The SWTOR appearance customization system is horrid and costing Bioware revenue

IMO they could make more money, and incur less of the wrath of the playerbase by abandoning all gambling bags, allowing direct purchase of everything, and by drastically reducing all CC's costs to at most 10% of current costs.

Selling more for less never works though. I mean, if it did, every city on the world would have a McDonald's in it, and that's just crazy talk.

I'm with you, I like the current system. It is so much better than other stat adjustment systems that I've dealt with.

IMHO, game developers in general drastically underestimate the revenue that would make by just selling items and not relying on gambling boxes. Players will happily fork over money for decent clothing options not hidden behind RNG.

We've all been asking for an Appearance Tab since pre-launch. Hey, but Starfighter.

Good example. I can't imagine buying the Cold Weather gear that I'd, essentially, have to wear all the time or none of the time. Great for Ilum and Hoth... but having to use it on Tatooine also? Crazy.

The dye system in swtor really is atrocious, and is costing them money.

They need to copy GW2's dye system whole cloth.

I'll use a dulfy link just for the pure irony (and quality) of it.
http://dulfy.net/2013/12/24/gw2-dye-gallery/

In gw2 they have hundreds of dyes that you can buy and permanently unlock. You can then apply these dyes any number of times to your armor in primary, secondary, and tertiary dye slots at your discretion.

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As much as I enjoy the adoptable and moddable armor system Bioware (finally) implemented, an appearance tab system is simply far superior to it.

For example, I like the new cold weather gear they've introduced. I'd definitely use it while on Hoth or Ilum along with my Tauntaun. However, the sheer cost of switching armors is prohibitive. I am certainty not going to invest that much time, money, and inventory space on armor that I only want to wear while on hoth or ilum then immediately switch back out of once I get back on fleet.

Maybe they could implement a system where your primary stat mods go into fixed pve and pvp slots, but the armor shells still need to be augmented if you opt to use augments. these shells would then be placed into separate appearance tabs.

I have the same opinion, its like they contradict themselves as a business....

We WANT you to buy more armor, but we make it very expensive to swap it out, so you may not want to buy more armor, but we need the income to keep the game alive, so please buy armor from the CM, but we can't fix the issue of it costing too much to change your armor, but we will keep selling armor anyway and hope you will buy it.

Want the CM to really take off? Give us an appearance tab and you will probably see 2x in sales!

I don't know how you can quantify the 'costing them revenue' bits, but I'll agree the entire system is draconian in its implementation.

Even so, it's worlds better than where they were at launch. So I guess that's a plus.

Some good points were made by the O.P.

I could totally get behind an appearance tab, but think it unlikely that the devs will make the 1 use dyes change.

A compromise I think both sides could agree on would be to have dye's remain 1 use but affect all outfits on the appearance tab. You could still individually dye each of the pieces and uncheck the "match to chest" option. This would allow them to monetize the dyes while allowing more flexibility to appearance.

As an added bonus, you could have some of those outfit's that are identical except for the hood up hood down option equipped so you could FINALLY toggle between the two!

I agree with the OP's assessment that having multiple tabs would only benefit the game as people will still see outfit's they like on the GTN / CM and buy them, probably more often even because they can use them all more easily.

My other gripe is that the dye's tend to come from RNG packs. I refuse to buy these...but will drop 20 bucks in to buy the dye I WANT from the CM when they offer one of those sales. Those should be a static feature.

i wish they would make it where the dies would change ALL the colors on the outfit.. like you said there are some that have parts that dont change at all. its the most frustrating thing ever to get the bit of armor you really wanted and find out you cant dye it the colors you want.

what they should have done is have multiple dye slots and no dual color dyes only have single color dyes. it would give us more freedom to change the colors to what we want. and make it easier to dye the entire bit of armor.. also dyes shouldn't be rare all colors should be common B^( i don't want too and i will not pay 1 mill for double white B^(