Why were the 3 levels of material turn-ins (ie Jawa Junk) removed? These were very beneficial to players.

I feel i am getting much less for my buck and as such won't be inclined to purchase future packs of this style.

 

I do like that the rare armor is in crates but that also is a downfall with the drop rate. Before one could get pieces of the rare armor from the pack and trade with others or sell parts to make money for the pieces they wanted. Now if the rng gods are angry you get zilch. After opening two hypercrates worth of packs I was unable to get a single crate of Sith Recluse armor. This compounded with the lack of a rep (which I felt added worth to my purchases) and lack of jawa scraps makes the packs seem un appealing.

 

The short and skinny: not getting my money's worth vs the previous format of the packs.

Edited October 28, 2015 by Deathweed

-Value returned was very low compared to all previous packs.

I understand that this is a side effect of the box sets that you get rather than the separate items. However due to the extremely low drop rate I feel as though the overall value was lowered.

 

-Too many decoration drops taking up space from other items(I enjoy decorating my stronghold but I open packs for the character cosmetic items ; Mounts, Armour,Etc.)

 

-Dissapointed by the lack of Jawa Junk. If the packs remain the same can you consider adding Jawa Junk as a third item that is always present like the companion influence item?

 

-Still too many reskins. Now it's even worse cause I feel like I'm getting the worst value for my money.

 

-Lack of reputation items.

 

 

Overall I was very disappointed by this pack.

 

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

In my opinion this is the perfect pack that you could give us :

 

1 Reputation Item OR 1 Cartel Certificate

1 Influence Item OR 1 Set of Jawa Scraps

1 Primary Item (Armour Set / Mount / Other Character Cosmetics)

1 Set of Decorations (For example 3 Chairs or 1 Damaged Republic ATV)

Edited October 28, 2015 by micnevv

• How does the new Underworld Alliance pack structure feel? What are your thoughts on the pack consolidation? What suggestions do you have?
  
• What are your thoughts on the changes to Hypercrates and the addition of Supercrates? Do you feel they are worth their cost? Do you enjoy opening them? If so, what do you enjoy most? If not, what do you like least?
  
• Are you more or less likely to purchase packs from the Market and why?
  
• Can you share any experiences or first impressions you’ve had with the new pack structure?
  

Let me start by saying some of the cullings and consolidations were great and felt long overdue. No one needed a forty-seventh minor starfighter experience boost that would not stack with the other three, and moving to armor crates only instead of individual armor pieces was a great move as well. Both of these were great ideas.

 

However, the packs were over-simplified and they just don't feel as fun to open any more. Like previous posters said, the removal of Jawa junk is the most glaring offender - it was the one thing I literally could not have enough of, the one thing I knew was going to make the pack at least somewhat worthwhile no matter what items actually came with it. In the same vein, I miss getting reputation items and/or cartel certificates. All these were guaranteed tokens of value that one could rely on, however miniscule. With them gone, so is the incentive to amass packs.

 

If this is the new pack/crate structure going forth, I will honestly stop buying crates entirely and just get contents from the GTN instead. If you ask me personally, the ideal pack would contain:

 

 

• One crate of armor pieces
  
• One serving of Jawa junk of random rarity
  
• One rep item or one cartel certificate
  
• One of either a crystal, a weapon, a decoration, a mount, a pet or an emote
  

 

Four things, two of which are bound to character/legacy, seems like the best ratio to make contents appeal to both buyers and resellers. The sheer abundance of companion gift drops in-game since 4.0 makes including them in cartel packs fairly superfluous in my opinion.

 

That's my 2 cents. Thank you for reaching out and giving us the chance to consolidate feedback.

I bought 6 of the gold armor packs and while I am not sure if this is a trend, but I thought I'd speak my piece. While I did get a really cool set (Marka Ragnos), it seems like the sets that you have on the market already (such as Thexan's Armor Set, the Sanctified Caretaker, etc) seem to drop a lot. Three of the six packs were things like this.

 

What I would like to see are some of the more rare sets sold individually. Such as Xo Xan, Satele Shan, etc. Also, it would be nice if, when buying these packs, if we would NOT get an armor set we already own.

