Sure, it does not help level 55s to level up their alts with 0 cost at all.

No. it really does not. It's really not worth the time and effort for a 55 to gather comms to equip low level alts.... WHEN the alts can do it easily as they go along in the new system.

See... before they made comms more effective for leveling characters with the 2.0 release... crafters could depend on cap level players paying scalper prices to get mods for alts. Yep.. you had a nifty little secondary market going there. You had a niche. But it was unfair to any new players. So.. Bioware made the comms process more effective for leveling characters (the way it was designed to be). Your niche went away... find a new one.

Crafter markets are NOT static markets. If you want to be a profitable crafter in MMOs, you need to adapt to the changing economies in MMOs. This is by no means unique to this MMO.. except that this MMO makes crafting more profitable for crafters when they find appropriate niches in the market.

The comms changes in 2.0 were not done to shaft crafters.. they were done to benefit a broader base of leveling characters in a young MMO that still has lots of new players coming in. Crafters have plenty of income options if they know their market and adjust accordingly to fill profitable demand rather then complaining that demand in a free market is changing.

Crafters have plenty of income options if they know their market and adjust accordingly to fill profitable demand rather then complaining that demand in a free market is changing.

Lol, this is not a free market at all. This is a highly controlled market where government competes with individuals. This market is not demand driven but it is supply driven. Plus, government can print both credits and comms yet they are not officially convertible to each other. Both can buy the same goods but at different rates at different times. Similar to Ex Russia actually more than Western world.

So several weeks on now, and my fears of the new comms system effectively killing the crafter-base and GTN system seem largely founded. While currently it is still possible to craft some high-value items in demand for players leveling characters from 50-55, from 10-50 the system is largely broken and pointless now. Even in the niche markets for big-ticket rare craftables, prices have dropped significantly since the launch of 2.0 due to both an influx of new crafting sources and an effective saturation of the player-base for those items. Prices for high-end rare craftables have even dropped so low in the last week or so that they're essentially priced at where the less rare and lower-end items were pre-2.0.

There is great success in the POINT of the changes to the system for 2.0, of course, as leveling my own character from 50-55 and gearing from grade 22 mods to grade 28 advanced mods has had almost no cost impact on me as a player. I've been given so much free gear and upgrade items under the new comms system that I rarely have to purchase anything on the GTN anymore to upgrade, and it's rarely ever worth the trouble to craft my own artifice items due to the fact that the same items are being sold on the GTN for less than what it would cost me to gather the mats and make it myself. It's also been great, as a player, for gearing my Companions. I was effectively able to upgrade a single companion to green grade 28s for under 100,000 a set from the GTN, including the cost to replace the occasional low-quality gear item with purples or oranges.

Unfortunately, while I feel, as a player, that this is a great thing (hey, something for nothing is always awesome for me personally), I also feel that, for a community member in an MMO, this is an absolutely horrible thing. It's never a good idea in any community-based game to give your community everything for free, and essentially this is what the new comms system has done. Players no longer, effectively, have to work for their rewards, nor do they have to participate in community-based systems to do so either. As a player, now, I can largely choose NOT to participate in those activities that differentiate a community-based game from a solo endeavor, which is contradictory to the point of playing an MMO. Moreover, it essentially negates entire gameplay concepts within the system of the game, locking out any potential reward for participating in these activities as-intended.

Sometimes, as in real life, it's better for everyone if they NOT get everything they want.... and this is one of those occasions.

While I am concerned for a select few of the crafters, the ones that price their items fairly, but the ones that are greedy and severely overprice everything they make, I say let them get screwed over for once.

 

I like how they have done the commendations, though I would like the binding to be Bind on Legacy, the items you get via commendations to be bind on legacy, no economy issues.

This is how I feel.... way too much stuff made is way overpriced, especially for leveling where you may only need it for one planet. The new system is awesome.

So several weeks on now, and my fears of the new comms system effectively killing the crafter-base and GTN system seem largely founded. While currently it is still possible to craft some high-value items in demand for players leveling characters from 50-55, from 10-50 the system is largely broken and pointless now. Even in the niche markets for big-ticket rare craftables, prices have dropped significantly since the launch of 2.0 due to both an influx of new crafting sources and an effective saturation of the player-base for those items. Prices for high-end rare craftables have even dropped so low in the last week or so that they're essentially priced at where the less rare and lower-end items were pre-2.0.

 

There is great success in the POINT of the changes to the system for 2.0, of course, as leveling my own character from 50-55 and gearing from grade 22 mods to grade 28 advanced mods has had almost no cost impact on me as a player. I've been given so much free gear and upgrade items under the new comms system that I rarely have to purchase anything on the GTN anymore to upgrade, and it's rarely ever worth the trouble to craft my own artifice items due to the fact that the same items are being sold on the GTN for less than what it would cost me to gather the mats and make it myself. It's also been great, as a player, for gearing my Companions. I was effectively able to upgrade a single companion to green grade 28s for under 100,000 a set from the GTN, including the cost to replace the occasional low-quality gear item with purples or oranges.

 

Unfortunately, while I feel, as a player, that this is a great thing (hey, something for nothing is always awesome for me personally), I also feel that, for a community member in an MMO, this is an absolutely horrible thing. It's never a good idea in any community-based game to give your community everything for free, and essentially this is what the new comms system has done. Players no longer, effectively, have to work for their rewards, nor do they have to participate in community-based systems to do so either. As a player, now, I can largely choose NOT to participate in those activities that differentiate a community-based game from a solo endeavor, which is contradictory to the point of playing an MMO. Moreover, it essentially negates entire gameplay concepts within the system of the game, locking out any potential reward for participating in these activities as-intended.

