Originally Posted by
Witchblade77
I kinda have to. right now I'm mostly popping in to finish the story here and there and to get those weekly conquest rewards before they are nerfed into uselessness. I don't play enough to justify for myself getting a subscription at the moment, BUT... when I do play with any regularity - I subscribe. not to mention.. its the only way to unlock expansion access when those release since swtor doesn't just sell those directly anymore.
for example. I like housing. while I do housing more in ESO, swtor was my gateway into housing and I still like to collect homes as they are released. but.... with credit limits - most homes are either inaccessible all together, or cannot be fully upgraded.. unless you spend cartel coins which cost money, whether you do that to get credits out of escrow, or unlock wings with cartel coins directly. but once you unlock the houses, you are fine, right? right? kinda. something that still annoys me about swtor housing is just how much of the furniture is stuck behind cartel coin rng boxes, and while sure you could buy them of GTN, but.... that's where the credit limits make a difference. again. could you decorate without any cartel purchases? to a point. but selection is much MUCH more limited that way. especially for decorations that instead of becoming a credit sink - utilize special currencies that you can only earn for a limited time.
now, lets look at unlocks. I'm lucky in that I started playing pre inflation (and while refer-a-friend program was still active, so you got a few of those unlocks for free) so I bought all of my unlocks with very small amounts of credits. some account unlocks were as little as 150k. they are a lot more expensive now, so f2p player more often then not would have to spend cartel coins if they wanted to get unlocks for their account. there are fewer unlocks needed now, so tbh I'm not sure what the adjusted cost is, but its generally in a long run better to get account unlocks vs per character and that's a nice chunk of cartel coins (you can earn some here and there, sure but its slow and the entire reward path to cc is completely closed off to you unless you subscribe - seasons, since cc are sub only rewards). another thing is that you COULD game the system (as I have and I'm assuming you have) and get as much unlocked as you can while you are subscribed for your "unlock the expansion" month - inventory slots, etc. but..... there is a reason why so many games prefer to be f2p. and its because its MORE profitable. people tend to feel smaller individual purchases less then they do a larger subscription fee, so they don't realize that they have spent more.
I'm rambling. but anyways, IMO, locking away a selling point of a content update behind ongoing subscription IMO is one of those choices the game makes when they want to have their cake and eat it too. they want to make subscriptions feel all but mandatory, while also utilizing the heck out of microtransactions. pick one SWTOR. oh who am I kidding, of course they will not.