Dark Vs. Light Packs in the Cartel Market

[PennyAnn]

I don't think the anger is around them selling the items. The anger is from the rewards being BoP from the event as opposed to BoL ( meaning if you got all 3 armour parts on any toons you could unlocks it in collections or even if you didn't want to unlock you could send bits to anyone you wanted ) - it seems this was done on purpose to leave people short changed into wanting/needing the left over items and now having a solution that just so happens to cost real money.

 

Again it is what it is and I don't care about that but the way they seem to have lied about the whole bit where the items HAD to be BoP or wouldn't unlock is now super far fetched.

 

At the least they could have made the packs BoL and the item BoP but they never addressed that convenient flaw in their lies.

 

Yep. This. Sloppy, Bioware. But really, shame on US at this point.

[PennyAnn]

Just to clarify...are agreeing or disagreeing with arciliuson? Because I'm in the same boat, hence why I have not opened ANY of the boxes, because I know 60-90% of the items I get are going to be worthless, because I have them already and I cant sell them on the GTN or vendor, or what I would do is give to guildys who needed a piece or too. Had one who was looking for the Tulak Hord set, already have it, so if I got a piece, I would have given them all to them.

 

Also....is me asking for them to revert the packs to a token system where we can choose the rewards WE want and have them BoP from a vendor is wrong and pandering? Just wondering for clarification.

 

The problem with the Vendor thing is that they historically have a hard time putting new items on old vendors or new vendors and having them not be exploitable (item return timers and the like). If they kept the return policy thing as it always was (ie: there usually wasn't one!), then problem solved. My suspicion is that sometime around the same time that they handed off Customer Service duty to EA and that got outsourced, somebody in a meeting said: "We're getting too many complaints about people buying an item they didn't intend to buy or didn't want. Change that." And then Bioware was just not thorough at bug checking what having a time period in which you could return items you bought from a vendor would mean in all scenarios.

 

Also kinda in the same way they can't find a happy medium and make a slot machine for old rep that everyone could have and enjoy (even long after they get the max rep from it). It is either too lucrative, or nerfed into oblivion for all eternity. There can be no happy medium.

 

This is why we cannot have nice things.

[demotivator]

THIS is the solution to the big issue of the packs being BoP? Just toss more packs up on the cartel market that are BoE and make people pay for them? Man, just when I think Bioware can't sink any lower, they find a new and original way to exceed my expectations. And I better stop here, before I say something that will get me perma-banned.

 

One thing you should learn: they always sink lower. Always. I think they are digging their way to China.

 

Be assured that they have something even worse in store for the end of summer.

Edited July 13, 2016 by demotivator

[DarkSaberMaster]

One thing you should learn: they always sink lower. Always. I think they are digging their way to China.

 

Be assured that they have something even worse in store for the end of summer.

 

Yep. It will always get worse when EAWare is involved.

[ChicksDigHarleys]

I didn't see this coming...said no one ever.

[DarthSpuds]

Something fun into a chore? Spending money on packs and opening them was fun but now it's a chore?

 

What are you even going on about now?

 

 

 

Does LoTRO even hold a candle to this game in terms of player and subscriber numbers these days? Fairly sure it doesn't and it's just some niche little game for niche little players there days.

 

 

 

Then enjoy NEVER getting those items. Oh unless of course you buy them from the GTN after a long grind earning credits. One would wonder if it would have been easier to just buy the packs if that's the case.

 

How To Get What I Want The CC Packs Way:

1) Part with REAL MONEY to buy CC.

2) Spend CC on Pack

3) Get NOTHING I want.

4) Go to GTN, find prices for what I did get.

5) List Items

6) Achieve Sales

7) Lose % of Credits as auction house fees.

8) Grind for remaining credits to buy what I do want.

9) Buy what I want.

 

Net Result: Real cash outlay disappointment at horrid RNG and drop chances, GTN hassle, grind for credits, get what I want.

 

How To Get What I Want The GTN Way

1) Grind credits to buy what I want.

