Ancient Artifact Authorisation

[DeikkuKonoki]

Right, I have never In my life seen another MMO do something as sneaky as this and to be honest, it's quite outrageous.

(I am not saying other MMO's don't do this, just I have never personally experienced it)

Yesterday I brought a weapon using my Cartel Coins that a fancied the look of, upon trying to add modifications to the weapon I couldn't for reasons the game did not clearly notify me about.

I figured there was something wrong with my level or my class, I was baffled. After some research I found out that I needed an Ancient Artifact Authorisation pass from the cartel market which cost a rather heavy 1200 cartel coins.

My issue isn't that I needed to buy one (although that is kind of a low blow for us free players that want to spend money in the store only to be stopped by a paywall layer over a paywall)

But more that I had absolutely no idea, what so ever. Even upon further investigation I have realised that there is literally nothing in the game that mentions the need for an Ancient Artifact Authorisation. I even had to search keywords in the cartel market to find it.

I hovered over the details on various weapons in the cartel market and NOTHING mentioned a thing at all about needing an additional item to use the weapon in the game and tbh, the weapon is pretty useless if you can't add modifications to it.

So now I am left feeling like I have been scammed into buying premium or additional credits for this Authorisation from the cartel market because I wasn't clearly notified. I have now brought myself a weapon, with money that I now locked behind another paywall?! and I brought this not knowing it would be because again, there is literally ZERO indication that I will need it.

 

So I have two suggestions here.

 

1: remove it entirely because who the hell wants to spend money on a paywall locked cosmetic.

 

2: actually give people information or a warning before they purchase weapons from the store in the form of big red words saying "You do not have Ancient Artifact Authorisation, you will have severe limitations with this weapon. Are you sure you want to buy it?"

 

Or just don't allow people to buy them at all without the Authorisation, send them a link to the additional paywall you created.

Sure, it will deter people from buying it, but man. It sure it dirty to scam people into buying it like that.

[casirabit]

https://swtorista.com/articles/swtor-free-to-play-vs-preferred-vs-subscriber-guide/

[DarkTergon]

were you trying to put purple mods in? I've a pref account that uses stuff from the CM all the time, and have no issue.

[DeikkuKonoki]

https://swtorista.com/articles/swtor-free-to-play-vs-preferred-vs-subscriber-guide/

 

I get that all this information is out there, but it's not made clear in the game.

The problem, to summarise is that I brought a weapon (for cosmetic purposes) from the cartel store, only to find that I could not use that weapon without buying another item from the cartel store.

The game did not tell me this in any way. I simply would like to be notified before committing to buying something cosmetic from the store that I cannot use that item to its full extent in the game unless I buy another item from the store first.

To be honest, I can understand legendary weapons and such in the game being restricted to players that have that item or are sub players but cosmetic based items from the store I cannot understand at all.

I am no longer a free player, but if I was I would like to buy an item from the store without the worry of not getting what I paid for.

I have looked more into this and I can kind of understand restricting high level content for things like strongholds and raid type endgame content past the story. That is fine, and gives things like the Ancient Artifact Authorisation actual purpose.

But restricting cartel brought cosmetics to it is just plain outrageous, especially when they don't clearly tell you that you need the pass in the cartel store before to commit to the purchase. Sending links to information that tells you this online is fine and all but I shouldn't have to make the mistake first and then find out later through information online on some wiki, community made website that I need additional items. It should be up to the devs to tell us what we are actually paying for.

[DeikkuKonoki]

were you trying to put purple mods in? I've a pref account that uses stuff from the CM all the time, and have no issue.

 

The mods I used were removed from another weapon that said mods worked fine with. Not sure why you didn't have the issue. The issue was that I could not put the mods in the weapon I brought from the cartel market, I was able to put the same mods in other weapons I had. Have you tried it recently?

[DarkTergon]

The mods I used were removed from another weapon that said mods worked fine with. Not sure why you didn't have the issue. The issue was that I could not put the mods in the weapon I brought from the cartel market, I was able to put the same mods in other weapons I had. Have you tried it recently?

 

not recently, but will have a look later and let you know it's quite possible they changed something, but they were supposed to be making it better for F2P's, not worse

Edited April 9, 2020 by DarkTergon

[SteveTheCynic]

The mods I used were removed from another weapon that said mods worked fine with. Not sure why you didn't have the issue. The issue was that I could not put the mods in the weapon I brought from the cartel market, I was able to put the same mods in other weapons I had. Have you tried it recently?

It's a wrinkle in the way artifact authorisation works. If you don't have it (subs have it automatically while they are subbed), you can't character-bind anything that involves "artifact" grade items (purple and yellow, essentially). That might be a purple weapon or armour piece that drops from a killed enemy (or, I guess, from e.g. flashpoint boss rewards when you are submax level) or an unbound purple/yellow mod-object that you want to put into an already bound piece of moddable gear.

 

DISCLAIMER / CAVEAT: What follows is speculative, and is intended to *explain* a possible reason for the behaviour you've seen. It is in no way meant to *excuse* it, merely to *explain* it.

 

What happens with unbound moddable gear if you put an artifact-level already-bound mod-object in it? Well, it tries to temporarily become artifact level *and* permanently become bound, and that transition isn't allowed if you don't have the authorisation. It's kinda a corner case, and I'd guess that it has nothing to do with it being a CM weapon and everything to do with the process binding it. If you can spare the credits, acquire an empty crafted moddable weapon from somewhere (most probably the GTN) and see what happens if you try to put the mod-objects in it while it is not bound to your character.

[DeikkuKonoki]

It's a wrinkle in the way artifact authorisation works. If you don't have it (subs have it automatically while they are subbed), you can't character-bind anything that involves "artifact" grade items (purple and yellow, essentially). That might be a purple weapon or armour piece that drops from a killed enemy (or, I guess, from e.g. flashpoint boss rewards when you are submax level) or an unbound purple/yellow mod-object that you want to put into an already bound piece of moddable gear.

 

DISCLAIMER / CAVEAT: What follows is speculative, and is intended to *explain* a possible reason for the behaviour you've seen. It is in no way meant to *excuse* it, merely to *explain* it.

 

What happens with unbound moddable gear if you put an artifact-level already-bound mod-object in it? Well, it tries to temporarily become artifact level *and* permanently become bound, and that transition isn't allowed if you don't have the authorisation. It's kinda a corner case, and I'd guess that it has nothing to do with it being a CM weapon and everything to do with the process binding it. If you can spare the credits, acquire an empty crafted moddable weapon from somewhere (most probably the GTN) and see what happens if you try to put the mod-objects in it while it is not bound to your character.

 

I appreciate you are trying to help and thank you for it, unfortunately I have already subscribed. I intended to subscribe anyway and that was just the push to do it sooner rather than later.

I was quite annoyed that this problem was the push I had in order to made me subscribe. If I didn't love the game so much I would have uninstalled and deleted it.

By subscribing I had resolved the issue and so I can't see if your fix actually works.

I will say that I had several low level mods in my inventory at the time and non of them would bind to my weapon. I had tried many things before I alt tabbed and did a bit of research.

Something like that should not have to be researched and tbh if what you're saying is correct then the problem needs to be fixed by either notifying people or changing the way cartel brought artifact level items actually work in the game.

 

Thanks again for your reply