Cartel Pack Changes Coming with Steadfast Champion Pack on 5/16

[Costello]

EDIT:

 

Jeez, people really are pouncing to try to turn "we put different amounts of time / effort into the four different tiers" into "the lowest tier was deliberately garbage."

 

No thats in response to them scrapping the bronze category. It works two ways one that they will continue to produce the same quality items and call them silver items. A rose by any other name. Or that bronze items were deliberately made worse to differentiate them from Silver, so an economy item use to pad the lock boxes to reduce people's chance of getting the higher quality gear. And this change will result in them no longer putting poor quality items in the lock boxes.

Edited May 12, 2017 by Costello

[Rankyn]

What you are asking about sounds like the Bronze / Silver / Gold <type> packs, such as the Silver Decorations pack, etc. Those types of packs the team puts on and off at various points in the year. I will pass on your interest for the deco version.

-eric

I would much rather have completely separate decoration packs because as it is, so many deco items are just stupidly rare and expensive for no good reason.

[Darkside]

 

What you are asking about sounds like the Bronze / Silver / Gold <type> packs, such as the Silver Decorations pack, etc. Those types of packs the team puts on and off at various points in the year. I will pass on your interest for the deco version.

 

-eric

 

No, what she means is that we want hypercrates/packs available to us that are nothing but decorations. From bronze to platinum quality. So instead of buying your typical hypercrate, we would have the option to buy a decoration hypercrate. Of course price would be commensurate to quantity and quality of the decorations. You could even take it a step further and pattern it after a normal hypercrate. In that you can make a variation of the chance cubes that drop decorations from the older packs.

Edited May 12, 2017 by Darkside

[Deewe]

Hey folks,

 

Currently, when you open a pack you will receive:

• Two items – New pack item(s) and/or Grand Chance Cube(s)
  
• Two misc. – Jawa Scraps and Companion Gifts

 

Starting with the Steadfast Champion pack on May 16th, you will now receive the following:

• One new pack item
  
• One Grand Chance Cube
  
• Two misc. – Jawa Scraps and Companion Gifts

 

Additionally, packs will now only contain Silver, Gold, and Platinum rarity items. What this change means is that you will more consistently get new pack items (since one is guaranteed in each pack) and you will have a much greater chance of getting Silver, Gold, and Platinum items than you did previously. Our plan moving forward is that we are not going to be making Bronze quality armor sets, decorations, etc. any longer. Our focus is to ensure the new items in each pack are of the highest quality, giving you greater value for your investment.

 

Let us know what you think! Thanks everyone.

 

-eric

Hi Eric,

 

Issue with Grand Chance Cube(s) is while some like them others just can't stand them anymore.

With the current plan you are just making both these population not happy.

 

For a win/win situation I'd strongly suggest to move away the Grand Chance Cube(s) from the regular packs and create specific Grand Chance Cube(s) packs.

A mitigation would be to allow players buying regular packs to choose (check box?) whether they want Grand Chance Cube(s) or only current packs items. But then it's not optimal for those only looking after Grand Chance Cube(s), unless... you allow players to choose which kind of box they are opening for both items slots.

 

In regards of the bronze quality removal, it look more like the junk items will now be tagged with a silver $.

 

If you want to make packs more popular and less seen as a lottery "racket" bring back the architects packs way, in which each pack had a decoration in them.

 

Then add back cartel certificates and reputations in the packs.

 

Finally please remove the countdown on being able to sell the CM items. It's a real annoyance for players.

Edited May 17, 2017 by Deewe

[XorrOn]

just get rid of the jawa scraps and add them to mission rewards or something...

 

I would rather if they didn't do that.

If you happen to have a non standard companion like a nexu, you can use the jawa premium mats to buy custom outfits for your companion.

But to be fair this is the only item of value I see coming from any quality of the jawa junk/scrap.

It would be nice if they added some better options for useage on the jawa junk. Like being ale to buy more and better stuff with it.

[Hockster]

So basically the grand chance cubes will contain all the bronze armors no one wants.

[Deewe]

Hey folks,

 

The team is aware of the concern regarding collection unlock prices and will be talking about options. No changes are currently planned, but we are looking at what we can do in the future. I will pass on any updates I receive from the team!

 

-eric

Please allow players to unlock separate gear pieces without having the whole set.

 

I have hundreds of items taking cargo tabs waiting for sets to be complete before eventually using them.

