swtor is now swtcm

[rottingaming]

Star Wars The Old Republic to Star Wars The Cartel Market. Its all I see now on the web page and the launcher so in your face with the cartel market for a game in which in which you really need to sub for.

[jimmorrisson]

I am not opposed to Direct Sale (pack to store gear) or gear directly made for the Cartel Market.

 

However the Gree Hypergate Regenator is not worthy of Direct Sale.

Spend your coins on the Sienar PR-3 Pod Racer!

Edited March 29, 2017 by jimmorrisson

[Cuiwe]

Well, you can either have direct purchase or RNG packs. I much prefer direct purchase tyvm!

 

Of course, I prefer earning that in game to all of those, but direct sale >> RNG pack, for sure(I H.A.T.E. RNG in all its hideous forms).

[DrDaMoZ]

The Cartel Market makes no sense for a Paid subscription MMO.

We need to pay a monthly fee AND pay for additional content?

You either go full F2P with a shop for additional content OR you go for a paid subscription that gives access to the full game and not this horrible crossbreed that combines the worst of both.

Now if the Cartel Market had a select list of items, like WoW has with a handful of pets and mounts but no gear, it would've been fine. However in SWTOR it's the complete opposite.

The 90-95% of the cool looking stuff (gear/pets/mounts/decorations) can't be found in game. I mean what's the point in running content if any gear you get looks like generic trash gear and you have to throw additional money at the game just to not look like a bloody clown? It just angers me how such a wonderful game with such a rich story is sploshed on by a thick layer of greedsauce where we have to pay for each individual ride after already having paid the admission price.

Let us pay 50 bucks per expansion and remove the CM, give us access to all the cool stuff in a sensible manner (like Revan's gear actually dropping off Revan! I know, shockingly simple and it makes perfect sense, doesn't it?) and you'll make many players much happier, old and new.

Sure you lose a few whales who spend 10-40k bucks a year on packs , yet you'll have a large a healthy playerbase eventually and an actual future if you do!

[DarkSaberMaster]

Lol. Where have you been at since.....ever. This game has always been about the CM ever since day one of it's introduction.

[josephxp]

The thing with the direct purchase is that its a reasonable price for the rarity of the item. 7600cc's for a platinum lightsaber if you want it that badly buy it. Next thing they will probably have a revan's armor set for 5000cc's.

 

Thing is it doesn't hurt the rarity of the item, if someone is going to spend $40+ of real money on a digital item though could grind in game credits for and guy it off the GTN be my guest.

[Edyn]

...Let us pay 50 bucks per expansion and remove the CM, give us access to all the cool stuff in a sensible manner (like Revan's gear actually dropping off Revan!...

 

Thank you - This is the type of MMO I'm used to and the MMO I thought I bought in 2011.To use your example, would I pay $60 for a direct buy of Revan's robes? No. Would I pay as little as $1.00 for a direct buy of Revan's robes? No. Why? I'm already a paying BW with my monthly subscription and I've experienced the Revan story (stories, actually,) so the thought of paying money top of what I've already paid to get the rest of the content BW created for this arc (Revan's robes) is insulting to me as a gamer...

 

...however...

 

What would I pay $1.00, $60 or even $300 for? An experience. I mean, that's how MMO's got started - a full fantasy experience, not a direct buy to obtain the Head of Onyxia. I would be more than happy to fork out $300 for a full expansion that has not only story/Chapters, but Companion interactions expanded stories/missions, new planets, Flashpoints, Operations, PvP maps, exploration missions, items, datacrons, crafting, stat gear, vanity gear, pets, mounts... I could go on and on with the potential content that SWTOR has and always had to offer and here I sit with my money burning a hole in my pocket, waiting for an experience, not just an item. The item should be part of the experience.

 

$300 available for one full expansion vs. $0.00 available in my wallet allocated for the Cartel Market. At this point, I can only figure that other players really want to direct buy everything and other people who may be like me are the minority. If so, I lament for the future of all MMO's and I long for the developer that's more vested in the fantasy MMO experience rather than retiring in Belize by the age of 35.

Edited March 28, 2017 by Edyn

[Theeko]

The CM is actually keeping the game alive though tbh.

[HiltoftheDragon]

I wouldnt mine buying a lot of items direct sale from the Cm at all. My issue is theres nothing on there that appeases me. This game has some of the ugliesst weps and armor ive ever seen in a game. Very little of it is actually decent looking.

 

I wished we could buy parts of items and assemble them into what we actually want....and that includes the dyes....all at a reasonable price.

