I am really getting frustrated with not getting any of the missions I want in my crew skill list. It feels like 7 times out of 10, I will have 0 metals (UWT) missions in the top 2 tiers. I know the ship enter/exit trick, but what a waste of time (and Biowares computing resources )! Have they ever stated why they emplemented this crappy design?

Instead of instituting crappy credit sinks like the recent bump in repair costs, how about a positive credit sink like allowing me to run the missions I want?

First let me just say that I have NEVER done the area switching thing to get the missions I want. The fact is that I want metals and gifts and to a lesser extent fabrics, so if I do not see a metals mission I just do a gift mission instead. And I can tell you, from experience, that the missions you choose influence what missions you get because I have experienced it first hand...

A few months ago, there was a point when all I wanted was gifts (trying to raise affection of companions on an alt). I ran level 5 and 6 gift missions over and over and over again. And there came a point when I did not get ANY gift missions. All five grade 6 missions were metals and fabrics. And of course I took advantage of it

From that point on, I have taken a more balanced approach to mission selection and there has not been a single game session where I have not gotten at least one metals mission since late November. And I have all the metals I need and then some.

All that being said, I agree with you that it would be a positive money sink if you could pay more to pick and choose which missions you wanted. That being said, I do understand the reasoning behind the current system - limiting resources. The fact of the matter is that given enough time, crafting materials in this and all MMOs are infinite; there is no limit to how many of a specific material there can be. So, MMO designers implement "artificial" limits to give those materials in-game value. And if you have ever sold anything from crew skills (crafted goods or materials) on the GTM then you care about that value. And being able to pick and choose which missions you want to run at any time would de-value those materials.

With this in mind, back in October, I suggested a system whereby you can pick and choose which mission you want from the whole list and that mission goes on an ever increasing cooldown. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=542599. What you are suggesting is maybe an ever increasing credit cost to run the mission.

We are on the same page here, just taking different angles at the issue.