Game design hurting Cartel Market sales?

[ML_DoubleTap]

Sorry man, but this is not possible for many of us.

 

A raiding main gets a lot of 180-186 gear drops, which are far from useless. That character's gear has to be thoroughly optimized for the exact best combination of stats, often in more than one set.

This leaves a lot of loose item modifications, that are needed for alts, companions, alts' companions, upcoming alts being leveled.

Just active inventory takes up about 1 cargo bay. It's a pain to recalculate itemization on every relevant alt every time you get a couple drops, so a passive inventory builds up for another half a bay.

 

A main will always craft, and it takes a minimum of one bay to keep every relevant mat. More now with conquests, but fortunately there's a legacy storage for multi-skill mats.

Miscellaneous items - stims and adrenals, crafted stuff, cartel shells and mounts, packs themselves, reputation tokens saved up for next weeks - take between half a bay and a full bay.

 

You need to clear up the inventory before opening packs, taking another half a bay. This realistically leaves about 1-1.5 bays that a raiding, crafting, PvPing, GTN trading main can spare to fill up without risk of ending up stuffed.

 

 

Oh, and that's using guild bank (XP boosts, companion gifts, mats from old packs aren't bound, so go there) and mailbox (not claiming expired listings or purchased items until needed) as additional storage.

 

The only way to get more that I see involves immediately putting loose modifications below 186 into temporary legacy gear and mailing it to bank alts, but that ends up incurring additional considerable costs of pulling them more times than needed (for a full set that's half a million down the drain).

Either that... or raiding less and crafting less.

 

What I end up doing in practice is instead open hypercrates on a fresh level 1 bank alt, teleported into a stronghold to use his cargo bays, leaving me to wait 1.5 days before I can use any stuff that's not legacy-wide on any real character. Can live with that, but it's still stupid.

 

You make it sound so much more difficult than it actually is. Are you a lawyer by chance?

 

If you have 5 personal bays on each toon and 5 bays in the legacy bank there's no reason you shouldn't have plenty of room. I regularly raid on 3 characters and pug on several others, I have all crafting skills and use them all regularly for conquests. I've yet to have an issue with space. There's a lot of absolutely worthless 186 mods, just vendor them instead of hanging on to them. Others you can just pop into legacy shells if you don't want them taking space. Just ask yourself, am I really going to need this high endurance enhancement in the next couple of months? Remember, the next tier of HM will be better gear than current NiM so there's no point in hanging on to stuff for that alt that won't be hitting 55 anytime soon.

[Deewe]

There are almost no items that have a 1 or 2 letter word in them. I've encountered it twice so far since the cartel packs started.

Maybe in English but I can assure you in French most names have "de" "du" "la" in them and more than often more then once. One example, not even the worst one:

 

Pack Forteresse de gardien de la porte

 

 

And it's as easy as shift-clicking the item and then clicking next to that word and pressing delete. You make it sound like you have to randomly click until you find the right place.

It's not like it's a long and ardeous process to remove the word. You're just being lazy.

Not really, if at least the input box would display the whole name it would not be that bad but you have to move around within the box with mouse/cursor to actually find the annoying characters and delete them

 

Also, as mentioned it would not be that annoying if we'd be also able to CTRL + Left Arrow move to next word, but we can't either.

 

 

The majority of the items you get from cartel packs have an extremely low posting fee, so if someone posts 10 items with a lower price then yours, just remove your item and list it for 1 credit lower than him.

Sorry have to disagree with you saying it's fine to have a cumbersome system.

 

It seems to me that most of your whini... eeh... complaints, are about you being lazy and wanting everything handed to you on a platter.

 

Honestly, if it's too bothersome for you to click in the right place on a series of words, you might want to look to yourself for the source of the problem.

Don't know what I did to you but that sounds quite harsh to me.

 

Then please allow me to answer that it isn't fine to be obliged to live with a poorly designed system that makes the game play tedious.

 

From my perspective game design and UI must, and I mark my words, they must smooth the player experience.

 

It isn't acceptable to be required to work the system around when it could be made, with few tweaking, much more convenient.

Edited September 19, 2014 by Deewe

[Heal-To-Full]

If you have 5 personal bays on each toon and 5 bays in the legacy bank there's no reason you shouldn't have plenty of room.

If you use some of these as spare storage for your main, instead of specifically legacy storage, yes.

With 5 bays, all we had until last month, plenty of room meant plenty of waste.

 

There's a lot of absolutely worthless 186 mods, just vendor them instead of hanging on to them.