I like the old cartel packs more than the Underworld Alliance pack - sure there were a few "problems" with them but I think the changes went overboard trying to address those issues and ended up making this shipment more undesirable. I usually get 1-2 hypercrates per shipment (with cartel coins and on the gtn) and after opening up a few packs this time I think I'd rather just buy any particular item I want from the gtn from now on.

 

Specific issues:

Value - the old cartel packs gave like 6 items and these only give 2 (at around the same price). Even if I got 3 junk items per pack (which is usually really bad luck on my part) I still feel I got a better deal with the old packs than the new ones.

 

Pack embargo - I like buying old hypercrates way more than the new bronze/silver/gold packs since (1) they're cheaper per pack so I can open more (2) the old ones at least gives consolation stuff in the form of jawa junk, cartel rep, etc even if I didn't get particularly lucky, (3) if I'm going for a particular "theme" I can be sure the items I get are of that theme rather than entirely random like with the new packs. At the very least I'd like to see the embargoed hypercrates cycled maybe 1 per month like before.

 

Weapons/color crystals/pets/companion customizations - I don't think these should've been removed. Every pack is going to have hot items and not so hot items, but that doesn't mean these had no desirability whatsoever (I could still use them on companions and alts, or give to new players). All this change does is make the less desirable armor sets the new "low demand" item. (The real problem imo is most weapons were ugly.)

 

Jawa junk/cartel certificates - why the heck were these removed? If anything they made opening a particularly unlucky pack at least tolerable.

 

XP boosts - Thank you for removing these actually undesirable items.

 

The sheer abundance of companion gift drops in-game since 4.0 makes including them in cartel packs fairly superfluous in my opinion.

I disagree. Not everyone has time to do heroics on multiple alts to farm companion gifts, they like the jawa junk and other things were the "padding" that gave the old packs value. For me, I'd like to see the old 6 item packs come back with either a credit box or a mission discovery replacing the xp boost.

Edited October 28, 2015 by FireFoxed

Too expensive compared to other games (LOTRO $1.00 for 2 items, STO $1.25 for at least 2 items). Here you are paying basically $2.00 for one item.

 

The companion gift is worthless and over saturated because you can get them from crew skills and alliance boxes, and with crystals, and, well you follow the pattern here.

 

The second item is hit or miss. Either you want it, or you don't. If you don't, odd are most everyone else does not want it either. The items bind for almost 2 days, which means you can't even offload it if you don't want it.

 

Comparing cost, items gotten, and relative ease of getting rid of worthless items, it's just not worth my time or my money. At the crazy cost of what it is and what I can get, I choose not to buy any packs anymore. You all charge too much for too little.

 

The hypercrates were just a slap in the face. You basically cut the amount of items gotten in half for the same cost. As for the supercrates, it seems like a money grab to me. 5 items (old pack number of items) for 3 times as much as the old pack.

Edited October 28, 2015 by Psychopyro

According to Customer Service, the Underworld Alliance Packs are outright bugged right now so I'm looking to get this addressed before anything:

 

I bought 12 packs and got nothing but bronze items and decorations... so I contacted customer support and made a complaint and requested a refund since the drop rates attached to the new crates were obviously bugged. They sent this response:

 

Greetings,

 

I am Protocol Droid M0-T0, Human-Cyborg Relations.

 

Thank you for contacting us about the issue you encountered. This particular case appears to have been caused by a bug within the game that will need to be corrected in a future game update and as such, cannot be corrected by Customer Service.

 

To allow us to identify and correct these issues, we would request that you submit a Bug Report on this issue. Bug Reports submitted though the In-Game Help Center go directly to our development QA team and not to Customer Service. To submit a bug, you can type /bug in your chat window or select Bug Report from the drop down when creating a new ticket in the In-Game Help Center.

 

We also recommend checking the latest patch notes at http://www.swtor.com/patchnotes for information on any fixes or changes in our game updates or our Known Bugs list, located at the top of our Bug Forums which can be found here: http://www.swtor.com/community....

 

We would like to apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused, and to thank you again for the valuable feedback you have provided. Please do not hesitate to report any other issues you may encounter while playing.

