Revamping Cartel Market Hypercrates

[Zarahemla]

Taken from suggestion #31 from my thread of suggestions found here

 

The cartel hypercrates are not a good deal right now. You get 5 items per pack, but only one of them is from the current pack. Two of them are from old packs and the other two are Jawa Junk and a companion gift. So basically we are paying for 3 items, 2 of which are old items. I am part of Bioware's target audience for Hypercrates. I have every single cartel market mount in the game. I buy 3-10 hypercrates every time a new hypercrate is released. That said, I think there can be some improvement to hypercrates.

 

A) First they should bring back reputation in cartel packs. That way players who don't get what they want, can go to a vender in the cartel bazaar and buy what they want, if there are no items on the GTN. We don't need to bring back cartel certificates. Just place a value on cartel certificates, say 5-10 million credits. Then price the cartel items for that vender accordingly. I wanted the Holo-rancor mount, since I'm a mount collector. But there were none on the GTN, at any price. So I had to buy nine hypercrates before I got it to drop. That did not feel good. Selling that item in the cartel bazaar would have fixed that problem.

 

B) Getting rid of cartel certificates and raising the price of cartel items from the vender by 5-10m credits per certificate would give a credit sink to the game, which some players feel is needed after the companion gift exploit. It is intended that the vender would sell these items for more than they would sell for on the GTN. This would also make it easier for decoration enthusiasts to get as many decorations as they want to make their strongholds pretty. If they want 20 lights, they can just go to the vender. This will also help Dye collectors.

 

C) Get rid of the Jawa Junk and companion gifts from the packs, as those items are basically useless. There can still be 5 items inside a pack, but one item can be a reputation item, and two items can be from the current pack, with the remaining two items being from old packs (random chance of one of those old items being in a chance cube). This makes it feel like the current pack is giving items from the current pack, as the majority of items (3) are from the current pack.

 

D) The vender in the cartel bazaar should sell all the items in the hypercrate, with each tab being one a different pack in the shipment. So one vender per shipment, with multiple tabs to accommodate all the packs.

 

E) Up to Bioware on how much reputation you need to buy platinum items, but my recommendation is 2-4 hypercrates to get max reputation.

[SteveTheCynic]

C) Get rid of the Jawa Junk and companion gifts from the packs, as those items are basically useless.

I think you're overstating your case here. They aren't *useless*, although their utility *in* hypercrates is somewhat limited, and there are surely better things to put there. Read on.

 

I don't think *much* purpose is served by having the Jawa tokens (of any colour) in hypercrates, because they drop in reasonable quantities from Command Crates, but the items themselves still have value (and therefore usefulness), not least because I can buy mats with them and dump those mats on the GTN.

 

Companion gifts suffer a similar problem. They aren't useless, as they still allow you to rank up companions or to sell them so that other people can rank up companions, but there are other sources that produce them in substantial quantities (Unlocked Alliance crates, for example), so the slots in the crates could be better spent on other things.

 

So they aren't *useless*, but there are other things that would be *more* useful.

[jamoup]

 

So I had to buy nine hypercrates before I got it to drop.

 

This is why they won't like your $uggestions

[Zarahemla]

I think you're overstating your case here. They aren't *useless*, although their utility *in* hypercrates is somewhat limited, and there are surely better things to put there. Read on.

 

I don't think *much* purpose is served by having the Jawa tokens (of any colour) in hypercrates, because they drop in reasonable quantities from Command Crates, but the items themselves still have value (and therefore usefulness), not least because I can buy mats with them and dump those mats on the GTN.

 

Companion gifts suffer a similar problem. They aren't useless, as they still allow you to rank up companions or to sell them so that other people can rank up companions, but there are other sources that produce them in substantial quantities (Unlocked Alliance crates, for example), so the slots in the crates could be better spent on other things.

 

So they aren't *useless*, but there are other things that would be *more* useful.

 

Companion gifts sell for around $3,000 credits each, Crafting mats sell for $3,000 credits on a good day. Credit Explosions used to drop in hypercrates, but they were removed because they only had about $50,000 credits in it. So yeah, Jawa Junks and Companion gifts are technically worth something at $3,000 credits, but should be removed from Hypercrates because they are worthless when compared to other items that have been removed from hypercrates.