Not talking about Nefra exploit drops, they're meant to be worthless. Raid 180 and 186 gear with optimized itemization.

 

Others you can just pop into legacy shells if you don't want them taking space. Just ask yourself, am I really going to need this high endurance enhancement in the next couple of months?

Turns out that, when you count alts of each class, not all of them HM raiding, plus at least one companion for each, more than one for the main, it's a lot of gear that needs to be distributed and redistributed (main>alt>main comps>alt comps).

 

As to the next couple of months, I live now and play this game now. Running in 156 on an alt and vendoring 180 or bad 186 on main just because in a few months there will be something better is like wearing torn pants and not replacing them because this winter there will be a new collection.

 

Now with conquests, the need has especially arisen to gear up previously needless alts, because you get a lot of badly built groups when cheesing ops on a maximum number of everyone's alts (if you don't, you might as well not pick a planet at all, and while at that save on a guild ship).

[ML_DoubleTap]

If you use some of these as spare storage for your main, instead of specifically legacy storage, yes.

With 5 bays, all we had until last month, plenty of room meant plenty of waste.

As you said below, we live in the present, what was available up until last month doesn't matter. There is more than enough room between character cargo bay and legacy storage. I craft hundreds of war supplies each week for conquests as well as some other crafting for money and I have plenty of room.

 

 

Not talking about Nefra exploit drops, they're meant to be worthless. Raid 180 and 186 gear with optimized itemization.

I sell vendor plenty of 'optimized' mods. I only need so many crit/alacrity enhancements The point still stands, if you don't have a current need for those items, there's not too much sense in saving them because the next tier will be better.

 

Turns out that, when you count alts of each class, not all of them HM raiding, plus at least one companion for each, more than one for the main, it's a lot of gear that needs to be distributed and redistributed (main>alt>main comps>alt comps).

 

Pro tip: get legacy gear for Treek and you don't need to gear all of your alts' companions.

 

As to the next couple of months, I live now and play this game now. Running in 156 on an alt and vendoring 180 or bad 186 on main just because in a few months there will be something better is like wearing torn pants and not replacing them because this winter there will be a new collection.

 

If you have a current need then I'd assume you'd be sending the gear to the alt that needs the gear rather than letting it sit in cargo so you've just rendered your argument moot. Why would you run around in 156 gear if you have a cargo hold busting at the seams with 186s?

 

Now with conquests, the need has especially arisen to gear up previously needless alts, because you get a lot of badly built groups when cheesing ops on a maximum number of everyone's alts (if you don't, you might as well not pick a planet at all, and while at that save on a guild ship).

 

Poor argument. Conquests are all about SM, you can do those in about any gear. Heck, we run through lvl 50's just to get them more gear.

[Deewe]

Pro tip: get legacy gear for Treek and you don't need to gear all of your alts' companions.

If I may, only works if:

• You have Treek
  
• You can stand her blabbing
  
• You don't want to play with any other companions
  

[OddballEasyEight]

I see alot of lawyer-esque wrangling to make things seem extra difficult and hard, so I think I'm gonna ignore this discussion from now on.

[Heal-To-Full]

As you said below, we live in the present, what was available up until last month doesn't matter. There is more than enough room between character cargo bay and legacy storage.

I don't want to use my legacy storage as simply extra storage for my main. It has other, more important uses.

If I do, yes, there's plenty of space to play around with packs.

 

I sell vendor plenty of 'optimized' mods. I only need so many crit/alacrity enhancements

Crit/alacrity is not optimized, it's low endurance; sought after mods and enhancements have power, not crit.

 

Pro tip: get legacy gear for Treek and you don't need to gear all of your alts' companions.

Very very cumbersome. I legacy share some gear I can't just duplicate (e.g. 186 chests from Nefra with optimized mod and enh from raid piece), but sharing companion gear is a pain in the butt. More often than not it's more time-efficient not to bother and go with whatever the companion has on already.

 

If you have a current need then I'd assume you'd be sending the gear to the alt that needs the gear rather than letting it sit in cargo so you've just rendered your argument moot.

Like I've explained, it takes time to re-optimize gear accounting for new loot. So as to maintain the priority, main>alt>main comp>alt comp. Doing it on every drop is an insane waste of time. Much more time-efficient to maintain a little inventory and do it in whole sets.

 

Poor argument. Conquests are all about SM, you can do those in about any gear.

I can. Someone's non-raiding alt number 5 who just hit 51 and is only wearing anything due to lolster, and now 4 of these in the group? You want to be equipped to carry, not just do.

 

Want. Not have to.

