CM Changes - Negative and Positive

[Sorrai]

I am absolutely in agreement with all the points the OP has made.

 

 

I am loving many aspects of this new expansion but the changes made to hypercrates is definitely not one of them. I am going to vent here. I'm very displeased with what they've done regarding cartel packs. The new CM hypercrate format needs to change immediately. They are no longer even "packs"! One measly item coupled with a boring companion gift does not constitute a "pack". A companion gift should not be considered as having any substantial value. It's little more than a disposable condiment--like a packet of mustard for your hot dog. That isn't fun or exciting at all.

 

Like many others this game is a big hobby of mine. On top of being a dedicated subscriber I also regularly purchase a hypercrate with the justification and rationale that I don't mind investing in something that gives me a sense of satisfaction and value for my money while also financially supporting a game that I greatly enjoy. However, this drastic new change definitely makes me feel like I am getting much less for such a high cost. At roughly $40 a hypercrate, I am definitely discouraged from spending so much real money on so little imaginary items.

 

 

They need to restore the following to each pack:

 

1) Jawa Junk. These were a nice staple for mat gathering and therefore are items of value.

2) Cartel certificates. One of the nicest things about these was they could be put toward acquiring rare and valuable items. I felt like this was a nice system that further rewarded players who invested in packs by offering an alternative way to acquire rare items they might otherwise never be able to obtain.

3) Credit Boon. These random credit bonuses were a fun and rewarding mini-prize to receive in a pack. Isn't the point of any game to have fun and feel rewarded?

4) Reputation. I like the Reputation system and the exclusive rewards it offers. It adds extra incentive for players who are already making that steady grind with regular pack purchases.

5) The exclusive Hypercrate bonus pack. I liked these a lot. This was a fun and rewarding bonus item to receive that guaranteed players who invested their hard-earned cash in a very expensive hypercrate would always receive a rare and unique item on top of the normal packs they purchased. People *like* perks!

 

 

Things I never want to see in a pack again:

 

1) Space Mission, Exploration, Class Story, GSF, Warzone experience boosts. Leveling is no longer the grueling grind it used to be and these redundant XP boosts should never waste space in a pack again. I think Minor and Major XP boosts are still fine when considering the F2P crowd who will benefit most from them.

Edited October 26, 2015 by Sorrai

[Rouakh]

Weird thing happend to me while I was spending cc last days. I bought two hypercrates and got only tonn of frontline crap panties and gloves, destroyed speeder bike decor and one or two items of some other crapy sort. Zero gold armor or nice decors.

Then I bought 5 golden armor crates:

-Thexaan Set

-Herald of Zildrog Set

-that oldschool imperial officer set

-Dart Addeddu (don't hurt me for this ) set

-Admaral Karath set

 

Sold 3 last sets and made 12 mills out of it

Zildrog alone goes for 9 mills but not sure if Im about to sell it

And a barely can sell those cheap items from the pack

 

I was pretty sad that I wasted 11k for trashy packs

Wanna make creds - take golden crates.

Edited October 26, 2015 by Rouakh

[Alec_Fortescue]

Ugh, the new hypercrate changes are awful. Value for money not. On the other hand I bought three Gold Armor Packs. Beside cool individual pieces I got full sets of: Sith Recluse, Dathomir Shaman and Satele Shan's. Nice...

[Moonstorm]

I wanted to provide some feedback to the devs on the Cartel Market changes, speaking as someone who buys 1-3 hypercrates of each new pack and has done so for quite some time. (If you do the math, that's a hefty monetary investment monthly.) And as someone who compulsively unlocks almost everything in Collections, I feel comfortable saying I'm a heavy Cartel Market user all around (and a sub since beta to boot).

 

In the bad news / good news game, I will start with bad news first so as to end on a positive note.

 

The Bad, #1:

 

Cartel Packs: I am enormously disappointed by the changes to the packs, both single and in hypercrates. While I appreciate the effort to remove "junk" (a pox on those Space Mission XP boosts), and while I also appreciate efforts being made to insure that each pack has at least one good thing (as opposed to a randomized collection of XP boosts, companion gifts, and one toy or something), I feel the new model of 1 item + 1 companion gift is not at all in my favor or appealing. To prove that I actually gave it a try before knee-jerk outrage, I should say I bought a hypercrate of the Underworld Alliance pack yesterday, to see for myself what the results were before posting anything. The thoughts and results I came away with were:

• After opening a hypercrate, I didn't just have fewer items by count, I also had almost zero of anything I'd hoped to get. That was almost never previously true with hypercrates; you could usually count on getting half a dozen items you wanted. In this case, with fewer chances each pack, the RNG hit much harder when it worked against you.
   