 

Galactic support is our specialty…

 

Sincerely,

 

Protocol Droid M0-T0

 

 

I can also confirm that I bought a new 30-Pack Hypercrate, and got 27 Bronze items, 2 Silver items and only a single Gold item out of all of them. Compared to, consistently, getting at least 50% Silver items and around 5-10 Gold items under the old system from every Hypercrate.

 

If this is "working as intended", then I'll never buy a Pack of any kind again and would recommend anyone else do the same. Currently, I essentially paid to be given the stuff nobody wants, and I can't see a single thing that I'd actually consider value for money spent.

 

..... honestly in my personal experience, the most valuable items I got were the companion gifts. That's not a good thing, and just goes to show how little the Bronze items are valued. And right now you're lucky to get anything BUT Bronze items.

Edited October 28, 2015 by Transairion

It kind of seems like I'm getting a bit less for what I was getting compared to the previous style of packs. I also miss the inclusion of reputation items and a corresponding reputation vendor because it felt I was getting a bit more value beyond what was just in the box. Whether that be a exclusive dye, a statue or a rare armor set etc.

According to Customer Service, the Underworld Alliance Packs are outright bugged right now so I'm looking to get this addressed before anything:

 

 

 

 

I can also confirm that I bought a new 30-Pack Hypercrate, and got 27 Bronze items, 2 Silver items and only a single Gold item out of all of them. Compared to, consistently, getting at least 50% Silver items and around 5-10 Gold items under the old system from every Hypercrate.

 

If that is indeed true, these packs should be removed from the market immediately and fixed.

I did not find opening this crate to be as fun as others.

 

I like pets, emotes, crystals and customizations. The price seems high since we went from 48 items to 30 for the same amount. It's not like the new armor and mounts are significantly better than older ones.

 

I also miss having rep. That always felt like an extra reward for opening packs rather than buying items off the gtn.

 

I do, however, like having all armor in crates.

Why were the 3 levels of material turn-ins (ie Jawa Junk) removed? These were very beneficial to players.

 

Bingo.

 

The packs offer zero value, even compared to the previous ones. 2 items is hardly worth shelling out 5000+cc for.

How does the new Underworld Alliance pack structure feel? What are your thoughts on the pack consolidation? What suggestions do you have?

While I don't think anyone enjoyed getting a bunch of boosts that they could only hope to sell at severely discounted prices (space game XP boosts, exploration XP boosts, etc), the current packs feel somewhat empty.

 

No more reputation items, no Jawa materials, I have yet to find a cartel certificate in what I have opened...

 

I would like to see a third item added. Possibilities for that third slot could be:

• Jawa materials
  
• Cartel certificates
  
• Dye modules
  
• Color crystals
  
• Companion customization
  
• Boosts
  
• Reputation items

 

There is room for a third category of items between gifts and "main attraction" stuff.

 

What I would like to see out of the boosts is, instead of making marginal boosts, focus on three things: A 1 hour XP boost, a 3 hour social boost, and a 3 hour valor boost. Keep sit simple.

 

What are your thoughts on the changes to Hypercrates and the addition of Supercrates? Do you feel they are worth their cost? Do you enjoy opening them? If so, what do you enjoy most? If not, what do you like least?

 

I have purchased three hypercrates. I did not purchase them from the market, though, rather bought them on the GTN.

 

Worth their cost? From that perspective, not at all. The first two packs have cost me 4.5 million. That's what I lost, not what I spent.

Pay for the pack, open them up, re-sell everything on the GTN, and lose 4.5 million in the process.

Now, to be fair the GTN is out of your control and I did keep the gifts, so that part of the money lost is on me, but part of the problem was on you.

 

I opened 81 of the 90 packs that I bought, choosing to sell 9 of the packs unopened, but of those 81 packs I only got 4 gold items, two of which were decorations (the wrecked ATV).

 

That is on you guys.

Blame the RNG gods or whatever and I get that, but 1 gold item in a hypercrate isn't making these packs seem like a good deal, especially when you chose to remove everything else to make those items the only real attraction.

 

I like opening packs. Has that whole "Christmas" thing going on. But when people are spending real money, especially when they are spending in bulk like on a hypercrate, sorry, but I think they deserve more than a single gold item for their $54.00.

 

Are you more or less likely to purchase packs from the Market and why?

Again, given my experience with the gold drop rates, I am not going to be in a hurry to spend cartel coins on these packs.

