New Cartel Market Unlocks - Credit Cap Increase and Combat Styles

[DawnofThePhoenix]

Hello everyone,

I recently noticed the unlocks section on Cartel Market and I found out about all kinds of unlocks for players who want to avoid subscription but want to have reasonable access to the game at the same time. At first I was enthusiastic, the idea that I could buy and get rid of all the restrictions in one single-time purchase, to avoid having to stay subscribed for months or years was exciting. Unfortunately I noticed that not all unlocks were present and even if I bought all the unlocks, I would still be restricted with: Credit Cap (1 mil.) and being able to switch to my secondary Combat Style*. Now I understand that you Bioware, use some type of business model that you stick to. And importantly you try to give people with active subscription enough benefits to make it an interesting choice. However this Summer I decided to play another MMORPG game, the Elder Scrolls Online. There I figured out I could buy all the game contents in small transactions. In the next paragraph I will try to explain how content access works in ESO and what is the point of this forum post.

So basically in Elder Scrolls Online there are two types of purchasable DLCs, the chapter DLCs which are main expansions like Shadow of Revan or Legacy of the Sith containing one large campaign story line. The other type of ESO DLC are smaller purchasable DLCs which often offer either a bunch of dungeons(SWTOR equivalent > flashpoints) or a smaller story/area. Those smaller ESO DLCs could be, in terms of SWTOR, compared to HK-51 or HK-55 Mission purchasable on Cartel Market, or the small updates that Legacy of the Sith is receiving all year long in forms of new planets and short stories. So going back in time, circa 6 months, I had to make a decision about playing ESO with active subscription to get instant access to all small DLCs and chapter(big) DLCs minus the newest/most recent chapter(big) DLC that needs to be purchased separately in addition to active subscription, or to buy all content packs separately for quite a price without paying for subscription. The price difference was 14.99€ for 30 days of game time, that gives access to everything except the newest big DLC (High Isle) or second choice was to pay about 200€ (approximate price required to get all current ESO DLCs permanently without discounts**). The right choice to most of you would be obviously to choose the subscription path because it's cheaper by a mile. However to me... I'm a kind of player who likes to play more games at the same time, which means that subcriptions aren't best solution for me. Let's say that in the beginning of a week I may fancy playing a driving game (GT7), on Wednesday to Friday I may want to play CoD:Warzone 2 with friends and then I may play SWTOR on the weekend. To me, paying for subscriptions while having such a diverse taste in games can be a bit of a struggle. Sometimes I may end up paying for a subscription of 2 months for SWTOR and then temporarily lose interest in SWTOR after first month until I find my way back into it. The second month of game time will unfortunately not wait for me and vanish away. Or following a previous example I can end up paying for a month of SWTOR subscription but end up really only playing it on 8 days of that specific month which economically bothers me because it's not effective. Going back to ESO I decided to simply drop more money on it because I knew that If I buy everything separately, it will cost me a price of about 2 years of subscription. Knowing myself, a lot of those subscription months would go to waste and I wouldn't be capable of playing all that content in 2 years in my slow pace anyway. So the most economical way for me was to go with simply spending more money at once, saving more later because of my slow pace and constant game breaks. Another point that needs to be noted is that the amount of content packs that creators of ESO release on yearly basis is comparable by price to up to 6 months of subscription. This means that I'm not going to be saving whole lot money buying everything separately. Avoiding the previous path of subscription does not save me too much money if any, but on the other hand it rids me of the psychological burden of not being able to play what I want, when I see fit and being kind of pressured to play SWTOR more often even when I don't really want to. 

Going back to the case of business model in SWTOR, at least to my knowledge, players who want to play new big DLC like Legacy of the Sith have to subscribe once, to gain and retain access to it even after subscription goes off. This is amazing for me. I'm okay with making a one time purchase of subscription that gives and retains access to new content. However after subscription goes off I will be bothered with credit cap, inability to switch combat styles, losing access to hiding my head slot, losing access to extra quickbar. Some of listed restrictions can be unlocked at the moment but some as of yet can't. It would be okay to me if I had to pay the same price like other players who prefer subscription model If that would mean I could play whatever game I want when I want. The model I have on my mind is that we have two options:

A) You subscribe for a whole year that is yearly price of 131,88€ (Steam pricing 2x 6 months). (I assume that this also might not be the most popular choice among players since players in all games always come back at content patches and then leave quite quickly until next patch drops)
B) You subscribe as many times as there are content patches in a single year, including the small planetary content drops, with let's say 3 content drops, you only have to subscribe three times for 30 days of game time that is 38.97€ (Steam pricing 3x 30 days of game time) + the price of all the unlocks in Cartel Market that could be well over 140€ after all unlocks are added and if you purchase them for whole legacy.

(Keep in mind that the person who subscribes won't have to spend any money on cartel unlocks and will have up to 5700 more cartel coins too.) 
 
