Somewhat related question: the old reputation items only drop randomly from Ultimate packs, right? And there is no check whether I can use an item or not, this is only proposed for the new consolidated fraction, isn't it?

 

I am asking because I just lack ICE (champion rank with like 12k points from legend), so not sure if investing is actually going to make sense?

Merging reputations (or any currency for that matter) is always a positive move.

 

Frankly, ALL currencies should be merged. One currency: credits.

 

New mmo's might come out with one currency and its nice and simple and easy for players to use and understand. Then an expansion or 2 comes out, and the lazy development decision to add currencies to direct player behavior happens. Then a couple more expansions and players have to deal with 50 currencies. It is silly, and simply lazy design. You can encourage players to do specific things within the game without having to burden them with an obscure obfuscated purchasing system.

 

I mean seriously, do old MMOs have to have 17,862 different vendors each one with a different currency? In the real world you'd simply go to the bank and convert all your currencies to your local currency and every vendor you deal with would accept your money. Lets get rid of all reputation, command tokens, pvp-currency or whatever and just have credits.

 

Would that make developers have to create very interesting content or players wouldn't use it? Yes. That's not a bad thing.

It’s very simple. If after the merge a player has Legend in one vendor they will receive Legend in the new Vendor. You mention titles will not be avails able. Why not simply grant the titles to every player with Legend status? Or change it so that if a vendor has a title it can be bought for credits similar to the security key vendor?

 

There is absolutely no good reason to drop all the titles

They are keeping the titles for people who have legendary status already. The problem is for people like me, who are half-way though Legendary (which takes about 3 hypercrates of packs to complete) and have already bought and opened the 5 to 10 hypercrates to get that far along, and have been doing it slowly, over time, since those packs are rarely available, and so are expensive when they do list on the GTN. The packs mostly contain crap items nobody wants, so they're basically a waste of money, other than the rep items they drop. So I've been wasting money on crap that I can't sell, for years, just to slowly build the rep. And now that I'm only one or two hypercrates away from the title I've been working for, I'm being told that I can't actually get it unless I buy up 2 more hypercrates in the next 2 weeks and open them all. But there are zero packs/crates even available on my server, and you can't buy them from the GTN, so basically Bioware is telling me that they have actually been robbing me of credits/real money for the past few years, and are going to take away my ability to get the thing that I have been slowly paying them for every month.

 

<all the rep changes you mentioned> snippety-snipped

 

How do I Earn Underworld Exchange Reputation?

Reputation tokens will be a guaranteed drop from Ultimate Cartel Packs unless you are at Legend status. Cartel Market Certificates are being added into the pack as a rare drop.

 

Thanks everyone, let me know if you have any questions!

 

-eric

Rep changes: This. Is. Awesome!

Question: Will the Cartel Market Certificates be sellable/tradeable or will they be a bop drop?

Frankly, ALL currencies should be merged. One currency: credits.

 

Why ?

So that those who already have masses of credits can dictate any prices ?

So that those who already have masses of credits can play the in-game economy ?

Like in RL ?

Can you provide a little more detail on this part? The Ultimate Cartel packs currently drop 4 items. If a Reputation token falls, is it going to take place of one of the four slots? Or will there be a possible fifth spot?

What about those of us who will have the Legend status already? The reason I'm a little worried about this is the old packs would still take up slots for reputation drops even if we were already at Legend rank, so a slot would still be wasted, and the credit return for these was laughable, and because they were bound we couldn't sell them on the GTN. Are you guys changing the system so it will check the Legend status before opening the pack and it will for sure never drop for a Legend player and never take up one of our slots? Or at the very least give them a better credit gain, or even unbind them like anything else in the pack currently.

 

Good questions. Rep tokens be useless to me. I guess if its a 5th item then not really losing anything as long as price does not go up, but if the rep is replacing a item slot, then BW you should know by past experience's with cartel packs this is probably not going to go well.

Did those people take into account that you can sell some reputation trophies back to the vendor?

Yes, they did. I have to admit that I was quite impressed with the thoroughness of the test. I wouldn't have had the patience to do it, myself. The GTN prices seem to confirm their numbers.