2) Buy what I want.

 

Net Result: Minimal GTN hassle, grind for credits, get what I want.

 

Cancel out equivalencies and what have you got?

Cartel Packs = spending real money to be disappointed.

Yup, that's smart.

 

BTW: it doesn't matter if LoTRO only has one player, if their store is better, then it is better.

 

You go to the hardware store to buy a drill, the store assistant says "Sorry, no drills, but if you buy this mystery box you may get a drill, or a hammer, maybe a box of screws, could even be a dented sheet of tin, but there a possibility you'll get a drill - but it probably won't be the exact drill you want. But that doesn't matter you can sell whatever you get on e-bay, and then buy the drill you do want. How's that for a great deal?"

 

Would you do it? No, of course you wouldn't. So why do it with pixels?

 

Cartel Packs are the biggest con in this game, and I can't believe just how many suckers Bioware found to partake, just because there's 0.001% chance there might be the configuration of pixels you want.

 

All The Best

[CrutchCricket]

Yep, people are idiots and Bioware will drain them dry. Nothing new to see here.

[Beachdudeca]

I like the packs , they contaon some of the most highly desired items in game , its a great thing

[Andryah]

I didn't literally mean it was the ONLY reason to run it, just that it was the main reason to run it along with companions.

 

Fair enough. Perhaps say what you actually mean then, rather then go to absolutes.

 

When you say something other then what you mean.... it's kind of dishonest/misleading, even if harmlessly so IMO. It's a text only discussion forum, so we can really only go by what someone actually writes.. right? And absolutes are kind of the weapon of choice around here for bashing the game and the studio.

 

Either way my main problem is their eliminating a incentive to run this terrible event and instead make it more of a cash grabbing format to supplement as a "fix" for the packs being BOP.

 

I do appreciate you embracing that there are other reasons for running the event.

 

So, If I understand you correctly, you are only doing the event for the random chance of getting lucky drops of what you want from the packs?

 

Are you buying the packs? If not.. how can this possibly be a problem? Like everyone else... you have full control over whether you purchase something from the cartel market or not. And you still get the packs from the event... which cost you nothing but your time, and drop exactly the same loot table as the ones being sold.

 

The way I see it... the studio gave players even more choices with these packs going into the CM now in a non-bound form. More choices is generally better IMO.

 

Will I buy any packs? Nope.. Never do. But I embrace the fact that some players love them.. and if so.. more power to them. I do not see it as a money grab because I honestly believe the player can and will choose if they want to take part in buying packs off the CM or not... just like it's been for more then 3 years now.

Edited July 13, 2016 by Andryah

[DenariusJay]

Like Darthspuds said, its way easier to make credits just playing the game (4 Man tat run on multiple alts = ez millions) and do easy ops like EV/KP Hm and win DMC that sell for a mill then save your money and buy what you want out of the pack. This is what I do. I bought a hyper crate months back just outta sheer curiosity of what I would get, and what happened to me is exactly what you described - I paid 14 mill for that hyper crate and made back maybe 6.5 mill back from all the junk crystals and armors and mounts that I got. So I basically gambled 7 mill for some super awesome item that I didn't get anyways. The packs are a joke IMO.

[Focusangel]

And i was about to delete a char..

Hah! Now i can just buy the stuff.. and guess what - they are even Bind on Equip!

[HuaRya]

So decided to buy twenty dollars worth of packs and pretty much got the bad RNG I've gotten from the last several pack editions. Chance cubes with brown/brown dyes, soccorro saber, alliance flag hanging, feign death, and a bunch of other detritus.

 

This pack is the same for those like me who almost always get the raw end of the RNG. It's easier to just delete these sub 10k items instead of spending weeks trying to give them away for 5-10k on the GTN.