 

Can you share any experiences or first impressions you’ve had with the new pack structure?

 

Like opening packs, not going to spend money unless I think the value increases. Gold drop rate has to be better or at least need to see some nice extras in the packs like dyes, cartel certificates, etc.

 

Thanks.

Edited October 28, 2015 by Mithros

I was hyped for 2 items per a pack but I thought the cost would be low. No more junk XP boosts and all armor pieces dropping in cases were a good change but that's it. You barely decreased the cost and thus the packs aren't that much popular. You ask too much for too little and the chance for getting gold drops is insane. I would fall for it only if you would sell these packs for 100cc considering their current drop amount and ratio.

 

You can keep it at 200cc but you need to make them drop something else than just a random item and a gift. IMO what is reasonable at 200cc is the drop that consists of four guaranteed items:

one case of armor pieces

one decoration

one additional item from the pool of emotes/toys/mounts/crystals/weapons

jawa scraps

 

Now that justifies 200cc.

Edited October 28, 2015 by PavSalco

One thing I have thought would be a problem with using Bronze, Silver, and Gold destinations rather than worded designations is that the symbols are small and the Bronze and Gold symbols look very similar in color and if color is off slightly on your system they look identical. I would suggest using colors familiar to everyone who plays the game and will be unmistakable Such as Green, Blue, and Purple everyone at a glace who plays this game knows those colors and what they mean at a glance and they are not easily mistaken for eachother.

I've bought 30 Alliance Packs and am pretty happy about the changes. No longer will opening a pack fill up your whole inventory; I like that you removed the XP boosts that were not very valuable anyway.

 

My biggest complaint in the previous pack was that the decorations dropped too rarely - they are the only item you need multiple copies of and should drop the most. I was therefore happy that the Alliance Pack dropped so many decorations.

 

My biggest gripe would be the price though - a single decoration is not worth 2 bucks in my opinion, and I don't see myself buying too many packs in the future. For half the price, I would definitely continue buying the packs.

I was also very astonished about the low drop rate of the Akk Dog, my favorite item from the pack. While I was pretty lucky to have gotten it from a pack, I know that going forward, I won't be so lucky and I don't want to pay 10 million credits for future companions - especially since they are more limited than the traditional companions (cannot craft, requires certain gift type, the tricks cannot be put on the quickslot but need to be clicked which means I won't use them very much)

Oh, and please add pets back into the packs - I was really sad that the new pack had no pets.

Edited October 28, 2015 by Jerba

I really agree with kamennebbie.

 

If this is the new pack/crate structure going forth, I will honestly stop buying crates entirely and just get contents from the GTN instead. If you ask me personally, the ideal pack would contain:

• One crate of armor pieces
  
• One serving of Jawa junk of random rarity
  
• One rep item or one cartel certificate
  
• One of either a crystal, a weapon, a decoration, a mount, a pet or an emote
  

 

I'm really pleased XP boost got removed but that is the only thing I'm pleased with :

• Jawa junks were usefull and a net gain.
  
• No reputation track is fine... yet reputation token where fun to get. I would love to find random old reputation tokens inside the new packs.
  
• With KotFE I'm drowning under companion gifts. I always find a couple during heroics and inside Alliance crates. That's more than enough.
  
• Weapons design really improved on previous packs. Sure I don't want Soccoro blasters again, but I'd rather have only one set of weapons through the shipment than nothing.
  
• Contraty to armors or weapons, decorations are needed I much higher quantity (I don't need only one chair or one computer, I need dozens !) They really should have their own slot (or better, be added to collections ! That's the right thing to do !!)
  

 

I brought an hypercrate. There was no "bonus crate" as on previous packs. As there was less possible contents and less items per pack It felt really underwhelming and overall, really not worth the price.

 

By comparison, I found the previous shipment really great and probalby the best you've made.

Edited October 28, 2015 by SgtJey

The new ones just aren't worth it. I'm sorry, but it works out at around £2.50 per pack, and to have the possibility of getting one item of any value for that price is just a rip off. I've purchased 6 of them (one individually, one supercrate) and the best thing I got was of silver rarity. I won't be purchasing any more packs that consist of two items.

