Let’s Chat – Cartel Market and You: New pack design (Underworld Alliance)

[Mathew_Diameth]

Cartel Market and Myself?

 

Well, though I spent quite a lot of money at my own expense and acknowledgement of my actions, I expect or better yet, I demand better compensation. Out of two Hypers I acquired a number of bronze and a few silver pets and decorations. Gold in the form of new equipment? Not much at all. This has left me to the current stance of quite a few people, that a hold needs to be placed on CM purchases until this random system is either fixed if broken or changed. With the amount of chances for equipment and new releases it causes serious chaos amongst the vast amount of people looking for the "Next Big Thing".. Just my two cents, take it as it is...

[Mathew_Diameth]

I'd like to see cartel certificates reappear in packs. And don't tell me to use the slot machine because I used 3000 chips this week and only saw one cert...

 

I also have to agree with this post. I enjoyed collecting cartel certificates left and right and be able to purchase interesting goodies in the Cartel Lobby. At the same time with those, how about having some of the reputation support for some of the earlier titles you could earn, such as from the Starfighter Collection.

[PappaKane]

I have to say that the new Anarchist pack was very disappointing. Purchased a hypercrate and received mostly chance cubes that contained items I either already owned or had no interest in. Not a single saber to be found

[PainOfDemise]

I have to say that the new Anarchist pack was very disappointing. Purchased a hypercrate and received mostly chance cubes that contained items I either already owned or had no interest in. Not a single saber to be found

 

Pretty much this. Ended up getting 30 crates just to get a bunch of stuff from other packs instead of the one I purchased. Doesn't exactly make me want to buy these things if I'm trying to get stuff from the pack I'm BUYING and yet, I basically get everything from other packs.

[Aardevark]

Hi Toby.

 

To be totaly blunt there a load of crap..

[dynosian]

I opened a ticket to ask if the new packs were bugged, since I received far more old content items than I did items from the current pack.

 

After purchasing three hypercrates (90 packs), I received many copies of the same weapon, one mount, and one set of gold armor (far better than most others it would seem). Still, I found it outstandingly offensive that 75% of the items I recieved were items from OTHER packs. I did not buy other packs... I bought the current back... because I wanted items from the current pack. If I wanted armors or color crystals or decos from previous packs... I would have purchased those gold and silver deco/armor/crystal/etc packs when they were on the CC market.

 

I opened a ticket to ask for a refund, since I assumed my packs were bugged. In all honesty, I'm not one of those people that sit in front of their computer all day long looking over every single developer note, so I didn't even know about the chance cubes being a thing. I thought "Hey, a new pack, lets get some new items! Yay Star Wars!". Those jubilant cries of joy soon turned to stunned silence. Silence further enforced with the CS member closed my in game ticket without addressing my issue. Yes, I understand you like my money more than me, and will not return it. I get that. But....

 

Is it intended that you are to get more items that come from outside of the packs, than items affiliated with the packs themselves? We buy the packs because they contain new things, not because they contain old things. There are old item packs for that.

No dev on the forums seems to be willing to address this issue. That tells me they either don't care (which I don't think is the case), or something did screw up... and they are worried about admitting it. Since there have been so many screw ups with the patches as of late, I'm inclined to believe it is the latter and not the former. Still, I think the community would REALLY APPRECIATE, if a Dev would speak on this subject. There have been several threads crying out about this, and many customers feel swindled. You would think some form of damage control would be done before they start hemorrhaging clients.

 

I myself will never spend another dime on CC after the curt and dismissive response I received from CS regarding my issue. Which is sad because I genuinely enjoyed the process of opening packs. The little bit of gambling has always been fun in my eyes. I have the disposable income to spend $100-$200 each new set of packs, and while sometimes I end up snapping my fingers and going 'oh drat, bad rng', I've never thought it was an actual problem until now. It really saddens me to see such a potentially fun aspect of the game go down the crapper due to seedy business practices. That being said, I would still like to give ToR the chance to continue earning my subscription by answering my simple bold question above.

 

No I will not put in a ticket to get it answered, I did that and got ignored. No I will not CALL CS and speak to them, as I have no proof that a person over the phone will be nice to me when the person across text was dismissive. I would like the question answered here, publicly. I think we, as customers, deserve that much at the very least.

[StarkHelsing]

I purchased four Hypercrates myself, giving me a whopping 120 chances to get something decent. What I got was chance cube galore and items that can’t be sold due to the saturation of the market. It seems I wasn’t the only one who was hyped for something in that crate. Regardless my friend wanted one of those sabers and I was willing to aid him in getting one. Three of us combined our ‘rewards’ from our crates resulting in over 200+ crates. Not one crate held the lightsaber or any of the other golden mounts – barring the Rancor.

