I'm a frequent purchaser of cartel packs and have accounts on two different servers. What I have found in recent months is a decrease in demand for cartel pack "filler items" i.e. average apparel, emotes, crafting mats, etc. on the GTN. You can't even vendor them back so after a few cartel pack cycles your 5 cargo spaces are jammed with items that might be in demand if the pack wasn't still available in the cartel market.

 

Solution: When A new Cartel Pack comes out embargo the proceeding pack that came out before the prior one. So if pack 4 in a series is released, embargo packs 1 and 2 in the series keeping only 3 and the new one (4) available for purchase.

 

This is just a suggestion from those of us that have our cargo slots full of older packs that can't get more than 5k on the GTN. And we usually have to repost them again and again until they sell. Thank you.

This seems like a great idea to put all of the economic control into the hands of those cartel marketing folks. I have to say bad idea all around.

Or do what I do.

 

Buy 1 hypercrate, open it, sell all the packs, buy exactly what you want and have a few million left over.

i do not agree with this, not at all... honestly i wish they'd never embargo a pack ever... if you cargo bay is full of commons that everybody has a copy of then just discard the commons... but embargos are just a way for someone to take something that was once on average of 500k to eleventybillion, just because "it can't be obtained any other way now except for the one i own chumps, hahhaha"... yeah, not cool...

OP... you so crazy. lol. That won't do anything to remedy your perceived situation.

 

The real problem with the GTN economy is the GTN system itself (lack of market data, analysis tools and options to list items for longer periods), and especially the players who have no idea what a market economy is, nor how to price or even undercut effectively.

 

Example of a herpaderp-pants-on-head-gone-cross-eyed-full-retard undercutting strategy that I see all the time:

- Player A sets a fair market value (FMV) of an item and lists it. In this example, let's say 500K, since it's an item with perceived medium-high value, and is currently in demand. Cool.

- Player B goes, "derp derp you charge too much. I under cut you. 50% urrf herp." Is it like some kind of undercutting competition here? ...wow!

- Player C goes, "uurrrrf...I sho u all how undercut. durrrrr," and smashes that down with his list of 10K. My god!

 

The sheer stupidity I see on the GTN is the reason for the volatility. Still, that 10K list will be bought in short order and then relisted to the 50% point, since that relister wants a quick and profitable turnover. Forget the FMV; derps don't care. And crafters see this all the time with their marginal gains - or, at times, losses - when listing their crafted goods in a herpaderp roller-coaster market.

 

Similar to what the poster above me stated... Other times, it's completely the reverse, and the derps go nuts on asking an exorbitant and unrealistic amount of credits for items that they will likely never sell and never move, but somehow have convinced themselves that their piece of digit garbage is worth something, and that someone stupid enough - with a lot of credits - will buy it. LULZ. Unfortunately it gets less LULZ in the long run, as the exorbitant price is held and is perceived as the norm. So the other players, seeing this long-held price, will use it as a benchmark to set their own. Now, sometimes you get the 'derp derp' player undercutting by 50% -- and in this one case -- that is actually a good thing for the simple side-effect of moving the price down towards equilibrium. The underlying problem, in this example, is no historical data to back up the decision-making process.

 

Take a game like EVE for example. That game's market allows you to list items up to 90 days. It has a histogram, moving averages, min/max daily sell/buy points ... basically a metric ****-ton of data... AND analytics to help a smart player set their price, undercut effectively to move fast, hold slightly higher for an increased profit margin within a reasonable turnover period, or adjust their buy/sell order prices based on daily aggregate market fluctuations. Oh, and the way many of those players undercut on items (esp. consumables, ammo, or other commodities) is done in the order of tenths or hundredths of ISK (pennies in other words); because, the lowest price will move first -- even if it's $0.01 cheaper.

 

Guess what? This game's GTN has a sort function to put the lowest price on top of the list, and many players use this function when buying. So, we can also uncut by pennies too (likened in the order of 1 credit differentials). But also guess what? I still see almost everyone undercutting by 1000's of credits on items. Just...wow.

 

Apparently, even if this game had those same kinds of market tools as EVE, and the GTN market data made available to the average player in this game, the vast majority here lacks the economic and mathematical aptitude to even begin to use them: most hail from the WoW crowd after all. So, many would rather just slave away at a grind and earn credits that way, rather than use their brains and make the most of what they have. Maybe they get lucky and score a super rare item, but to those kinds of derptastic players, they would just list it at a 50% undercut anyways. Thus, they would ensure that their bonuses won along the way are reduced low enough, so that they can feel justified to foster their menial grind unabated.

 

Seeing this behavior en mas almost lends credence to a particular esoteric etymological creation myth of human beginnings: that we all were created to be slaves that are best suited for the dullard thrall of daily toil.

Edited March 11, 2014 by PifferPuff

They should just do away with the pack system entirely.

 

allow us to buy everything directly from the cartel market then introduce a plex system to allow us to buy and sell cartel coins directly on the gtn instead.

One of the reasons so many clothing items do not sell well is because of how restrictive the appearance system is in SWTOR.

 

Think of leveling. How many new players are going to rip out all their mods and place them in a new outfit?

 

Think of end game. How many players, no matter how money they have, are going to stop using an outfit they fully augmented and fully augment another set of clothing and transfer all their mods.

 

End game that cost can be around 2 million credits just to change your outfit. That doesn't even count in the hassle of ripping out the mods, plugging them into a new outfit, going to the mod station, spending 32k adding in a new augment, then transferring all those augments, and do not forget that if you ever want to change your outfit to something new that is another 2 million credits and the whole process starts over.

 

The current system is just bloated and many people pass on a lot of decent outfits because they know they are not willing to drop 2 million to completely change their look.

One of the reasons so many clothing items do not sell well is because of how restrictive the appearance system is in SWTOR.

 

Think of leveling. How many new players are going to rip out all their mods and place them in a new outfit?

 

Think of end game. How many players, no matter how money they have, are going to stop using an outfit they fully augmented and fully augment another set of clothing and transfer all their mods.

 

End game that cost can be around 2 million credits just to change your outfit. That doesn't even count in the hassle of ripping out the mods, plugging them into a new outfit, going to the mod station, spending 32k adding in a new augment, then transferring all those augments, and do not forget that if you ever want to change your outfit to something new that is another 2 million credits and the whole process starts over.

 

The current system is just bloated and many people pass on a lot of decent outfits because they know they are not willing to drop 2 million to completely change their look.

 

I couldn't agree more! Why does changing mods have to cost so much? Even as a sub?

I couldn't agree more! Why does changing mods have to cost so much? Even as a sub?

 

Even if the ability to remove mods was free (and it should not be free as it is a money sink) removing 36 mods to change your outfit is boring. It takes too long and takes up too much pack space (as you have to carry around those outfits and have enough room to remove and reapply the mods).

 

They could build in an appearance tab system which charged small fees, as a money sink, to change your appearance but also make it function with 1 click of a button.

 

People would easily buy up more Cartel Market items alleviating the lesser sold items on the GTN and increasing over all sales of outfits and outfit related material on the Cartel Market.

 

One poster replied that if your game monetizes outfits, the game should not go out of it's way to drive players away from purchasing said outfits.

Edited March 11, 2014 by illgot

It is time for the packs to evolve, who still uses armoring that is bound? Do we not all have alts now who share armor? Bound to Legacy pieces need to be the new norm but sadly because of the collections system we won't be seeing that any time soon.