I know I'm not going to change the business model of SWTOR with this post but I wished and I hope somebody from Bioware reads this and that someone might consider, even for a moment, inclining to a simple formula of giving people more options to pay for this game, for the same price, in my case it being a more direct manner (through more unlocks that aren't time gated). The philosophy behind this post is basically: "More options to pay for the game, same price from long perspective."

I hope you guys have a nice rest of your day and I'm happy for any kind of input from you, SWTOR community.
I hope to see you in the Star Wars The Old Republic, kind regards!

*there might be more restrictions than those but they are the most important ones missing in Cartel Market that I had on my mind at the time of writing this. Feel free to add other non-purchasable unlocks in the comment section below. 

**I think that last time I did math that included every possible content pack going on discount in ESO, I would have to pay about 140€+ to get access to eveything in game at this moment. Store discounts on both, content packs and store currency included in calcualtions.  

Edited January 17, 2023 by DawnofThePhoenix

[SteveTheCynic]

Advice: make your suggestion clear.  With such a large wall of text (really, the story about your misadventures and calculations in ESO didn't seem to me to be pertinent), you need to isolate the actual suggestion, draw attention to it, and so on.

Perhaps begin with the suggestion, and have the wall of text be justification.  And then repeat (copy/paste?) the suggestion at the end.

[DanielAstrol]

While I agree that a credit cap increase would be good (to 100 000 000), there are also options.

• I was just talking with a friend, and he mentioned that we should be able to convert credits to CC. Guild Wars 2 did this really well.

Here's my addition to it: For example, a player wants to convert 1 000 000 credits to CC. There would be a conversion fee in CC that are there, regardless of the amount of credits. Let's say.... 450 CC. Then the player now has 1 000 000 CC from the 1 000 000 credits.

 

• Buying credit packs on the CM, which are strictly legacy bound, like the HK bonus chapter and cannot be sold on the GTN, nor traded or mailed. These packs would offer multiple choices.

Pack 1: 1 000 000 credits (for 500 CC)

Pack 2: 5 000 000 credits (for 1 000 CC)

Pack 3: 10 000 000 credits (for 1 500 CC)

Pack 4: 15 000 000 credits (for 2 000 CC)

Pack 5: 31 000 000 credits (sort of a bundle, and is the total of the previous packs, for 5 000 CC)

---

Let me know what do you guys think.

Edited January 23, 2023 by DanielAstrol

[felleto]

I like any idea that makes Cartel Market items more accessible. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but I don't think a conversion system will be added to the game, due to the fact that we are dealing with EA of all publishers. These are the people that said that Fifa packs are ethical and are great "surprise mechanics". They are never gonna make less money off a game intentionally to please the player base. I feel sorry for SWTOR sometimes...

I like your idea though great stuff 

[SteveTheCynic]

2 hours ago, DanielAstrol said:

• Buying credit packs on the CM, which are strictly legacy bound, like the HK bonus chapter and cannot be sold on the GTN, nor traded or mailed. These packs would offer multiple choices.

Pack 1: 1 000 000 credits (for 500 CC)

Pack 2: 5 000 000 credits (for 1 000 CC)

Pack 3: 10 000 000 credits (for 1 500 CC)

Pack 4: 15 000 000 credits (for 2 000 CC)

Pack 5: 31 000 000 credits (sort of a bundle, and is the total of the previous packs, for 5 000 CC)

The game economy is already monstrously inflated, so making it easy to acquire even more credits by spending cash doesn't sound like a great idea.

Then again, compared to what you can acquire by selling items on the GTN at the moment, the amounts of credits-per-CC suggested are very small, even Pack 4.  (Pack 5 costs as much as Pack 4 + Pack 4 + Pack 2, but they add up to 35million versus the 31million in Pack 5...)

[felleto]

Now that I think of it 1kk for a pack seems too little money, now that most things cost billions. Idk maybe increase the price of things because most people would be able to buy everything from the cartel market with the amount of credits they now have. Maybe increasing the value of cartel coins more would be ideal. That just reminds me that some achivements reward 20 cartel coins for completion, is it too much to ask for at least 100 cartel coins per achivement wth?! 20 is just a slap in the face. 

[HollyUSEC]

In the subject line, it appears you're suggesting a Cartel Market unlock for more combat styles? Or is it earlier access to the second style before you meet the normal qualifications?

I see a problem with allowing four or even three combat styles in one character. 

When second styles were introduced, a lot of my hard leveled alt toons fell by the wayside, unnecessary to play further except maybe for crafting. Increasing the number of combat styles, even as a cartel market unlock, could eliminate the need and/or drive to play any alts at all, as your main becomes a 'jack of all trades,' even if a tech user cannot chooe a Force style and vice versa. You could play just one Force user and one Tech user and they could cover almost anything if they were allowed, say, four total combat styles. 

Just two styles potentially increases the amount of gear grinding that toon might have to do, if say, one style is sniper/gunslinger (strict dps) and the second is vanguard/powertech (option of playing as tank). Now if you also add the scoundrel/operative or commando/mercenary styles in (option of playing as healer)?