[Jeirose]

I have loved buying cartel packs. I've also overtime, ignored the fact that the same items are recycled over and over into the 'new' packs. It is shameful and criminal that this game touts a new pack "dark vs light" and 10 crates in a row all have old items. Truly, have you no shame at all? Are there just 4 people in a room some where running this game and saying.. ok, new packs... lets call them "dark vs light" and 85% will be recycled items with 1/2% new, sought-after items and 14 1/2% slightly new versions of old mounts and decorations. Yeah! everyone says and "hey lets have Mexican Food for lunch today".... really terrible way to treat loyal players. I have spent an embarrassing amount of credit card dollars on this game but have found over and over you recycle. It is insulting and inexcusable. Shame on you.

[-BlackDragon-]

lol this is such a joke

[Lakemine]

Because let's say I have a lightning tuning for sale. I don't want to sell it for 15 million credits. I think it's worth much more than that. So what do I do? I go to trade chat on the fleet and offer it instead of on the GTN. I KNOW someone will pay more than 15 million credits for it, so why not?

 

If you then decide to head that off by capping credit trades between players at 15 million too, I'll start offering the tuning only in exchange for something of equal value (in this case, the tunings regularly sell for 40 million). I'll want a Tulak Hord lower body set, or a different tuning, or a couple hypercrates, etc.

 

Your idea makes it even harder for YOU to buy these things.

 

Ahhh....well I see where I was wrong and not being clear. What I ment was putting a credit cap on GTN sales, not on player trades and sales in the trade chat channel or between players. (As coding just the GTN I would think be MUCH easier then trying to code for EVERY trade made between players.)

 

Explaining it that way, would it still be a bad idea? Lets us both get what we want, me having a credit cap and being able to buy things on the GTN and you (or other people) who want to sell higher can sell in the trade channel. Seem fair?

[Lakemine]

That's very interesting. Is it common knowledge that you could unlocks a set over different toons and that it broke?

Fwiw I assumed it had never changed and you always had to unlock each item on the same toon for it to count in collections.

 

Now for some tinfoil hat fun ... could it be they purposely broke it in light of this event coming and knowing they would be selling packs? I.e. make it as hard as possible for people to get full sets, tease them with 1-2 items from a set and thus push them into buying packs ( or support the buying of packs by buying from GTN ) to get that last missing item?

 

Wouldn't be funny if it got conveniently fixed just before or after the packs were available?

 

Funnily enough I'm only semi joking with my conspiracy theory above as I would put nothing past marketing departments these days and whilst BW has shown some outright poor design choices with the game itself they have imo had some genius moments over this year when it comes to marketing ( except the subscriber and get all previous chapters, I feel that wasn't well thought out but that was ideally made last year ).

 

 

 

 

Which is why a lot of people were calling Eric a lair when he said you could unlock them in collections even if they are on different characters, but....I just took it as he or most likely the devs, have not been playing or maybe just that specific part of the game since then and didn't know it had broke. Like I said, even I had not know it had broken till 2 days before it launched, as even I was going off of 4.0 information and things I had tested.

 

 

 

 

I had only noticed the fix on the crystals mentioned, nothing about the "numbers of items unlocked".

 

Am I the only who didn't know you could unlock armour collections over multiple toons at 4.0 or something?

 

Not that it matters me because I just do it all on one toon anyway which may be why I missed it.

 

It seems like it was not widely known, even the guildys in the few guilds I'm in didn't even know, even though I talked about it when 4.0 came out because I asked and had been waiting for it for a LONG time, as I had some of Tulak Hords pieces on one server and some on another. Yes I know I could have just server transferred for 90 CC (back before they reverted it to less then what it originally was) but didn't have any slots open. And didn't have 34 million (at the time now its MUCH higher) to buy the other pieces.

 

Whats sad.....is if your idea and thoughts are true....wow....just.....wow. EA will have completely lost any.....well to be honest if they were true, that despicable and dishonest and rude, I would go to the Attorney General to see if legal action could be done. But its only a hypothesis atm, though I hope its false, but in this world of greed.....truth is stranger then fiction.

[Lakemine]

The market is self regulating so ideally there is no "stupid" pricing. If someone pays that price great, if not then it sits there until either someone does or the price drops.

