MMORPG.com - The Slippery Slope of SWTOR's Cartel Market

[Darsithis]

Disappointing to see level 50 anything being available on the cartel market. I liked the initial idea of the cartel: speed up your acquisition of things, not outright provide them.

[Kelimbror]

Disappointing to see level 50 anything being available on the cartel market. I liked the initial idea of the cartel: speed up your acquisition of things, not outright provide them.

Agree...100%

[Deleted]

The problem to me is that they seem to be deliberately making it hard to get said gear in game in order to encourage cash shop purchases.

I think there's a lot of of truth in that and I think that Bioware have realised that most of their income right now (but maybe not in the future) comes from the cash shop rather than the subscriptions and so they want to "encourage" us to use it further. (Note that I can't tell for sure if this is true, but I imagine it is for the first month at least)
It's a pretty good strategy for making more money with the potential to turn into a real problem when/if people start to figure it out.

Personally I don't mind using the cash shop to speed up getting gear, but I don't like it when they just sell level 50 gear on the Cartel Market outright.

[namelessone]

I'm not against cash shop itself, it's all about how you accomplish it. Take LOTRO - in my opinion, one of the best F2P MMOs out there. Not only does it NOT shove it in your face all the time that you aren't a subscriber, it also actually rewards you with cash shop currency for certain in-game activities. It's just not fun to play when the game overtly begs you for money at every corner.

[Kelimbror]

I think there's a lot of of truth in that and I think that Bioware have realised that most of their income right now (but maybe not in the future) comes from the cash shop rather than the subscriptions and so they want to "encourage" us to use it further. (Note that I can't tell for sure if this is true, but I imagine it is for the first month at least)

This is probably the case. I bet they made more from the Cartel Market than they did for the month in subscriptions. Naturally EA would mandate that be their focus from now on. It's a double edged blade....I just don't like max gear of any kind being available for purchase.

[Psychlon]

You just jumped to that conclusion because I've bashed awful F2P model of swtor you seem to love so much in other threads.

To be fair I hate all cash shops (vanity or not) and most F2P models but they are not always for the same reason. The danger of a cash shop making a F2P game worse is sometimes a factor. In the case of Swtor both of those 2 issues working together make it the overall worst model I've ever seen but they can cause separate issues.

Everyone knows that you are bleeding all over SWTOR threads to "warn" new people how "bad" this game is....

They could have added most of the custom gear to current flashpoints, speeder added to speeder vendors etc. . As a subscriber I don't really want to buy stuff as I'm already paying a monthly subscription.

As for the argument lvl 1 fresh player would recognize how restricted they are I call bullshit. How can they know something they haven't experienced?

[shimargh]

i'm not totally ok with this F2P model, but it will never be a pay to win if you can get the "currency" also from a subscription...
so it's just a "decide what to buy first" -obviously if you want to put some money on it you will get it faster, so it's not a "pay to win", almost not totally

again, i'm not happy with these changes, nor i am a bioware fan, but really i'm kind of tired of all the "paranoid" posters (i say paranoid just to put it somehow) on how this model sucks or how this will bring the mayan predictions into the game or whatever, i've just remembered why i'm more and more away from forums...
can anyone just play the damn game? or any other game and stay silent? or share some points of view about it, but not asuming you got the TRUTH?

[Edge-]

The ship stuff has me a bit worried, but I'm not quite at "slippery slope" yet. I'm concerned about how they'll continue to handle the cash shop in the future (between this and Life Day stuff) a bit. But assuming they are, in fact, listening to player feedback, they'll hear loud and clear that both situations aren't very popular with people, so hopefully they'll move away from that direction.

[Angella]

When Bioware/EA sells gear intended for PvP/group PvE, I'll be worried. Selling top-end gear for a single-player mini-game doesn't bother me in the slightest.

I also like how most of the cartel stuff is obtainable in-game.

We'll see how things develop. So far, its fine.

[Deleted]

Author of the article writes: "For example, Cartel Packs can generate new high level resources and even actual credits from thin air, artificially inflating the supply of credits and resources (or companion gifts) in the game server’s economy at any given time."

If "actual credits from thin air" was indeed happening, it would kill the server economy almost instantly, but I don't see it. Looking of Dulfy's list am I missing something or is the author clueless?