 

Mostly, I just want to remind people that many of the items require multiple Certificates. I've seen a few I would like that cost 10 but IIRC the most expensive one takes 20 Certificates. However hard people believe it is to get a Certificate, multiply that by the number we actually need. Stronghold fans don't want just one rug, they probably want at least one of each of the Certificate-locked decorations. These cost 1 to 2 Certs each. Now if you want a mount, come up with 10 more. Want a complete armor set? A new pet? You get the idea.

There has been a lot more concern expressed about losing access to the legacy titles for these factions than I was expecting, but in retrospect I realize it was probably just because I was sitting pretty on my across-the-board Legend ranks and didn't have to think about it. But other folks' comments here have turned me around on this position, and I'd like to suggest a potentially easy fix built on something someone else suggested:

 

You mention titles will not be avails able. Why not simply grant the titles to every player with Legend status? Or change it so that if a vendor has a title it can be bought for credits similar to the security key vendor?

 

That latter suggestion seems like a good one. Since you are already being generous and being additive with people's rank progression, why not just continue that generosity and say that all of the legacy titles from all of the factions should be available to anyone who achieves Legend in the new Underworld Exchange faction, then put those titles as a sellable item on the vendors. Have their purchase cost be 1 Cartel Market Certificate, so that you've both rewarded the people who previously worked toward those titles by making their previously earned rep additive (meaning they are now much more likely to be at Legend after this change) and incentivized them to buy at least one more pack for that Certificate since they hadn't actually finished working their way through it previously.

 

If, however, there's a technical reason that clickable/usable title items can't grant legacy titles (I've observed those typically only grant character titles), then perhaps go with this option (in two parts): 1. make sure the new Underworld Exchange faction has a reputation track like all the others, 2. take all of the previous CM faction titles (which are all granted in two tiers at Friend and Legend) and tie all of the Friend titles to the Friend rank in Underworld Exchange, and all of the Legend titles to the Legend rank in Underworld Exchange.

We need a better way to make old systems accessible to new players. But this trivializes past effort (new rep can be very quickly max'd via the slot machine) while at the same time cutting off legacy titles from new players. I would prefer if extra rewards were given to players based on total influence across all cartel reps (probably certificates) and if some other way to obtain the legacy titles could be added. Past effort would be rewarded and no content would be cut off from anyone.

 

This would make me happier. I'm a little salty about the idea of people who spend an evening on the slot machine having the same legendary status vendor item availability that I spent far, far too much money building up over the years. While I'm happy that new players will have access to the items, and I'm happy that cartel certs will be available from packs again (assuming a similar 20% drop rate), I do feel like my efforts are being trivialized.

 

IoNonSoEVero if you are on Star Forge you can look for my Nar Shaddaa stronghold (Cedaric, usually in the top 10). There is a slot machine is the big room overlooking the balcony. I added Felucia just in case. If we can arrange a time I can give you a key. If you are on Satele Shan I can slap something together for you to use.

I'm a little salty about the idea of people who spend an evening on the slot machine having the same legendary status vendor item availability that I spent far, far too much money building up over the years... I do feel like my efforts are being trivialized.

 

To be fair, they were trivialized anyway. These reps and titles are not an issue of gaming skill, it’s spending real money or credits on gambling. So...yay you?

 

No one is losing titles or items (given the assumption that they fix the current issue with the One Rep To Rule Them All).

 

These complaints are the same that people in WoW voiced when Cataclysm came in and wiped out a few old things.

We need a better way to make old systems accessible to new players. But this trivializes past effort (new rep can be very quickly max'd via the slot machine) while at the same time cutting off legacy titles from new players. I would prefer if extra rewards were given to players based on total influence across all cartel reps (probably certificates) and if some other way to obtain the legacy titles could be added. Past effort would be rewarded and no content would be cut off from anyone.

 

While I'm not as bothered by this change as others, I do agree it would be nice for extra rewards to be given based on total rep across all factions. People who previously earned high rep tiers on those factions did so by spending either a lot of real $$$ or a lot of real time in grinding credits to buy the packs off the GTN (and to be honest I think it's fair to say that most people who did achieve Legend probably did it via the $$$ option).

