why is the SWTOR community so against "pay to win"

GTN is massively overpriced, a single purple 55 mod is 4.5 mil.

What you talking about is convience, totally different to P2W. I'll say this, maybe they could add more substantial perks so for that I could see your point. However, I must reterate that P2W is not natrual for an MMO. Income is generated by currency yes but also with subscriptions transfers etc.

The pay to win aspect of many MMO's is not exclusive to their profits. It is certainly a factor, but not the primary source of income.

You're talking about 180-rated gear. The second best gear currently available. Gear that is obtained by playing endgame PvE operations.

And just what do you think would happen to the number of people that run ops, if that gear were sold directly in the Cartel Market? In my experience, the quantity would drastically reduce.

Your first post was Dec 2013, so I'm guessing you weren't around for patch 1.5. Around that time, three things happened:

1. The best gear (150-rating) was craftable.
2. The "learn other players schematics" trick was made public here in the forums.
3. The materials required (Molecular Stabilizers) were gotten from breaking down PvP gear.

Suddenly, there was an explosion of "Best in Slot" gear on the GTN for super cheap. And ops groups were suddenly harder to form. Why worry about finding a good group when a few dailies would get you top level gear? Heck, at that time everyone got a free set of Tionese shells for the set bonus, too.

The reduced number of groups forming persisted until 2.0 dropped, bringing a new tier, and making the materials difficult to obtain. It's been SIGNIFICANTLY easier to find groups from that point forward.

Since you're complaining about high-level raid gear being too expensive, it sounds like you can't run ops yourself. Perhaps you don't like people, and hate running with groups. Perhaps you're a poor player and couldn't hack the operation anyway. Perhaps you're on a dead server with no other players.

But the fact of the matter is, selling 180-gear directly on the CM would have a deleterious effect for those of us that LIKE ops. For better or for worse, the gear "carrot-on-a-stick" drives enough players that if you removed it, fewer groups would form.

If you want 180 gear, than you either need to become a better player, or you need to find better friends, or you need to get better at making credits to afford those millions on the GTN.

i've tried doing an op back before the SM groupfinder thing and never managed to find a group. even so most groups did HM and NiM so it was pretty hard.

i am upset with the prices for GTN, but i certainly understand why they are like that: hard to get craft mats, hard to get up cybertech to qualify to make it in the first place, and hard to find the best stuff "in the wild".

I've never heard anyone - and I mean anyone - ever say that it's hard to get cybertech to 450 before.
You must be doing something wrong, because I honestly cannot see how sending your companion to craft some green gear with the mats you've already gathered or have bought from the GTN is in any way "hard".

But the fact of the matter is, selling 180-gear directly on the CM would have a deleterious effect for those of us that LIKE ops.

If you like Ops, then why would you stop doing Ops regardless of where the rewards can be obtained?

For better or for worse, the gear "carrot-on-a-stick" drives enough players that if you removed it, fewer groups would form.

But the fact of the matter is, selling 180-gear directly on the CM would have a deleterious effect for those of us that LIKE ops. For better or for worse, the gear "carrot-on-a-stick" drives enough players that if you removed it, fewer groups would form.