what is stopping me from purchasing a lot of sets

I know what you mean. In fact, I'd actually be almost happy with just the "outfit changer" from City of Heroes. Where you had, and could get a certain number of slots that you could set up with a different outfit and that you could change back and forth among whenever you felt like it.

This system though, even with tons of outfits unlocked and even with tons of credits to do it with, I don't even bother because it's just too much of a hassle. After all, as others have pointed out, you have to go through the hassle and expense of augmenting the new outfit, then changing out each and every single mod, enhancement, armoring and augment for every, single, piece and when you aren't using the outfit, it just sits in your inventory or wastes hold space.

Frankly, by the time I'm done considering it, I figure that it's almost easier to roll and level a completely different toon when I want a different look instead.

Yeah... pretty much agree.

Credits are for most players.. the most trivial of in game resources these days.

Sure.. we always have people who claim to be poor in game and need/want charity features.. but the reality is that If you play this game even half way decently you always have more credits (for level) then you need.. even with the costs to acquire desired new gear from the GTN and swap mods as you change outfits.

Besides.. with much of the new moddable gear from the CM.. most players are picking and choosing a piece here and their to adjust their appearance... NOT swaping an entire set (which just makes you look like a BTDT clone on Fleet).

People always want more for less in game these days it seems... yet the game gives even average players the access to just about everything a player could want through simply pay+wealth accumulation.

I love to customise my characters in MMOs and experiment with appearances. But I don't very often in SWTOR . Why? Because I don't want to incur the high costs to strip all the mods out, fit new augment slots and acquire new dyes. All this just because I want to run around in a different outfit? No thanks.

So, I get an appearance I like for each character and I sit on it .... long term. I only change if something really really catches my eye. Which with the way the armour designs are going downhill with each patch is very rare.

So the current situation doesn't benefit the player. Does it benefit Bioware?

Let's assume that Bioware don't care about player enjoyment and just want to make as much money as possible. Well, the current situation inhibits this too. They would sell a lot more cosmetic items if the cost to change appearance was negligable.

So it makes no sense other than being a credit sink. But there's other ways to leech credits out of the economy and give the players something back in the process (Treek being a good example).

It always seemed funny that they would charge you to take something from your own gear.As far as your lower level chrs you can farm comms.

Now, I would argue this....because I did it.

I was running Makeb (up to the Archon fight, where I stopped) with inferior gear, no augments, Makeb vendor mods using planetary comms. Since I can easily grind comms (I have a set I run on Balmorra and Tatooine that gives me around 70 to 80 comms each run) and can craft the rest that I need (I raised all the relevant crafting profs on alts to 450 or close, REd them to blue quality at least) that provided me with a cheap way to outfit multiple sets.

Makeb was not a cake walk using no augs and Makeb vendor mods....but it was not a wash either. Now that I have broken down and started running dailies to get better mods and generate income, I can see the problem.

But I can craft both MK-9 augment kits and the level 9 augs that go with them using my alts. I actually have a method that provides me almost zero cost per MK-9 kit....this is what I do in a nutshell.

My bio character stands in the volcanic mesa area on Makeb. I run a circuit, killing all of the silver and gold mobs and farm the nodes. I make enough mats on a single run to cover making a high level implant (level 53) that will provide one MK-9 part. I do this 9 more times.

Then I run my top level farmer in a droid area on Makeb, or in a place like CZ to farm metal mats. One run nets enough for one kit.

At the same time I run a few level 9 mat missions to fill any gaps and get the crafting mats that usually come from vendors...the costs are offset by the grinding of mats earlier.

Then voila...enough mats to make one kit and one top level augment...not the best augment in existence, but still very close to the best. And it cost me next to nothing but time.

There are methods...but they are not easy ones.

This is of course subjective and not everyone will agree, but that process sounds super boring :-)

"These days"? How many MMOs have you played? When MMOs first came out one of the priorities to all games were character appearance. It wasn't until recently that games started heavy restrictions on how players look because it didn't follow the "developers vision" on how the game should look. Guess what, players do not want to follow another persons "vision". They want to connect with their characters and develop their own look.

Games like Everquest and World of Warcraft set the online gaming world back a decade when they introduced the masses to MMOs with the idea that appearance restriction and class restriction were the norm.

The gaming community is just now starting to get back to having the basic features that MMOs in the mid 90s had.

"These days"?

I would imagine it would be for some folks, I think that's a fair statement.

I dont' swap armor every 5 minutes. I found a look l liked and kept it. If you want to swap armor sets like underwear yes it can get expensive. But credits are fairly easy to come by. I've never had a shortage of credits since early game.

But what you described wasnt really what the OP was complaining about. OP was talking that it was cheaper to just use the armor form the vendor and not swap in/out the mods. Agree, the initial investment is significant (roughly 120k per piece) but once its augmented, the incremental cost of swapping out armornings, enhancements,and mods is roughly 60k.

IF not spending 100k per armor piece, I'd be sitting at 50million rather than only 5million. Hence why i say it is an absolutely necessary credit sink.

What I am talking about is the fact that I do not buy sets in the Cartel Market because it is just too expensive in game for me to constantly switch out my mod to change my characters appearance.

I have a few sets I purchased with cartel coins I had accrued via the security key over the last year, after that I had enough parts to create an outfit for each of my mains. Past that, I will probably not spend any more on adaptive armor. It is too much of a hassle for a player like me, who enjoys spending at least 25 dollars a week on a game, to bother with it.

I will not spend money and buy a set, then spend more money unlocking it account wide, then spend even more on cartel packs just so I can wait 3 days and sell them in game to switch my outfit. Not worth my time or money when I am satisfied with one look.