 

If anything our haul of golden items was disgustingly low. Certainly not enough to compare to other packs which had the old drop rates and lack of chance cubes. What really hit a low point was that we were practically swimming in chance cubes. We were opening packs only to find a companion gift and two chance cubes? Out of the 70+ chance cubes that we all received collectively, nothing decent was dropped, besides ONE item. And that was the Ziost lightsaber which I can probably sell for a quick profit.

 

This isn’t right. I bought the pack advertised as it seemed rather obvious that the items within that pack would drop more than the chance cubes. I was wrong. If this is the case and we’re running around with a speculated 60% chance of getting a chance cube instead of the actual gear from the new pack then you need to state this.

 

For an item you hyped Bioware and then made near impossible to get you really showed a large amount of the community that we’ve given you too much cash. If you can’t respect those who give you money to actually give them a fair deal on the digital items they purchase, then quite frankly I’m going to boycott the CM. I will not leave the game, I enjoy it. But I will avoid giving you more money than you rightfully deserve when it comes to this horrible pack and its horrific drop rates.

 

Either fix the odds and actually address the issue or make items purchasable directly from the CM.

Honestly after all this nonsense I’m of half of mind to ask for compensation due this scheme of yours - that has left me so out of pocket. But what’s the point? I doubt you’ll give or even acknowledge the issue. If you do, grand – there’s hope for all of us.

 

Regardless, I’m done with the CM for now. Sad… I rather liked the thrill of packs and the excitement of getting an item I actually wanted and then some. This pack… didn’t do that for me at all, just disappointment.

 

I know people will scream, it's gambling! You should expect this. True, but even in a casino I know my odds. Even when I play a scratch card, I know my odds. I know the risks when I play such things and I'm not left with disappointment when I lose. Here, people were expecting the odds from the last pack but with chance cubes replacing the bronze items. This wasn't the case. These chance cubes seem to drop more than the old bronze items, and even then the chance cubes themselves offer low tier items up to the extremely rare golds from packs I didn't even want to get involved in.

 

It's just, I don't understand how this happened? Why would someone think that when I buy the advertised pack with all the cool new gear, it obviously means I only want a small percentage of what was in that pack and the rest nonsense from old packs?

 

If you wish to cater to the newcomer then simply have the old packs cycle in or have the chance cubes be on their own. Give them a chance cube hypercrate.

[Grdosija]

No dev on the forums seems to be willing to address this issue. That tells me they either don't care (which I don't think is the case), or something did screw up... and they are worried about admitting it. Since there have been so many screw ups with the patches as of late, I'm inclined to believe it is the latter and not the former. Still, I think the community would REALLY APPRECIATE, if a Dev would speak on this subject. There have been several threads crying out about this, and many customers feel swindled. You would think some form of damage control would be done before they start hemorrhaging clients.

 

Oh the devs care, I think. But let's not fool ourselves, it's not the devs that came up with this crap. It's the Account Management and Marketing. And they care only about how much money they siphon out of us. Devs are probably forbidden to even reply to any of these complaints.

 

I myself will never spend another dime on CC

 

That's probably the best course of action you can take. It's the only thing decision makers in such a big company respond to - you not giving them your money Trust me, they don't read these forums nor do they wanna hear about it

[EarnestBunbury]

With all the money being made in this market, why is so little being put into content? Oh, greed!

[dynosian]

Oh the devs care, I think. But let's not fool ourselves, it's not the devs that came up with this crap. It's the Account Management and Marketing. And they care only about how much money they siphon out of us. Devs are probably forbidden to even reply to any of these complaints

 

That's also a fair assumption, division of labor within the workforce over there, and there's only so much internal information the Devs and community managers are able to let out. This is probably one of those things. I can also sort of understand the argument that they are busy elsewhere, making sure the game is actually playable. As we went three or four days in a row of questionable stability, they have had their hands full. I get that

 

However, it doesn't change the fact that a large portion of their customer base is currently unhappy about a thing, and the only peep we have heard so far has been a blue post saying 'if you go to your bank to get your money back, we will perms-ban your account'.

 

The fact that the the responses that seem to be getting recieved over this whole fiasco have been so... contrite?... Leads me to think something is up, only compounding that assumption with the general silence on the topic at hand.