  
• As a follow-on to having received numerically less items, another of the main draws of buying a hypercrate was removed: namely, that I won't have hardly anything to sell. One of the things that made gambling on the hypercrates work was that you were guaranteed an inflow of credits from your GTN sales, which you could then use to buy the items you wanted but didn't get. With this hypercrate, I have almost nothing to sell, and because my RNG happened to be bad, nothing that I got is a high ticket seller. For the first time ever, I feel my hypercrate was a net loss.
   
  
• The addition of 6 additional packs to the hypercrate did not help at all in these results. 6 more guaranteed items did not, in the real application of it, balance out the possibility of 48. Not even close.
   
  
• The fact that the price of a hypercrate has not dropped just feels like salt in the wound. (I hesitate to say it's insulting, because that sounds very emotional... but it's pretty damn close to insulting.) This game is my hobby, and so I have never previously hesitated to throw my recreational funds at it for hypercrates. But with these changes, it suddenly does feel like I am throwing my money away as opposed to investing in a hobby or taking a fun gamble. I fully understand the Cartel Market is crucial to keeping the game going and I am happy to spend money there - but this particular change, as regards the amount of items that drop in packs, feels pretty egregious and I find myself extremely resistant to the idea of throwing more money at this particular CM purchase.
   
  
• I fear that with the increased scarcity of drops from the packs the cost of these items on the GTN will just explode. If this adjustment to packs was meant to control devaluation of items in the economy I think it runs the risk of backfiring, in that it will dis-incentivize the purchasing of packs to begin with. Bringing the GTN into line won't matter if the game's actual $$ income suffers.
   
  
• Conclusion: I strongly feel that either the price of the new style packs needs to come down, or the packs should return to providing more than just one item. At least two, for pity's sake! Perhaps two tiers: one random Gold or Silver item and one random Silver or Bronze item. That way you're still gambling; no guarantee of a Gold, but at least a chance, along with a promise that you're not going to be stuck with nothing but 30 Bronze items (I got about four full sets of Overwatch Shield armor and little else) for your $40. $40 is no joke.
  

 

The Bad, #2

 

Gold (Armor/Mount/Etc) Packs: Let me lead off by saying that I don't mind the repackaging into Gold/Silver/Bronze packs. In fact, I rather like it, and likewise appreciate that I can now focus on the item category I want. That's all good, in my book. But I think the prices need to be reconsidered. 1,200-1,500 CC on a gamble is just too high. That's almost $20 for crying out loud (usually $20 directly due to the packages you can buy CC in)! I have spent that previously in the CM many times, but always to buy a specific item that I knew I wanted and was guaranteed to get. A direct purchase for 1,200-1,500 is fine. But I will never spend that on a one shot gamble. The previous Grand Acquisitions packs offered you more bang for your buck in the way of a couple other items, or a lower price. The only suggestions I can think of would be:

• Just bring the price down. Scaling with the Silver and Bronze packs wouldn't need to be too great, but the Gold packs definitely need to come down.
   
  
• Perhaps another alternative would be to narrow down the range of packs from which a Gold item/set will be randomly drawn. Let's say I want to gamble on the Marka Ragnos armor set. My chances of that are better if the Gold pack I buy will only be randomly drawing from 2-3 shipments, as opposed to all 8. The former is a chance I might be willing to take for a high price; the latter is just stupid.
  

 

The Bad, #3

 

Cartel Market Certificates: I am updating this post to add an excellent question, as posted here by another player, about the Cartel Market Certificates. I can't believe I didn't think of this before. I was so focused on new item/gear drop rates that I didn't even think about the obvious: where are we supposed to get Certificates now? How are we supposed to buy anything from the Certificates decorations vendor or the reputation vendors ever again? (And if someone suggests the only place to get them now is the slot machine, I will howl; we don't need to resurrect the smelly corpse of that thing's impossible drop rates.) Certificates (and reputation rewards) were another thing that made the hypercrate gamble worth it; even if you didn't get an item you wanted, or an item to sell, you always got reputation, and you always had the chance of a Certificate which could also be profitable for you either in terms of getting you a deco or item you wanted or just to get a deco to sell.

 

The Good, #1

 

Collections: The collapsed categories, the filters, the search function - these are all just wonderful, wonderful QoL updates. Thank you!!

 

The Good, #2

 

"Grand" packs: Making these permanently available is great. This is particularly great for all of the weapons, dyes, toys, pets, etc - and the prices on those categories are reasonable (as opposed to the prices on Armor, Mounts, and Decos)! I think it's safe business sense to assume that people are more likely to gamble on multiple "small" gambles as opposed to one super big one. In the end, we probably end up spending the same amount of money, but with the lower prices you are more likely to catch buyers in the psychological compulsive trap as opposed to bringing them face first into the barrier of "Holy ****, that's almost $20 bucks for one thing. Uh... no."

 

Conclusion

 

All in all, I understand that the Cartel Market is crucial to pumping lifeblood through the game. I want it to succeed. I want to spend money there!