But if sacrifices are to be made, I'd rather suffer the 1.5-day waiting period to keep my main free of bound crap from packs, with nice cargo bays, each with its own purpose, not filled up to the brink with whatever, and legacy bays that serve the whole 22-character legacy, not one toon.

[ML_DoubleTap]

Crit/alacrity is not optimized, it's low endurance; sought after mods and enhancements have power, not crit.

 

 

I'm not sure you know what optimized means. A low endurance crit/alac enhancement is optimized albeit not always desired because only healers(and some DPS Sages) would use them. Optimized simply means the secondary and tertiary stats are higher than endurance on the piece. Sought after and optimized are two different things. But that's not really on topic.

 

 

But if sacrifices are to be made, I'd rather suffer the 1.5-day waiting period to keep my main free of bound crap from packs, with nice cargo bays, each with its own purpose, not filled up to the brink with whatever, and legacy bays that serve the whole 22-character legacy, not one toon.

 

You know, you could also designate an alt or two in that 22 character legacy that doesn't have cargo bays full of 186 mods to use as your pack opening toon. No reason it needs to be your main. That's what I generally do if I do decide to waste money gambling.

[branmakmuffin]

Finally I was tempted to make a few creds out of items I got from the packs themselves: what a pain. Did I say I had to wait for the timer to cool down yet? Then most the items link parsing for searching current price on the market doesn't work because the search doesn't work when you have 1 or 2 single letter in the name of the items. So it's shift click, find out search is grayed out, look out for the parsed name to clean it from single letters or 2 letters or ":".. if ever the letter where at the start of the name... nah too often they are not even at the end either so you have to click, click click till you find the correct position. BTW so happy we can't (CTRL) + (left/right arrow) to move to next words (not!)

Exaggerate much?

 

[LordArtemis]

I personally think they should do away with the time lock. I also think we need a search box in collections and the ability to shut off certain categories that will stay closed until we open them.

 

Finally, I think they should add all CM armor sets to our achievements, so we can see which pieces of armor we already have, and see what we need to unlock the set for collection if desired.

Edited September 20, 2014 by LordArtemis

[Heal-To-Full]

A low endurance crit/alac enhancement is optimized albeit not always desired because only healers(and some DPS Sages) would use them.

We disagree on definitions then. Where I come from, Shield/Alacrity or Absorb/Accuracy is never called optimized, however high on stats and low on endurance it is.

 

Crit/alacrity is not quite as worthless, but with current itemization even healers need at most a couple pieces of gear with any crit, which the game throws at players in non-moddable pieces in excess, and favor power on all the rest. In practice, it's now hard to find a healer who isn't overstacked on crit.

 

You know, you could also designate an alt or two in that 22 character legacy that doesn't have cargo bays full of 186 mods to use as your pack opening toon. No reason it needs to be your main.

Like I've said already, that's exactly what I did - designated a lowbie alt with no baggage for hypercrate opening.

The only drawback is the 36-hour bind timer before a real character can use the items. It's not painful, it's just pointless.

Edited September 19, 2014 by Heal-To-Full

[Deewe]

Like I've said already, that's exactly what I did - designated a lowbie alt with no baggage for hypercrate opening.

The only drawback is the 36-hour bind timer before a real character can use the items. It's not painful, it's just pointless.

The trend I see in the topic is people who don't mind about the actual issue, mostly dedicate an alt for this or make sure to empty plenty of cargo bay before buying crates.

 

Then as you mention it, the timer, from a player perspective sounds bad.

 

All in all, while some player aren't annoyed at all by the current mechanics regarding crates, GTN and inventory management, it's far from being a smooth process at all.

[DarthDymond]

The only drawback is the 36-hour bind timer before a real character can use the items. It's not painful, it's just pointless.

The point of the bind timer isn't related to in-game functions, it's related to mitigating the problem/possibility of people making fraudulent CC purchases or using hacked accounts.

 

If someone got ahold of my account and spent all the CCs I have accumulated, and there was no 36 hour timer, then they could immediately mail those fraudulently purchased items to their characters/their friends, or sell them (to completely innocent third parties) and send on the credits. BW would then be stuck either having to tell me "too bad, so sad - don't let your account get hacked next time" or tracking down where those items went and removing them from the economy, potentially having to tell an innocent buyer "sorry you bought this in good faith, but now we're taking it away from you."

 

Keeping things tied to an account for that initial window helps mitigate the problem and makes it a ton easier for BW to effectively hit an "undo" button on purchases once the account owner reports fraud.