 

Also putting in pricing caps is a bad idea I feel. Why? Because I don't want you tell me how to play the game just so you can play the game how you want to play it.

 

I am happy for them to introduce packs like this to lower the prices though, sure my prices might drop but I don't really lose any freedom from it and I can get more goods in the process. I'm free then to wait weeks/months to resell at higher prices again by which time you should have got what you wanted at cheaper prices or too bad - you are at the whim of the inflated market prices again.

 

We all win when it's done this way in a way I guess, capping though will always actually affect how someone wants to play the game thus it's inherently unfair.

 

But wouldn't having not cap be unfair also as not every player has 500+ million credits? Either way like with everything someone is slighted, and if there was a cap more people could buy things at lower prices. Also just having a credit cap isn't the only fix, upping the drop rates for rare items but more importantly decos, is needed before credit capping. If the prices come down because of a influx of items, then maybe credit capping isn't needed.

[Lakemine]

This is incorrect or disingenuous. Weapon tunings don't unlock and armor only unlocks once you get a full set which is unlikely on 1 character given the number of sets in these packs.

 

It is mindboggling to me that Grand Chance cubes have the full sets but these don't.

 

Not mindboggling when its designed that way.

 

And yes....they should have been more clear about unlocks.....but this is Bioware dev and PR people, have you read their responses to things over the past couple of years? This sadly is normal.

[Lakemine]

I have to go back to this because I keep getting stuck on it. Does "The number of Outfit pieces that you have unlocked is displayed on the set’s Collections icon" really read to anyone else like individual pieces could be unlocked on different characters and still count towards the whole set, because that's not how it reads to me in the slightest? If that is what happened—and hey, I never tested it—it sounds to me like an unintended side effect over anything else.

 

Hmm....I was going to post that I saw and heard and read Eric or other PR material from right before KotFE talking about this change, and that I tested it right after it came out and proved it, as I was very happy. But....spending about a hour going back and searching through dulfy, youtube and other sites looking for the livestream or blog post talking about having a set unlocked with different pieces on other characters....I can't find it. So....im starting to think you might be correct, in that having a set unlocked with multiple pieces on multiple characters is really a bug and unintended side effect. Which....if it is....the system they thought up for these boxes is even more insidious for making people buy more.

 

So...I am sorry to everyone I have been...well misleading I guess, if this really was a bug. I am sorry for any confusion I caused.

[Lakemine]

I find these DvL packs both bound and CM to have some of the best RNG of any pack ever imo ... flush with super rare silver/gold items.

 

Problem is...I already have most if not all of the silver and most of the gold ones and I wont get the ones I missing.

[Lakemine]

Yes, lets make something fun into a chore.

 

What a great way to retain players... ...oh, wait, how many rounds of server consolidation have we had?

 

Bioware could do a lot worse than go look at how LOTRO runs its TP Store.

 

I'll spend money to buy what I want, but I'll NEVER spend money to buy a chance to get nothing I want.

 

Frankly, people who buy these packs are mugs.

 

All The Best

 

They arnt mugs....but they are calling RNG gamble packs for a reason....why does Las Vagas continue to "make" money? Because apparently a lot of people have a need or want or a desire to gamble. Still can't figure it out myself, as when I do something I want to get something for it, not a chance to get something for it.

 

Just think if the dailies and heroics and well any reward in SWTOR were like that. You finish the highlighted HM or NIM with only a chance of 224 dropping....(well NIM for a few months kinda had that anyways) or finishing each daily gave a chance to get 10 credits for 12k, and the heroics gave a chance, really really really low mind you, of maybe giving a alliance crate, and on top of that its random, so it wont be a crate you want, and on top the armor you want is also random inside of it.

Edited July 14, 2016 by Lakemine

[Lakemine]

Something fun into a chore? Spending money on packs and opening them was fun but now it's a chore?

 

What are you even going on about now?

 

 

 

Does LoTRO even hold a candle to this game in terms of player and subscriber numbers these days? Fairly sure it doesn't and it's just some niche little game for niche little players there days.