[Endlich]

I purchased four Hypercrates myself, giving me a whopping 120 chances to get something decent. What I got was chance cube galore and items that can’t be sold due to the saturation of the market. It seems I wasn’t the only one who was hyped for something in that crate. Regardless my friend wanted one of those sabers and I was willing to aid him in getting one. Three of us combined our ‘rewards’ from our crates resulting in over 200+ crates. Not one crate held the lightsaber or any of the other golden mounts – barring the Rancor.

 

If anything our haul of golden items was disgustingly low. Certainly not enough to compare to other packs which had the old drop rates and lack of chance cubes. What really hit a low point was that we were practically swimming in chance cubes. We were opening packs only to find a companion gift and two chance cubes? Out of the 70+ chance cubes that we all received collectively, nothing decent was dropped, besides ONE item. And that was the Ziost lightsaber which I can probably sell for a quick profit.

 

This isn’t right. I bought the pack advertised as it seemed rather obvious that the items within that pack would drop more than the chance cubes. I was wrong. If this is the case and we’re running around with a speculated 60% chance of getting a chance cube instead of the actual gear from the new pack then you need to state this.

 

For an item you hyped Bioware and then made near impossible to get you really showed a large amount of the community that we’ve given you too much cash. If you can’t respect those who give you money to actually give them a fair deal on the digital items they purchase, then quite frankly I’m going to boycott the CM. I will not leave the game, I enjoy it. But I will avoid giving you more money than you rightfully deserve when it comes to this horrible pack and its horrific drop rates.

 

Either fix the odds and actually address the issue or make items purchasable directly from the CM.

Honestly after all this nonsense I’m of half of mind to ask for compensation due this scheme of yours - that has left me so out of pocket. But what’s the point? I doubt you’ll give or even acknowledge the issue. If you do, grand – there’s hope for all of us.

 

Regardless, I’m done with the CM for now. Sad… I rather liked the thrill of packs and the excitement of getting an item I actually wanted and then some. This pack… didn’t do that for me at all, just disappointment.

 

I know people will scream, it's gambling! You should expect this. True, but even in a casino I know my odds. Even when I play a scratch card, I know my odds. I know the risks when I play such things and I'm not left with disappointment when I lose. Here, people were expecting the odds from the last pack but with chance cubes replacing the bronze items. This wasn't the case. These chance cubes seem to drop more than the old bronze items, and even then the chance cubes themselves offer low tier items up to the extremely rare golds from packs I didn't even want to get involved in.

 

It's just, I don't understand how this happened? Why would someone think that when I buy the advertised pack with all the cool new gear, it obviously means I only want a small percentage of what was in that pack and the rest nonsense from old packs?

 

If you wish to cater to the newcomer then simply have the old packs cycle in or have the chance cubes be on their own. Give them a chance cube hypercrate.

 

I absolutely agree with what you stated! This pack is by far the worst pack, you get more stuff from older packs than anything else. The drop rates needs to be adjusted to drop more of the current pack than previous ones. Till they address this issue, i will vote with my wallet and not purchase a pack from the CC.

[Eres]

Ok, thinking about previous packs and new ones I've come to an idea.

I think the best way will be adding CM certificates to the Cartel packs again and a vendor for curent CM pack.

With few of them, players could have the option to directly buy items from Cartel vendors.

And with a vendor of current CM pack players might be able to buy items they are lacking. With this you'll have more satisfying customers.

You don't have to make new vendor for each pack, just one vendor that only sells items from the pack that is currently at CM. If person have everything he wants or have no desire to buy other things, he can spend his certificates on other items or items from next pack.

I'm not asking on making it 1 certificate per 1 item. You can put the price you want, ofcourse.

If there are items you don't want to sale for ordinary certificates, you can add golden certificates.

 

And I'm proposing to lower a bit drop rate of chance cubes(well, the whole idea is nice, but their drop rate is too high at current state) and instead of missing drop rate add the chance for those certificates.

 

Btw, idea for vendor's looks: twilek dancer lying on Hutt's lounge and eating grape

Edited February 14, 2016 by Eres

[blackphantome]

Hello from Germany! Also in Germany exists a discussion about the new packs. But there is nearly just one side: No one likes the new packs. Not because of the things in the pack - because of the new system. We buy a new pack and sometimes just receive old things that have got no connection to the pack. That's not honorable.

 

---Hope they change that.