 

I totally understand all the reasons that the dev team is making this change, and it makes sense. The change actually benefits players who hadn't yet achieved Legend (provided the titles can be salvaged, but I already made a suggestion about that in a previous post), but if some extra reward given to players who already made the grind isn't too hard to achieve, it would be great. X-number of Certificates for certain rep tier milestones in each faction would be neat, or failing that at milestones of your total cumulative numbers. Don't know how hard that would be to implement, though. Sometimes scripting something that can check all that data and ship out items based on it isn't as easy as it sounds.

Edited July 22, 2018 by JediBoadicea

Well this kind of sucks in my case, mainly because I've spent the past 6 months specifically farming these reputations, putting off buying anything else to finish them up just because I'm a completionist. I only bought the packs when they were cheap enough so I only lost a net total of probably 400 million credits on this endeavor, but the worst part is I've just got 3 reputations left and they're all just about one more hypercrate away from being maxxed out. Considering its taken me 6 months to get as much of the reputations as I have, this patch is coming at the absolute perfect timing for me to get so so close to finishing them (but still not) before they're taken away.

 

But on the plus side, I'll finally have a reason to buy the new 240 augments once theres no reason for me to buy specific rare hypercrates anymore.

What I actually don't understand is this : Why not give those reputation items to Command Crates ?

This would be the least amount of work, I believe. Everything could remain intact.

Can you let me know specifically which items aren't working?

 

Thanks!

 

-eric

 

Hey Sorry for the delay(Work Work). With the old reputations i have gained Champion at any vendor. On the Pts i have only newcomer. And only the grey/red and grey/purple dye worked. Every other thing not.

Edited July 28, 2018 by DrakeVenku

The title "Corsair, The Unruly" cannot be unlocked in the Collections window.

The title "Corsair, The Unruly" cannot be unlocked in the Collections window.

 

I have never been able t unlock that one.

What About the Legacy Titles / Rep Gear?

Any titles you have earned you will keep. Gear that you have will check against the new rep (which you will meet or exceed the requirement). Those titles will no longer be possible to earn. We may consider options for reintroducing those titles in the future, but there are no plans at this time.

Thanks everyone, let me know if you have any questions!

 

-eric

 

I just wanted to repost this for reference:

Binary Star Realty

Magnate (Legend)

Landowner (Friend)

 

Bounty Supply Company

Armed and Dangerous (Legend)

Licensed to Hunt (Friend)

 

Esstran Exports

Purveyor of Fine Goods (Legend)

Importer (Friend)

 

Freebooter's Trade Union

Freebooter (Legend)

The Plunderer (Friend)

 

Interplanetary Component Exchange

Fixer (Legend)

Troubleshooter (Friend)

 

The Contraband Resale Corporation

Contraband Connoisseur (Legend)

Discerning Customer (Friend)

 

These are the titles we should have after tomorrow hits, if we earned them prior to 5.9.2.

Ok so have they implemented this change of all the reputation vendors to underworld exchange? I just checked the cartel bazaar and i have no standing with the underworld exchange. Also, i have champion with Yavin 4, Makeb, CZ-198, section x, and oricon, plus hero with 2 or 3 others. Plus when i checked legacy tab all my orignal reputations are still intact with their current level. Did they not combine them with 5.9.2?

Ok so have they implemented this change of all the reputation vendors to underworld exchange? I just checked the cartel bazaar and i have no standing with the underworld exchange. Also, i have champion with Yavin 4, Makeb, CZ-198, section x, and oricon, plus hero with 2 or 3 others. Plus when i checked legacy tab all my orignal reputations are still intact with their current level. Did they not combine them with 5.9.2?

 

Only the Cartel Reputations have been merged into one rep; Underworld Exchange.

You get reputation with them from buying cartel packs or from the Contraband Slot Machine Deco which now drops Underworld Exchange reputation consumables.

The reputations you mention are game earned ones which are unaffected.