 

 

 

Then enjoy NEVER getting those items. Oh unless of course you buy them from the GTN after a long grind earning credits. One would wonder if it would have been easier to just buy the packs if that's the case.

 

But isn't buying from the GTN you KNOW your getting the item you want easier and the CM packs are complete and utter RNG based and you wont get what you want which means you have to spend more which means its harder? Or did they change it recently and when you open the CM packs you can pick what items you want? I'm confused a bit.

[Lakemine]

Fair enough. Perhaps say what you actually mean then, rather then go to absolutes.

 

When you say something other then what you mean.... it's kind of dishonest/misleading, even if harmlessly so IMO. It's a text only discussion forum, so we can really only go by what someone actually writes.. right? And absolutes are kind of the weapon of choice around here for bashing the game and the studio.

 

 

 

I do appreciate you embracing that there are other reasons for running the event.

 

So, If I understand you correctly, you are only doing the event for the random chance of getting lucky drops of what you want from the packs?

 

Are you buying the packs? If not.. how can this possibly be a problem? Like everyone else... you have full control over whether you purchase something from the cartel market or not. And you still get the packs from the event... which cost you nothing but your time, and drop exactly the same loot table as the ones being sold.

 

The way I see it... the studio gave players even more choices with these packs going into the CM now in a non-bound form. More choices is generally better IMO.

 

Will I buy any packs? Nope.. Never do. But I embrace the fact that some players love them.. and if so.. more power to them. I do not see it as a money grab because I honestly believe the player can and will choose if they want to take part in buying packs off the CM or not... just like it's been for more then 3 years now.

 

More choices imo, would have been the the BoP boxes from the achievements would have a token system so you could get what you want from a vendor. And then the CM version could stay the way it is now. Meaning if people have some items already they can get what they want and move on. Or for people who missed these items, they can get what they want from the vendor and if they don't want to go for Eternal or Legnedary tier, they can just buy the CM version and get random stuff they can keep or sell.

 

Also on more choices.....they should have made a vendor for the alliance crates. The alliance crates should have dropped a token like the EC and you could go buy WHATEVER armor set you wanted. (Mind you the only list of said armor sets would be the current drop loot table of the crates.) Yes its good thing (in fact a VERY good thing as some of these armors are my favorite in the entire game and wish I had more) that they re-added the armors that have been removed with 2.0 and 3.0 and 4.0, but having then RNG based is BEYOND stupid.

[Tsetso]

They arnt mugs....but they are calling RNG gamble packs for a reason....why does Las Vagas continue to "make" money? Because apparently a lot of people have a need or want or a desire to gamble. Still can't figure it out myself, as when I do something I want to get something for it, not a chance to get something for it.

 

 

Except a game that's not even rated M shouldn't promote gambling. I think

perfectly explains my opinion.

[Lakemine]

I have loved buying cartel packs. I've also overtime, ignored the fact that the same items are recycled over and over into the 'new' packs. It is shameful and criminal that this game touts a new pack "dark vs light" and 10 crates in a row all have old items. Truly, have you no shame at all? Are there just 4 people in a room some where running this game and saying.. ok, new packs... lets call them "dark vs light" and 85% will be recycled items with 1/2% new, sought-after items and 14 1/2% slightly new versions of old mounts and decorations. Yeah! everyone says and "hey lets have Mexican Food for lunch today".... really terrible way to treat loyal players. I have spent an embarrassing amount of credit card dollars on this game but have found over and over you recycle. It is insulting and inexcusable. Shame on you.

 

Well.....they have at different times released old CM items in different packs because not every player has been around as long as we have. Also they di release new packs, but this LvD packs they specifically said that old rare items would be in them, just like the BSG packs for example. And I see no issue with letting new players have access to them. What I do have issue with is having Satele's Armor set for example that I paid about 4.3 million for now is costing over 34+ million for new players who don't have it. That's beyond stupid and like I said....credit capping would curb it, but also upping the dropping rates of said items.