[Shwarzchild]

The chance cubes are a cool idea, but really they can't be so tied to every other pack in terms of item. If the chance cube had a chance at an item from the newest pack outside of the gold level, it would work much better. Nobody wants to get items from other packs when buying new packs. The new pack items are the selling point. I certainly don't want any ancient socorro weapons ever, and of course I was blessed with them now.

 

Also the weapons need to go. They should be sold exclusively on the cartel market by themselves. I would prefer never to see a weapon in the pack ever again. The drop rates on them are insanely high it seems, and they're near worthless. I would also suggest only developing two armors in each pack. Make those gold level. Mounts, pets, emotes, decorations should be the silver levels while the armors and the companions stay gold.

[jediloki]

The new Anarchist crates are a total disappointment.

 

I am not sure who thought making the %chance for the chance cube to drop for one of the two slots in the pack should be above 50%....they need to be demoted to bathroom cleaner with a specialty of cleaning the toilets. I would say fire them immediately, but having them clean the toilets for a few months then fire them would be more fitting. This pack as it stands is utter crap, they should learn to clean it up.

 

The newest crates should be for the newest items. Nothing else.

 

Want to sell a hyper crate of chance cubes for people to take chances of getting some of the older useful items...sure, make it a separate hyper crate pack. But remove them from the main pack completely.

 

If that is not possible for some stupid reason, then the chance for the to drop needs to be far lower than the 50-60+% drop rate people are seeing now.

[ValhallaSol]

Basically the same complaint as has been made above. We bought the new packs, six hypercrates+, in the hope of getting some of the new items. We received on average 60/70% chance cubes with very little in the way of the new items. Somehow, this just feels like a cheat.

 

In the end the drop rate for the lightsaber has resulted in them being 50+mil on the GTN, across all servers. This means only people with large amounts of credits have any real hope of getting one. There's not even the chance of using cartel certificates to buy the item from rep vendors, which just makes it worse.

[_ShadowHawk]

Every couple of months or so I come back to this game for a few weeks and buy a hypercrate for resources to share among my several characters. This time, seeing there were changes I wasn't quite sure of, I bought a new supercrate of Anarchist packs (the vibrosword would be welcome for a certain companion).

 

I wound up with nothing I wanted, nothing I could use, nothing I could sell on the GTN.

 

I won't be repeating that mistake. You need to make another change to the packs. Outfitting characters is a great deal of the enjoyment I derive from this game and this flatly takes that away from me. I'll check back in a week or three to see what's what. I love Star Wars, but there are frustration free ways of enjoying it.

[tummiswtor]

New pack is great, i like that some items are really RARE and hard to get it (like arbiter lightsaber).

Only one thing there's too many chance cubes in pack a bit, becouse most of them = cheap items.

[Xina_LA]

On the whole, I mostly agree with everyone, but...

People keep saying that no one wants to get old items from new packs. Sadly, the main reason I bought so many new packs was to get old items. Of course, that's probably because I'm a fairly new player. It's all new to me.

 

What I would like is the return of the Bronze/Silver/Gold packs for specific categories. BSG for decorations, armor, weapons, vehicles, pets, and so forth.

 

 

Assuming that's out of the question, I'd be fine with Grand Chance cubes so long as:

• They become Grand Chance (Decoration), Grand Chance (Vehicle), and so forth. If we get one from a category we don't like, we should be able to trade and sell them. Having a random chance of category on top of a random chance of a useful/gold item is too much stacking of odds. The chances of something useful are infinitesimal.
  
• Grand Chance cubes have a lower (perhaps no) chance of dropping a bronze.
  
• The cubes have a chance of dropping a Cartel Market Certificate, at least 1%.
  

 

 

Whatever the changes are, I bought 30 packs and received only three items that I felt were worth the price of the pack. Those odds are simply TERRIBLE. On top of that, the resale value of the items I did receive averaged at around 45k credits. (Mostly unpopular partial armor sets.) So the resale/trade value was terrible, too.

 

That's not leaving this new player with a good impression that makes me want to keep spending money.

Edited February 22, 2016 by Xina_LA

[Terrorus]

I read through the thread and, from what i gathered, the real problem with the anarchist pack seems to be the chance cubes. I'm pretty sure if they were removed from future packs the outrage would stop.

I believe very few people would disagree with having a way to obtain older pack items. However, the inclusion of chance cubes in NEW packs is, probably, the single worse way of doing it.

In the BSG packs you probably had the best way to combine the games need to make money with the players desire of aquiring items in a manner that felt fair for the price.