Edited March 28, 2017 by HiltoftheDragon

[ThrakhathSpawn]

The Cartel Market makes no sense for a Paid subscription MMO.

We need to pay a monthly fee AND pay for additional content?

You either go full F2P with a shop for additional content OR you go for a paid subscription that gives access to the full game and not this horrible crossbreed that combines the worst of both.

 

I agree, I might still be active if they did one or the other, but asking both is too much.

[NogueiraA]

If the cartel market sells only COSMETIC stuff, I don't care.

If they somehow introduce a way of getting any advantage STATS wise, then i'll start complaining.

Don't want this game to turn into chinese p2w trash.

[Storm-Cutter]

If the cartel market sells only COSMETIC stuff, I don't care.

If they somehow introduce a way of getting any advantage STATS wise, then i'll start complaining.

Don't want this game to turn into chinese p2w trash.

 

I've not defended Bioware much recently, but one of their core beliefs is that Cartel market stuff was purely cosmetic, and had no statistical advantage in-game. There seems to have been a mistake over DvL armour over-bolstering in PVP but that was an error, and it was gear that people earned through gameplay and not CM sale. - Though they seem to have taken a long time to patch it, I believe a correction is coming in 5.2

 

IMHO they can sell as many pixels as they like if it keeps the game afloat and new content coming in a timely fashion. Long live the whales!

[JediRelentless]

I agree, I might still be active if they did one or the other, but asking both is too much.

 

No, you wouldn't be active because the game would be dead without both.

Why should the current system affect your activity? Are you forced to buy Cartel Coins to enjoy the game? You don't even have to spend cash to acquire CM items, there's the GTN.

Edited March 28, 2017 by JediRelentless

[fushnchips]

Every MMO has a cash shop you are not forced to use it and i'm all for the cash shop if you wan't to pay for something cool like a mount or costume then buy it but what I don't like is direct purchase items that deflate the price of pre released items such as that light saber and lightning tuning.

 

Also what I don't like is them bringing back old items like the mounts in the new galactic command packs these mounts were removed from the game for a reason and same can be said for the white crystals bioware have a very bad habit of this and it really needs to stop.

[ThrakhathSpawn]

Every MMO has a cash shop you are not forced to use it and i'm all for the cash shop if you wan't to pay for something cool like a mount or costume then buy it but what I don't like is direct purchase items that deflate the price of pre released items such as that light saber and lightning tuning.

 

Also what I don't like is them bringing back old items like the mounts in the new galactic command packs these mounts were removed from the game for a reason and same can be said for the white crystals bioware have a very bad habit of this and it really needs to stop.

 

By your logic, you are not forced to buy the items when they are brought back.

[ThrakhathSpawn]

No, you wouldn't be active because the game would be dead without both.

Why should the current system affect your activity? Are you forced to buy Cartel Coins to enjoy the game? You don't even have to spend cash to acquire CM items, there's the GTN.

 

Good content creation and bug fixes, this game would be thriving.

 

I won't go into whether the game is dead or not, but when I did all the DVL that didn't require KOTFE on each US server, I walked though many empty paths.

 

I have not had SWTOR installed since the Command XP event announcement. All characters went delete that night to free up the name database. I do enjoy writing, so I still use the forums until my sub runs out.

 

After that, I will focus on an Erhu that I should have by then.

Edited March 28, 2017 by ThrakhathSpawn

[americanaussie]

Good content creation and bug fixes, this game would be thriving.

 

I won't go into whether the game is dead or not, but when I did all the DVL that didn't require KOTFE on each US server, I walked though many empty paths.

 

Good content is subjective. I'm excited for 5.2. negative cheerleaders will say it's no new content or not what they want. They could pump out monthly content and still not be what everyone wants or be enough to make everyone happy. Game is not dead. Harbinger is very active so I dunno what you're talking about on empty paths. Many of us did use Dvl to move from bastion to harbinger though.

[ThrakhathSpawn]

Content involves more than storyline.

 

Taking away the unique abilities of companions, and giving them all the same abilities, is a major loss of content. Especially to some one like myself that would run open world quests with my UI off, enjoying the charm the game used to have pre 4.0. Post 4.0, and especially 5.X, its all about players chasing specific rewards, they do not care what content they run, or if they enjoy the content they run, they just chase the CXP. This makes a player like myself, that wants to enjoy the game; feel like I do not belong.

 

Until the structure of the game changes in a way where the focus is player enjoyment, my path will diverge.

[DrDaMoZ]

I don't understand why people take this practice and try to defend it.