[LordArtemis]

The trend I see in the topic is people who don't mind about the actual issue, mostly dedicate an alt for this or make sure to empty plenty of cargo bay before buying crates.

 

Then as you mention it, the timer, from a player perspective sounds bad.

 

All in all, while some player aren't annoyed at all by the current mechanics regarding crates, GTN and inventory management, it's far from being a smooth process at all.

 

I think many would agree there is room for improvement, and I would expect that folks would drink from the "extra inventory space" shelf, even if they talk like they would never touch it.

 

Its the secret sauce that I expect most would enjoy.

[Heat-Wave]

What amazes me is when ideas to improve the game come up, so many people say, "oh no, we don't need that, it is fine the way it is..."

 

Boy, there sure are a lot of people who must hate change...

[Avatarless]

I've stopped buying packs since you can't even vendor any of the items.

 

There are only so many pairs of belts, wristbands and boots I can carry around and simply destroying them is a waste.

 

I tried selling them for 1 credit even, no one bought them.

Edited September 20, 2014 by Avatarless

[OddballEasyEight]

I've stopped buying packs since you can't even vendor any of the items.

 

There are only so many pairs of belts, wristbands and boots I can carry around and simply destroying them is a waste.

 

I tried selling them for 1 credit even, no one bought them.

 

I call BS on that... pretty much anything that's put up on the GTN for 500 or less is bought by someone somewhere.

 

I've had completely useless items that have 30+ pages of listings on the GTN and if I sell them for 500 or less, someone always buys them.

[OddballEasyEight]

What amazes me is when ideas to improve the game come up, so many people say, "oh no, we don't need that, it is fine the way it is..."

 

Boy, there sure are a lot of people who must hate change...

 

Not so much "we hate change" as "these changes are nice and all, but not worth the time and effort it would take to implement them, there are other things that are more important".

 

Of course, there's always the "I don't agree with you, I don't think these ideas improve the game" as well.

 

I've never seen a "This game is perfect, nothing needs to change" type comment.

Edited September 20, 2014 by OddballEasyEight

[TheNahash]

Reputation items are consumed until they are at max rep, then those go in the guild bank as well.

 

How can they store the reputation items in the guild bank?

aren't those bound to them?

[OddballEasyEight]

How can they store the reputation items in the guild bank?

aren't those bound to them?

 

Yup, I think most of them are... There are some that can be sold on the GTN so those aren't bound.

[TheNahash]

Yup, I think most of them are... There are some that can be sold on the GTN so those aren't bound.

 

I don't get it.

Are we talking about the items that increase your rep with the faction of each shipment? The green/blue/purple ones?

I've never seen any of them on the GTN.

[Kaisernick]

I don't get it.

Are we talking about the items that increase your rep with the faction of each shipment? The green/blue/purple ones?

I've never seen any of them on the GTN.

 

because they are bound, but i hit max with binary star reality and unlike the many other items that drop from boxes they can be sold to vendors, i dont think they sell for much but at least to are making some money from them .

[TheNahash]

because they are bound, but i hit max with binary star reality and unlike the many other items that drop from boxes they can be sold to vendors, i dont think they sell for much but at least to are making some money from them .

 

to vendors, yes I know that.

but how can they be sold on the GTN or stored in a guild bank?

Edited September 20, 2014 by TheNahash

[Jamus_Divinus]

The point of the bind timer isn't related to in-game functions, it's related to mitigating the problem/possibility of people making fraudulent CC purchases or using hacked accounts.

 

If someone got ahold of my account and spent all the CCs I have accumulated, and there was no 36 hour timer, then they could immediately mail those fraudulently purchased items to their characters/their friends, or sell them (to completely innocent third parties) and send on the credits. BW would then be stuck either having to tell me "too bad, so sad - don't let your account get hacked next time" or tracking down where those items went and removing them from the economy, potentially having to tell an innocent buyer "sorry you bought this in good faith, but now we're taking it away from you."

 

Keeping things tied to an account for that initial window helps mitigate the problem and makes it a ton easier for BW to effectively hit an "undo" button on purchases once the account owner reports fraud.

 

That's what I always thought. IF the timer is not due to the above then i'm all for removing it.

[OddballEasyEight]

I don't get it.

Are we talking about the items that increase your rep with the faction of each shipment? The green/blue/purple ones?

I've never seen any of them on the GTN.

 

Yeah, those.

But it was only a few reps that could be traded. And it was "back in the day" so i don't remember which ones.

But yeah, most of them are bind on pickup and they can be vendored too.

So they won't take up any space really. You either use them or vendor them. No sense in holding on to rep items when you've maxed the rep.