 

I can only hope that some of the recent changes will be re-examined, because as it stands I am resolved to find a new way to make credits (Slicing Mission grinding, here I come!) and get my vanity items, because I can no longer justify those hypercrate purchases.

 

Well, that doesn't happen very often.....I think I just agreed with all of your opinions. I feel sullied and unusual....

Personally, I have never been much of a Cartel Pack person, I tend to support the buyers via their sales on the Trade Network. With this new set however....yeah....I haven't spent a credit on anything new. Why? Because I can't bloody afford anything. 10 million for the Akk Dog. 2 Million for the Gloves to one of the new sets 8 million for the chest. To me, it hasn't been worth it to work up the credits for anything. At first I thought that people were just being greedy and charging insane fees for these items, but then I looked into it and saw the amount needed to buy the packs combined with the drop rates and scant quantity of the items.

How did they go from offering a Platinum Crate for Hypercrate buyers, to this?

[XiamaraSimi]

Very well written (so of course Bioware wil play the eyes closed, fingers in the ears, lalalala i cant hear/see you deal )

[Crescent]

This, so much this post! I bought several cartel coin cards yesterday before I had seen these posts and the associated nerfs that had happened to the cartel packs. I feel the risk of investing my money in Hyperpacks is no longer worth the reward. It used to be you were at least guaranteed a rare or super rare per pack, but that no longer seems to be the case. Also no more Cartel Certs???? Are you kidding??? Those are the only means of aquiring some items like primary black and secondary black dyes... which I use on my characters on their companions. What's that you say? There is a new pack that allows me to gamble from the entirety of your cartel dye pool? Yea, I'm not going to even play that roulette game.

 

The options I see are either a) lower the costs of these packs substantially and re-add things like cartel certs, and the chance at more item rolls ( ie one rare/super rare and a rare/uncommon item per pack) or b) start putting all your cartel pack armors on the market for a fixed fee (600-1400cc depending on rarity level) and start selling cartel certs (~200cc) so that we may put our funds toward the items and goals we want.

[Knockerz]

How exactly are we supposed to acquire cartel market certificates? I only had two needs for packs, rep and cm certificates, which makes buying any future more packs pointless. I can buy any future item from the gtn.

[steveEuk]

I give my support to the OP. Exactly how I feel. I have already posted my view as this is also in the discussions thread so it shows a lot of people are unhappy with the CM Changes.

[CAMELOTCRUSADE]

Just wanted to bump this up, I agree with the OP.

 

I have been trying to get that Akk dog and have bought a lot more packs than I should have. I have gotten next to nothing worthy out of it, which was not the experience I had with other packs I've bought heavily. At least all the peripherals of jawa junk (now especially great to get droid gifts for all my HKs), faction boosts, credit boons and dyes were nice to have Just getting one decoration or a piece of an armor set I don't want is too much of a letdown and gives a lot of buyer's remorse.

 

While we're talking about the CC I'd also like to advocate for something to ease unlocks for items we've already collected. Maybe a new drop to give us a free gold, silver, or gold unlock, or a discount on those rates for subscribers. Most of the joy for me is using that stuff on other characters, but for the expensive ones I just horde them in my bank until I know exactly who is supposed to get it, and as a result end up not using them at all most of the time.

[Emersyn]

I think the better option to burn CC is to get the Grand Gold Packs - get a confirmed Gold item (armor / mount) - sell it on the GTN, and hope that you'll get more than what the item you originally wanted on the GTN is going for.

 

Or simply just buy items like Thexan's Robes, Zakuul Dropship etc - and sell it on the GTN for Credits.

 

Take credits and save them until you have enough to buy the one item you wanted (like the Akk dog)

 

[Heromofo]

Listen to this guy

[Nitblade]

I never bought a Hypercrate before because there was not enough items i wanted in a pack to warrant it and I felt the price was a bit too high. But now the price goes to staggeringly ridiculous per items, that's a definite Heck No, Never.

 

I'll stick to stuff I can see like that nice Stalwart armor for my Trooper TY.

[Synsidius]

Great post and I agree with the OP 100%. Bump

[Feanar]

Bumping this up, Bioware, you can forget my money. Too much RNG, no value from me.

[TikkyLightmaker]

I think the better option to burn CC is to get the Grand Gold Packs - get a confirmed Gold item (armor / mount) - sell it on the GTN, and hope that you'll get more than what the item you originally wanted on the GTN is going for.

 

Or simply just buy items like Thexan's Robes, Zakuul Dropship etc - and sell it on the GTN for Credits.

 

Take credits and save them until you have enough to buy the one item you wanted (like the Akk dog)

 

Thing is: you just might get an armor set that you could have just bought right off the CM, since those are gold, as well. I suspected this, and someone confirmed this is indeed a possibility (due to them getting just that).

 

The Cartel Market has greatly dropped in value,to me, with 4.0. Looks like i'll be piling up CC after my last bit of spending - which was just on extra cargo space.

[Cindlehr]

agreed