It makes no sense that the Hutt manage to beam Revan's pants of his dead corpse before it even hits the ground every time he's downed.

It makes no sense that a Rishi lamppost can't be bought on Rishi, found as loot on some Rishi scrap heap or even crafted with spare parts.

It does make sense that there is a 0.5% chance that you actually manage to find a pair of unscathed pants on the smouldering corpse of your enemy which isn't completely ruined by your blasters and sabers.

Let someone grind a boss for months in a row to get those pants and proudly show them as they actually feel like they've earned something and give people an option to get them as a direct sale if they feel like money isn't an issue.

 

Because at the moment, what do we earn exactly when doing anything in game? Tokens. Tokens and tickets.

The game has been reduced to one giant Carnival where you get scammed at every corner with false promises of a bright future and all the prizes have <Made in China> labels and look like cheap generic IKEA knockoffs.

 

The game in its current state is nothing more than a fan service for rich Star Wars-crazed people who'd pay anything to be their own <insert major lore character here>, and the devs know it.

Soon SWTOR will house none but a few hundred cash whales strutting their paid gear on empty fleets, and the plebs, they'll move on to another game. The whales however have such a large ego they probably won't even notice until it's too late.

You need people for an MMO and there are many many more people who can't afford it than those who can.

So if you honestly believe that the CM is keeping the game alive, then the game is doomed to die a slow and painful death, and looking at previous subscriber numbers it already is.

There is absolutely no good reason for this system other than laziness and greed.

 

So call me crazy but i'd rather see a fleet with thousands of active people having fun, albeit all dressed up as Revan probably, than seeing the n'th discouraged person leave the game because they realize that buying a direct purchase lightsaber costs you a week's worth of food or 2 real life pairs of pants.

Edited March 28, 2017 by DrDaMoZ

[mitchsts]

i don't disagree, but at this point i think the cartel market is the only reason this game is still alive.

[ThrakhathSpawn]

There is a difference between becoming a rakghoul, and death.

 

The game isn't dead, and so long as Bioware has licensing from Star Wars covered, it won't be dead.

[LunaticFringer]

Sadly, OP, this is usually true of most F2Ps that have adopted any form of Cash shops implemented before even SWG shut down across the industry. Love it, or hate it like I do, it is a business model likely to stay until a company gets brave enough to only go with monthly subs again.

 

Normally I don't have a problem with them per say... but from my experience as a gamer once they're added to a game, especially after a game launch... the quality kind of goes down. This is the business side of things affecting the game. Even developers will sometimes decry that they got into game development to design games... mmorpgs included. Whereas now what we're mostly seeing are the games leaning towards making the game to churn out micro-transactions rather than develop the actual game.

 

Example: Take the most coveted CM item to You from any of the packs or direct sales. Now, if this were a classic-style sub-only game you would've seen that item introduced via a Dev made Quest as an item reward. Which one do you prefer? Sub and everything is available via in game means? Or, micro-transaction cash shops with glorified free trial options? I'll always prefer the old game industry standard myself... but I felt we got better quality content overall... even if it was lacking back then as well.

 

My main point though is that this isn't really new anymore since it has been in the mmorpg industry for ten plus years now. EA/Bioware had to do it really after things didn't go so well after launch. Little bit of a double edged sword for our game here... it saved it... but it didn't help it as far as overall game quality has been concerned. Opinions being what they are, of course.

[Storm-Cutter]

Every MMO has a cash shop you are not forced to use it and i'm all for the cash shop if you wan't to pay for something cool like a mount or costume then buy it but what I don't like is direct purchase items that deflate the price of pre released items such as that light saber and lightning tuning.

 

.

 

But on the flip side it makes them cheaper and more abundant to buy for credits instead of shelling out a lot of your CCs to unlock in collections.

 

No one is forcing people to buy CCs. Almost everything is available for in-game credits. - and there's no statistical advantage that CM items have over other gear / mounts/ pets / companions &c.

Edited March 29, 2017 by Storm-Cutter

[CrazyCT]

The same as with real life - if you don't like it, just don't shop there. Edited March 29, 2017 by CrazyCT

[LordSkyKnight]

Sadly the up coming generation has been mentally trained to accept this shady behavior. Take the saber for 60 dollars as an example. The art assets are already in the game. You are paying 60 dollars to put that art asset on your personal character. EA is laughing all the way to the bank. The other sad part is they don't even invest that money back into the game as additional content. Swtor is currently running on a skelton crew so that is why we don't see much in new content. Funny that they are hiring additional staff for the cash shop though. I'm laughing at the people who buy coins as well to buy this stuff.