[Psychlon]

probably what the author means.... rescources could be the lvl 7 ship pats and creating credits from thin air = selling unlocks/ items via GTN or he means selling the gtn items to a vendor which I frankly don't know if possible.

[Deleted]

Cheers. But selling via GTN to other players obviously doesn't create credits, it just reallocates them, which is perfectly fine for an economy. Selling to a vendor might be an issue depending on prices - if it was possible.

[Azhreia]

Selling unlocks/items via GTN isn't creating credits though, it's just a transfer between buyer and seller. Not sure if the packs can contain credits, I have my doubts though.

[Deleted]

Im actually more bothered about the lifeday stuff being cartel market only then being able to buy stuff i can get ingame for their space mini game, its like they've taken what could have been a small vanity event akin to the wow holiday events, have a few fun quests here and there and been lazy and just locked it all into a cash shop, give me some quests to do for it, give me something as a subscriber,(im already lacking for things to do) dont lock it into the cash shop only.

In 6 months we've had one raid, one warzone, rehashed space missions and a companion quests that takes a day to do(and the companion doesnt even have quest dialogue), and they cant even be arsed to make a small event thing for life day they go and be lazy and slap it behind cartel coins, between this and the cathar being cash shop exclusive, and their promise of more and more Cartel packs.

I think im going to just cancel, because i feel they're shifting away from giving me monies worth for my subscription, lacking in effort in pushing out new content to putting more efforts into the cash shop. I'm not paying a sub so they can use that money to make me pay for more crap in the cash shop instead of giving me things to do for the money i pay

[Psychlon]

Cheers. But selling via GTN to other players obviously doesn't create credits, it just reallocates them, which is perfectly fine for an economy. Selling to a vendor might be an issue depending on prices - if it was possible.

Selling unlocks/items via GTN isn't creating credits though, it's just a transfer between buyer and seller. Not sure if the packs can contain credits, I have my doubts though.

actually yes, the packs can contain credit unlocks ranging from 40-70k

[Icaras]

The thing I dislike most are the "random packs". I dropped $20 on cartel coins the other day to buy some packs (was hoping for a throne) and while I got a few nice toys and some pink crystals, I also got a few dupes of items (Item which sadly seems to be commonly duped, based on the GTN prices on my server) and was left disappointed. I'd really rather just be able to buy everything direct. Its aggravating that I HAVE to buy random packs and that has also convinced me to not buy anymore coins.

Drop chance from a boss is one thing, but drop chance from a random loot bag bought with real money? No, no more.

[Kelimbror]

If people haven't caught on by now, buying packs with your real money or your stipend is a waste. All they will be good for is to sell for a pittance on the GTN. You are better off taking advantage of the other suckers who buy these things and are forced to put the items up at drastically reduced prices b/c they are worthless.

Just wait a week or two and you will see an influx of everything save for the throne mounts and color crystal. Even the special sabers were down to like 200k the other day on my server. I bought one just because I was dumping down to under 350k credits for my account lapse.

[moff]

I think we are heading directly to the worst case scenario with the cartel market.
but in the end thats what I expected and feared, the problem is that most people are not like us, many even welcome p2w options, and enough buy stuff from the market like crazy. I just hoped someone at bioware/ea would have had the balls to say NO, ONLY VANITY stuff, but who can blame them when they make so much money with the market? the players get what they want and pay for.

[Psychlon]

as if the sabers would be super rare....

[Kelimbror]

as if the sabers would be super rare....

...you just ninjad the Fresh Prince of Bel Air into my head. So I will give you all a treat.

Now this is the story all about how
My account got flipped, turned upside down
And I'd like to take a minute just sit with me
And let me tell you this game is anything but free

In west Austin, Texas in a summer haze
In a cubicle programming through most of the days
Instead of making content, which would be really cool
They were busy making cash shop items for fools
EAs run by some guys that are up to no good
And the Cartel Market's trouble for our neighborhood
With patch 1.6, the ship gear started to begin
That this game is telling us we have to pay to win.

I tried to tell the folks on MMO-C
That there were warning signs we were being put on our knees
If anything I could say that this act was rare
But I thought, what the hell this is BiowarE(a)!

Now there's a new cartel pack with goodies to buy
But I'm not falling for the scam this time
I hoped that with SWTOR, I wouldn't see this day
But EA likes the ca-ching! of to win you gotta pay.


You're welcome.