 

Unlocking items separately would cost more than unlocking a full set (120% ?).

Pretty sure you'd make much more CC sales this way.

Edited May 12, 2017 by Deewe

[Pscyon]

The team is aware of the concern regarding collection unlock prices

Yes and they just don't care, right?

No changes are currently planned

Nice of you to confirm.

[Darkside]

JUST SO EVERYONE IS AWARE:

 

Current system: Potentially 52 new pack items per hypercrate.

 

New system: Max 26 new pack items per hypercrate.

Edited May 13, 2017 by Darkside

[ludoviccb]

It's a return to the system that they used before putting back the Bronze Items, but with 26 packs per Hypercrate instead of 30. The Grand Chance Cubes drop rate was around 50%, so about the same as one of the 2 slot a garanted Cube and the Silver was worth as much as the Bronze and most Gold as much as Silver from the others pack that got Bronze in it.

 

They went back on it last time and they will probably do so again.

[Spyderwraith]

Just so everyone is aware:

 

Current system: Potentially 52 new pack items per hypercrate.

 

New system: Max 26 new pack items per hypercrate.

 

So why would I want to spend current CC prices for considerably less items.

[AscendingSky]

So why would I want to spend current CC prices for considerably less items.

 

This is why I've stopped buying gamble packs. You get fewer items with worse odds practically with every shipment. Compare current packs with the first few shipments. Back then, you had SEVEN slots as opposed to the four we have now, they had Cartel Market certificates and rep items for vendors to buy other stuff, and many decorations dropped in groups of two or four. Now EAWare is pulling this anti-consumer removal of the item quality cheapest to unlock again, in a way to try to squeeze even more real money transactions out of people. Shame on them.

Edited May 13, 2017 by AscendingSky

[RaiderMid]

This is why I've stopped buying gamble packs. You get fewer items with worse odds practically with every shipment. Compare current packs with the first few shipments. Back then, you had SEVEN slots as opposed to the four we have now, they had Cartel Market certificates and rep items for vendors to buy other stuff, and many decorations dropped in groups of two or four. Now EAWare is pulling this anti-consumer removal of the item quality cheapest to unlock again, in a way to try to squeeze even more real money transactions out of people. Shame on them.

 

A business trying to make as much money as possible. Oh the humanity.

Seriously though, they need to make money to keep the game running and continue development.

Who knows why they think this is the way to go. My speculation is that they are not hitting financial goals with Subscriptions or CM sales. Will this change help? Doubtful but it might drive down price of GCCs which are ridiculously overpriced on the GTN right now.

[DmdShiva]

No thats in response to them scrapping the bronze category. It works two ways one that they will continue to produce the same quality items and call them silver items. A rose by any other name. Or that bronze items were deliberately made worse to differentiate them from Silver, so an economy item use to pad the lock boxes to reduce people's chance of getting the higher quality gear. And this change will result in them no longer putting poor quality items in the lock boxes.

 

Whereas under the proposed system, all of the old bronze gear will exist only to increase the pack purchase rates, because the Grand Chance Cube is defined as dropping anything that appeared in a previous pack -- so we'll still be getting Bronze items; we'll just be getting them from the Grand Chance Cubes, diluting the more desirable rewards even further.

[Darkside]

A business trying to make as much money as possible. Oh the humanity.

Seriously though, they need to make money to keep the game running and continue development.

Who knows why they think this is the way to go. My speculation is that they are not hitting financial goals with Subscriptions or CM sales. Will this change help? Doubtful but it might drive down price of GCCs which are ridiculously overpriced on the GTN right now.

 

They're having to degrade the item size and quality in order to gain back the money they have lost through subscription cancellations due to poor design! This will only degrade the cartel market, and further detract from the game. They should be focusing on pumping out real new content instead of tweaking the screws down ever tighter to the remaining loyal players.

Edited May 13, 2017 by Darkside

[DreadtechSavant]

just get rid of the jawa scraps and add them to mission rewards or something...

 

I like and use the jawa junk a lot. well green junk not so much but blue and purple a lot.

 

Gifts on the other hand, I hate with a passion when I get them from packs. Also soon companions will get influence from crew missions so gifts will be pointless and worthless.

[Kernel_Cinders]

Eric, please let us know if the price of the new Hypercrate is going to be lower then the current price. The last change made to hypercrates lowered the number of crates per hypercrate as well as increasing the price of each hypercrate.

