what is stopping me from purchasing a lot of sets

I have a real problem with that. I am constantly changing my look. I swear they designed the market with me in mind lol.

It is boring but so are dailies.If you want something you have to put the effort out.I craft all my 156 gear except relics.The secret to farming is lots of coffee.That and your favorite music.Ctrl + S helps with Treek.

Music is a big one. Either I play classic Star Wars music in the background (not enough of that in this game IMO) or just regular music I enjoy.

I am definitely in favor of an appearance tab system ala LOTRO, but given the mod system here I was thinking about this instead.

How about a "Gear Manager" UI window? Try to picture this, sorry no illustration and it will sound more complex than it is, I did make a napkin sketch at work this morning...

1. A window that, at the top, has 5 "Gear" boxes (arbitrary number). Or tabs if space is an issue. Each box representing an orange gear set (head, chest, waist etc..). Providing 5 different appearances.

2. The bottom portion of the window contains 2 "Mod" boxes (1 for pve and 1 for pvp) with buttons above them for each gear slot. Depending on which gear slot you select, the mod box updates to represent those mods.
So now, using the "mod boxes", you can populate each gear slot with the mods that you want. One set of mods for pve, one for pvp.

Now, those mods that you set up will auto populate whichever gear set you have selected from the 5 gear set choices in the top of the window.

Exqmple: I'm out pve'ing in gear set 1, but I get the urge to pvp in gear set 2. So I open the gear manager UI and in 2 clicks i'm ready..1 click to select gear set 2 and 1 click to select the pvp mods set. Apply, close window and bam. Maybe that's 3 clicks..

I have no idea how feasible this is from a programming standpoint or anything like that. Probably would take until 2016 anyway. And yes, it minimizes the credit sink and i'm sure ruins a bunch of other things that I can't thnk of but i'm sure you'll all tell me.....Just spitballing here.

Shoot, you could even make money off of it from non subs. Subs get the max gear slots, freebies get 1 or 2 and can unlock more through the CM.

Thoughts? Or am I over complicating what would otherwise be accomplished with appearance tabs....? It is Friday and i'm a little loopy from the week.

free to play players can start with one appearance tab and no secondary modification tab while subscribers start with 2 appearance tabs and 1 secondary modification tab. Then allow the purchase of more through the cartel market.

Appearance tabs and modification tabs can be a great money sink for those that do not want to spend money in the cartel market and the modification tabs can help more than just PvPers. Additional modification tabs will help people that play more than one build.

Bioware is missing a lot of possible revenue by sticking to their original modification system they had in beta (yea in beta all gear was modable).

Appearance tab was a HUGE topic during beta. I mean it was one of the top topics next to changing the name "wizard" and the changes that should be made to space combat.

I still strongly support the idea of an appearance tab. Short of that, I would like to see Mod extraction costs removed for subscribers.

I would also STRONGLY recommend they consider releasing all available colors as primary and secondary dyes that can be craftable, drops and rewards....the dual colors can remain primarily pack or rare items.

White, black, red, yellow and blue should be a given with individual primary or secondary color dyes.

I think WoW's newer transmogrification system is the way to go. You have your gear with the stats, the a slot for appearance. It shouldn't cost more after you've already spent the currency, credits or $, to buy the armor to get the look. Can we please get a BW point of view on this?

BW's point on this is already implemented in the game.

But I think it wouldn't hurt to tweak it a bit. Just my view naturally, but I think removing mod removal cost for subs would be a nice step.

Not a necessary one...I'm fairly satisfied that some kind of appearance system exists today compared to launch, but I think improvement could be in order.

I've played MMOs since 1999.

In the old days....... you had to grind for whatever you wanted.. and sometimes it was so scarce that it took months before you won the drop you wanted. Nobody complained about it.. they just did it.. because they understood it was the price to acquire

In the old days.... before there were in game trading houses.. you might be able to find some other player in game that had the item you wanted and that you could purchase. Might. Nobody complained about it.. they just did it.. because they understood it was the price to acquire.

In the modern era.... many people are intolerant of anything that represents any barrier to them dressing their characters the way they want to.

The approach of this game is superior overall to appearance tabs in other games. Why? because you still must pay the freight (either in labor or currency in game) for constant upgraded of equipment for stats anyway. In addition, in MMOs where there are appearance tabs.. in most cases the really desirable "looks" are expensive and scarce in the player economy. Not in this game though.. they are actually very common, they just operate on a bit different model. In case you have not noticed.. the end game gear progression is constantly moving forward....and that represents ther eal burden, just like every other game. An appearance tab and the complaints about it are simply a distraction to the real gear burden to players (which they rarely complain about).... constant stat upgrades.

Personally, I really like this particular MMOs approach. I can literally keep any piece of gear for as long as I want to wear it on a character. There is no artificial need to discard it because it's stats are now obsolete and non-competitive. I have complete freedom to mix, match, and modify to my hearts content. Is there a price for that freedom? Yes indeed. Like most everything else in MMOs.. there is indeed a price for that freedom (extraction fees)... and I'm fine with that. The entire player economy is in fact tuned with that feature in mind... so for average or better players.. it really should not be an economic burden. Hell, the progression of wealth in this game is such that it should really not even be an issue for newer players either.

IF credits in this game were hard to come by.. I would be supportive of the complaints here. But frankly... credits in this game flow much more freely then other MMOs where there are appearance tabs.