weekly / max limit of comms needs ( badly ) to be raised

Some interesting points, and some that show how adding legacy gear to a time-sink based game that releases new content sporadically was probably a dumb idea.

From a game company profitability perspective, caps and lock-outs are all designed as throttles on player progression.

These throttles are designed to balance the speed of content consumption against that of content creation, such that players continue to maintain paid subscriptions over the life cycle of content patches, thus allowing the game company to earn a profit on capital spent creating new content.

Without throttles, players would simply consume each new patch as fast as possible, grow bored waiting on the next patch, and end up cancelling their subscriptions resulting in less revenue and possibly losses for the game company.

So until game companies can find a way to produce new content as players consume it, all at a cost that player subscription or other payment models can support, there will always be things like caps and lock-outs used to throttle progression.

If the point of comms is to throttle progression then why do they keep adding more ways to get comms? They're practically throwing them in your face for everything you do now. Did a flashpoint? Ultimate comms! Did a story mode operation? Ultimate comms! Did a tactical flashpoint? Ultimate comms!

If that's the reason for limits on comms then I don't think BioWare even gets it.

I suspect they are increasing the ease of getting elite and ultimate coms for players like myself. (Fyi, tactical flashpoints don't give ultimates.) I am a reluctant grouper. I solo 90% of the time and I only do tacticals since they are just a step above soloing. I play a lot and I spend a lot. I have multiple 55s and have never reached the cap on anything but planetary coms. Why would Bioware want to make it easier for players like myself to earn coms you might ask? They want to make the majority of their new story content for groups, but they want all of their players to participate in it. Improving the rewards is really the only way Bioware can try lure soloers into group content.

Sorry, I don't do that break down the paragraph and stretch the response to fill a page stuff. If you get loaded up on coms, and get everything you want, and you flag yourself for combat, don't be obtuse, you know you will dominate. Not sure how many more times I really have to explain exactly why they are doing it.

Time is Money. The more time you spend, the more money they make the longer they keep you subbed. The less time you spend means less money for them. As a for-profit company, it just makes sense to gate things. You might not like it, but this business model vastly outweighs your wanting to farm coms morning, noon, and night.

To be flagged means " attack me at your own peril "

not, " Now I can attack whoever and kill folks @ my whim "

Time is money, they want to keep folks subbed for longer. However double xp decimates levelling times to throw folks asap into the endgame. go figure

There will always be someone geared better than you, faster than you, weekly caps or no. That argument doesn't hold water.

The only argument that does hold water is:

GATING = Time Spent
Time spent = Money earned

The longer it takes us to accomplish our goals, the more money they make. They are a business, for-profit, not a Goodwill.

And double XP implies you will make alts. Alts make you do what? Spend more TIME in the game. Method to madness.

And yet that's not always the case. They've introduced XP buffs that let you level faster, they've held double-xp events to help people level faster, they've removed the lockouts on flashpoints, they've added the ability to use vehicles in spaceports, they've added shortcuts to various end-game planets, and they're removing the need to leave the instance when wiping in an ops. Need I go on?

You write equations like that's all there is to it, and it's not. Your frictionless vacuum doesn't hold up so well in the real world. Saying that it's better "because that's how it's done" doesn't matter if it's not really better that way. Clearly they've reevaluated time sinks and gates in the past, and found that it's not always better that way.

And all those buffs to get you to 55 insure you will now spend as much time playng your alt as you do your main (to an extent). They want you at 55, with your max number of available characters so you log in every day... trying to get further and further ahead, while in the meantime, they keep gating the content and moving the level cap. So where you would have had one or two characters, you now have 7 or 8 and spend almost equal time on each. This means, thanks to those boosts, you now spend 2-8 times as much time in the game. Now add back in the Time=Money and voila!

Is it better for US? Of course not. Better for them? You betcha!