 

I do not like this planned future change to the crate loot table. There. I said it. I do not like it, not one bit . . .

 

With this change I will always get a GCC and another item. This is going to greatly deflate GCC prices, which in turn will make the packs even less appealing for people to purchase. Lowering the price of Hypercrates would not only be fair, but warranted.

 

This change will also devalue Silver items, inflate Gold items, and Platinum items will be even more outrageously priced then they already are. The price of Decorations will also be greatly affected by inflation. Players will be getting less bang-for-their-buck with this planned update to the crate loot system compared to the current crate loot system.

 

The idea of having a separate crate for Decorations always listed on the Cartel Market is a very good idea as many people enjoy their Strongholds and showing it off to their friends and guild members. Making Decorations for sale separately and removing them from the current crate loot tables would be a welcome change to many players.

 

Please ask the person(s) in charge to delay and reconsider these future changes they are planning to make to the current crate loot system. Thank you for reading.

 

 

KC

[HunterGriff]

I like and use the jawa junk a lot. well green junk not so much but blue and purple a lot.

 

Gifts on the other hand, I hate with a passion when I get them from packs. Also soon companions will get influence from crew missions so gifts will be pointless and worthless.

 

I mean i personally can't find any use from them. I know you can use them for crafting purposes, but i'm almost sure a lot of the crafting stuff you get without it. but i could be wrong

 

As for the gifts, yea, i'd rather take the gifts out more than the scraps. they're hogging up my item stash.

[Turbelagos]

If you're going to do this, at least make the packs cheaper. We're gonna get less new items than we do before per hypercrate, and we're going to drown in grand chance cubes, which usually gives out crappy items anyway.

 

Plus by removing bronze items, it seems like you're reducing the amount of variety of items we can get from each pack as well. Reduce the prices for each pack, the way you did so last time.

[ViciousFett]

LOL, Chance cubes in every pack, along with the usual useless jawa junk and companion gifts....

 

I haven't bought packs on the level I did when we got reputation tokens and cartel certificates. Thanks BW, for continuing to save me real money, and allowing me to purchase everything off the GTN instead.

[mitchsts]

they say its so that people get better items from removing bronze items, i think the only reason is so that they can charge more in collections by making the bronze items change to silver. now bronze is silver, silver is gold, and gold is platinum. there is no difference except for the price we pay to unlock it.

 

you're not "making it a higher quality". you just want more money from people. at least be honest about it.

Edited May 13, 2017 by mitchsts

[docbenwayddo]

You want me to buy packs, how about:

• 
  Contains 1 bonus Stronghold decoration.

• Two Rare bonus items with a chance of a Super Rate!

• One boost item, for either overall XP or CXP.

• One companion gift of at least Artifact quality.

• One <insert Reputation for shipment here> item. (or the Cartel Certificate that could drop instead)

• Contains a varied amount of Scrap Materials which can be traded to a Scrap Peddler on the fleet.

 

The listed "bonus items" are armors/vehicles/crystals/weapons from that shipment only

Something like that and I'd buy it. Like I used to.

 

 

Bronze rebranding looks like nothing but Collections money grab and Chance Cubes can go suck an egg.

Edited May 13, 2017 by docbenwayddo

[Jedi_riches]

Why? You did this before and ended up reverting it back to the old system.

[jamesedjones]

Oh yeah, silver is definitely the new bronze. Check out the weapons in the next pack: http://dulfy.net/2017/05/02/swtor-steadfast-champions-pack-preview/

 

Reminds me of the antique weapons I still get in those worthless GCCs.

[Costello]

Oh yeah, silver is definitely the new bronze. Check out the weapons in the next pack: http://dulfy.net/2017/05/02/swtor-steadfast-champions-pack-preview/

 

Reminds me of the antique weapons I still get in those worthless GCCs.

 

Agreed.

 

It seems they have introduced Platinum and gotten rid of bronze which at best is a rebranding at worse is smoke and mirrors crap where fast food restaurants got rid of a small coffee and went for medium, large and extra large just cause small sounded like you weren't getting as much.

 

Is the cartel market going to be the focus of the game from now one? It seems there have been no patches, a large number of technical difficulties, no information on 5.3 (aside from 2 lines of twitter posts) and the road map delayed form 3 weeks. While changes to the CM are taking priority. If this is the case, is it the players fault as the purchase of CM coins is seen as only being interested in the cartel market and no in having a complete enjoyable game?