 

I don't usually purchase packs, but with some of the items on this new one I was honestly enticed. However, when I read about the chance cubes I knew it would be a bad value for my money. When i buy a pack I want a shot at geting items from that pack, items which were never obtainable before! That is what I'm looking for when I spend my CCs.

With this latest pack i have a 50~60% chance of having a roll for an item from ANY of the other packs. Even if the chances of each item droping were equal (they most certainly are not) the odds of geting anything of interest are abysmal.

 

Unfortunately, considering the images released for the pack that is droping tomorrow (march 8th), the chance cube will still be plagueing the game. And with nothing as interesting as the arbiter lightsaber to drive the sales and all the controversy, I'm hoping the player base will vote with their wallets and make this the least sold pack so far.

Edited March 7, 2016 by Terrorus

[Mistress-Taboo]

Drop rates are horrible now, most of the time I get chance cubes

If I'm paying $42 of real cash for super crates of 30 for that pack, I do expect to be getting items from that specific pack

Even with chance cubes, I'm getting older stuff, that I already have

I've been here since the beginning and buying all time, but if this doesn't change, I'm gonna stop buying CM stuff

[Wayshuba]

I know this is a little late but I like the new pack designs. After using free CC to purchase 5 of them and not getting anything at all that I wanted (or could use), I smiled and realized these new packs are going to save me $50 a month in CC purchases.

 

Why? Because these are completely worthless the way they are now and I have decided to swear off any pack purchases at all. To be frank, I have better odds of winning the powerball than getting some digital good that I want out of these crates.

 

Now, that being said, here is my simple suggestion for packs, if you insist on sticking with them, in the future.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=8868327#post8868327

[eduardoxaud]

I'm wondering if the devs still read this post... people are complaining about the new packs since the release of the first one and nothing has changed! I've bought the supercrate of the new pack, the visionary one, and within 5 packs I got 9 chance cubes, 1 replacement part companion gift, the same one that you can buy with 1 green scrap from the jawa. 15 green scraps, 20 blue, and 6 purple, plus 4 other companion gifts of various tiers. not even 1 decoration! The cubes gave me nothing from the current pack.

 

Chance cube drop from all packs can enter the category of worst ideas the devs had.

 

Why dont the crates drop the bronze, silver or gold packs from armor, weapons, crystal and decoration types? At least we'll known the type of thing we're rolling for, and can sell them accordingly...

 

Why dont put all gifts from tier 5 or 6?

 

Why dont show respect for the money people still spend on this game while refusing a friend's request to forget this "dead game" and download other mmo?

 

People are spending money, and the feeling that I have is like the devs treat us as they're doing a big favor to us.

 

So, I'll do like other people here and save the money spent on CC until they start to think.

[Xina_LA]

Still no Cartel Certificates?

[TestofFaith]

This thread might well be dead, or falling on deaf ears even if not, but I hope that Toby is actually still reading feedback. After reading the forums and the assessments of the new design for the packs and crates, I had decided not to purchase either because it sounded like a really bad design with a greatly reduced probability of getting anything good from the new items.

 

Today, I decided to buy some CCs and give a crate a shot, figuring the silver stuff used to drop like rain and I really wanted one of those Tempted Apprentice sabers; especially since I have waited for BW to finally give us a lightsaber with Luke's RotJ ignition sound since I started playing during 2011 early access (and we all know its in the game since it is used when you select a character to log in every single time).

 

Well, I received 11 character items total (weapons/armor/crystals), 4 of which were duplicate supplementary armor boxes, 13 decorations, and 37 chance cubes (which all dropped bronze junk that I either already had or had intentionally not acquired). There were also several influence items, but these are in no way something I would ever purchase a pack/crate for when I get them for free in masse during KotFE game play/endgame.

 

I will not purchase another pack, of ANY type again. I let my desire for an item overcome my gut feeling that these were an even worse form of digital banditry than before (and they were near-intolerably weighted against the player THEN), and I paid the price with real-world currency. As a side note, the lightsaber I wanted was not among the items, however I found one for 345k on the GTN so I bought it. Sadly, the sound set is bugged, making this whole experience comically more unpleasant.

 

As a small business owner, I assure you that if someone in our regional network were using your gambling addict-based model combined with the recurring quality control issues, they would be blacklisted relatively quickly. I ask as a fellow certified retail merchant, and as a loyal customer to your product for nearly 5 years despite some periods where that loyalty was fairly unrewarding: please take a look at this cartel pack product design's glaring flaws and adjust it to show more regard for the hard-earned currency that your customers are paying. Thank you.

Edited April 8, 2016 by TestofFaith