Completely overpriced. I bought around 3 dozen hypercrates over the last year or so but I probably won't buy any packs anymore because it's just not worth it.

I'm paying twice as much per useful item (I'm not counting XP boosts and such, already have more than 1k of them) compared to what I paid before 4.0.

 

What I'd like to see is this:

• Two random items, each being either: a crate of armor pieces, a crystal, a weapon, a decoration, a mount, a pet or an emote
  
• One serving of Jawa junk of random rarity or a grade 5 or 6 companion gift of at least blue quality.
  
• One rep item or one cartel certificate
  

for the same price as now.

And please don't make every third item one of those stupid blahblah weapon Aurek/Besh/etc. I sold two entire cargo holds of those for a total of <50k once.

Edited October 28, 2015 by CheaterLL

If this is the new pack/crate structure going forth, I will honestly stop buying crates entirely and just get contents from the GTN instead. If you ask me personally, the ideal pack would contain:

 

 

• One crate of armor pieces
  
• One serving of Jawa junk of random rarity
  
• One rep item or one cartel certificate
  
• One of either a crystal, a weapon, a decoration, a mount, a pet or an emote
  

 

That's almost a perfect list but please consider to put a guaranteed drop of one decoration. People need multiple copies of almost every decoration and the market never has enough supplies. Or people list them for a ridiculous price because how rarely decorations drop.

 

Reputation for the cartel packs was unfair to everyone else. Yeah it was fun but I see the reasons why Bioware gave up on the reputation gained by cash.

 

Replace the rep tokens with decorations in that list and we are ready to go.

Edited October 28, 2015 by PavSalco

Reputation for the cartel packs was unfair to everyone else. Yeah it was fun but I see the reasons why Bioware gave up on the reputation gained by cash.

 

Er, may I ask how it was "unfair" to anyone? It was a major meal ticket for BW, especially since Legend Reputation was worth opening about 4-5 Hypercrates. Anyone could get that Rep as well, as long as they bought Crates of the GTN, then they didn't even have to pay CC! It was a reward for dumping that much cash.

 

 

What's more unfair is right now Cartel Reputation Vendor items are bugged and not bound, so you're seeing Crowns of Avarice up on the GTN for under 100k (and no 6 Certs that are required for the vendor version).

The supercrates are stupid. if my math is correct, they end up being the same price per pack; absolutely no reason for them at this rate. Hypercrates at least give you a slightly better deal and also drop a platinum pack.

 

And on that note, the new packs are a rip-off.

It used to be for somewhere between 210 and 250 cartel coins, you'd get two rare items, a consumable boost item, some Jawa scrap, a companion gift, and either a reputation item or a cartel certificate. Now, for 200 cartel coins, you get...one rare item and a companion gift. Maybe if the new packs were literally half the price they'd be a good value, but right now I'm just sitting on my coins until the old packs come back around.

 

And hey, what's the deal with taking all the direct-purchase stuff off the market? It's absolutely unbelievable how much content was removed in 4.0, from leveling gear to endgame missions even to cash shop items.

 

These changes to the Cartel Market have nothing to do with player satisfaction and everything to do with EAWare trying to squeeze more money out of its subscribers' wallets. As someone who has loyally subscribed since Early Access, I really do resent that. I'm giving it another few weeks to see if you all want to fix anything, but as it stands, I'm very likely to unsub. I believe that as a result of the gawdawful changes made in 4.0, this game is going the way of the Orange Pixel.

These packs feel extremely overpriced. Why would I gamble 200 CC on the off chance of getting an item I want plus a single gift? While I am not sorry they are no longer filled with boost items or rep items (I don't want to feel like the only way to grind a rep is by paying), the dearth of items in new packs compared to the old really feels like a ripoff. Hypercrates just magnify the feeling that I am paying a lot for very little.

 

If this is your plan for packs going forward, I'm not inclined to buy this type ever again. And since it's the only type I ever really buy, I will also probably have no reason to buy CCs ever again either. I'll just get exactly what I want from the GTN.

Underworld packs aren't really good value for money at all. Drop rates on some items seem to obscenely low. The bronze/silver/gold packs are fantastic though, and I'm spending most of my CC on those. Leave those as they are, add more to the normal packs next time round.