 

Sometimes, as in real life, it's better for everyone if they NOT get everything they want.... and this is one of those occasions.

It was never intended that crafters price gouge the leveling segment of the game. You guys killed yourselves IMO, as I expressed eariler.

You want to make good credits in crafting... pick a niche at the higher levels of the game. Plenty of people are doing it. That is where the credits are and always have been. It was a fluke that you could scalp the low end mods market for as long as you did. It's over... move on. The economy is fine overall... it's just some crafters cannot or will not adapt to a changing market. The low level economy is actually healthier now that all the price gougers are out of it. Healthier for the consumers.

It was never intended that crafters price gouge the leveling segment of the game. You guys killed yourselves IMO, as I expressed eariler.

 

You want to make good credits in crafting... pick a niche at the higher levels of the game. Plenty of people are doing it. That is where the credits are and always have been. It was a fluke that you could scalp the low end mods market for as long as you did. It's over... move on. The economy is fine overall... it's just some crafters cannot or will not adapt to a changing market. The low level economy is actually healthier now that all the price gougers are out of it. Healthier for the consumers.

I totally agree with you on this....

So traditionally, the commendations for a particular planet were only really useful to you if you were properly leveled for the planet. If you were overleveled, the comms were no good to you, leading a lot of people to horde them (bad), or dump them for gear to sell to other players (good). I think the new system of planetary comms is meant to make comms more generally useful to the player that earned them in that regard. If you're underleveled, you always need that better gear, but if you're overleveled, lacking gear at your level never hurts you because you're already more powerful than the challenges you're going to be facing.

If you're overlevelled then you are probably not enjoying the game, the fun is beating the enemies who nearly kill you, without that challenge you are merely pushing buttons.

However, much of the GTN is dedicated to providing a player-to-player system to obtain the upgrades a player needs, precisely when he needs them - and thus an economy is formed. If you wish to level your character's gear beyond what your current comms can support, you use your credits on the GTN to get the gear you need. This provides a service to the player, but also a means of income for crafters and other players to earn money creating and selling goods for others.

There are never enough comms to equip yourself and your companions, so the GTN might take a slight hit, but not a major one.

My fear is that the new system ruins this economy by allowing players to trade comms earned at low levels to be used for goods at high levels, thus eliminating the need to participate in missions (for credits and materials) and the larger economy to maintain gear leveling. Worse, I fear that if there is no system in place (and I haven't yet heard of any) to prevent players from earning comms for grey-leveled missions, it will allow players to go replay missions on previous planets and earn comms they can use on higher level ones - which can be, certainly, game-breaking.

As I previously mentioned, there are never enough comms for buying equipment for yourself and your companions, so I doubt it can be game breaking. In fact I just means that you don't have odd comms hanging in their inventory, also you get better mods and equipment from crafting, which has never broken the game.

Obviously, a mission on Coruscant does not have the same difficulty, nor does it offer the same experience or monetary/gear reward, as one on Corellia... but under the new planetary comms system, a comm earned in either has the same value, and the items that can be purchases with said comms are of the same price. But clearly a level 10 gear mod does not have the same value as a level 50 one, and yet the new comms system makes it so, and gives players equal access to either... this, essentially defeats the purpose of having a GTN for gear leveling and for crafting in general.

The fact you have to be a certain level to equip an item reduces the disproportionality, and if you hoard comm's then you are probably going to be struggling most of the way. I think you are overemphasising the risk.

Why such a system was implemented, but prices not adjusted in the vendors, is beyond my understanding. For such a system of universal currency to work, as in any other scenario, items of higher value have to cost more. A Corellian mod should cost significantly more comms than a Coruscant one... but it did not appear that this was so when I checked. Bioware must either return an individual planet comms system, or BETTER, level the prices with the value of the mods. It's the only way to make the system fair.

No, The individual Comm's system left players with odd comm's cluttering the Currencies page of the inventory, and you couldn't get rid of them. This is better.

Otherwise, players MUST be prevented from earning comms from lower level missions, using mods earned from lower level missions on higher level gear, or being able to horde more comms than it takes to buy the highest level gear at any planetary vendor... thus ensuring comms can only be used for gear appropriate to the planet in which they're earned, or for the next upcoming planet (for over-leveled players) - no highe - and giving players incentived to use their comms when they earn them.

If you are overlevelled then you are not going to be enjoying the mission, if you are not having fun then you are punishing yourself, no other action is needed. And people have incentive to use comm's, it called the game, if you hoard your comm's you are going to be underequiped, and struggling against various bosses.

An alternative would be a system like I was told existed in the beta, where lower-level planet comms could be traded for higher level ones at a reduced value... much like the warzone-to-planetary comm trade works. This system would have been greatly preferrable to the system that was implemented for planetary comms.

This would work too, but I'm sure they got rid of it for a reason.

I totally agree with you on this....

Only problem with this theory is that crafting was never very profitable to begin with. It has always been more of a credit sink than a license to print money. Best "profit" item any of my crafters can make is a color crystal that sold for roughly 100k a few months ago. It's now common for the 2 day timer to run out when it's listed for 65k. The materials to make that 65k crystal cost roughly 60k off the GTN. Acquiring the mats via missions could cost much more, depending on your luck at getting the required purple mats.

The real credit generator in the game is the CM now.

Not counting the timer for placing CM items on the GTN, you could quickly and easily convert a $15 armor set into roughly 1,000,000 credits. Accumulating 1,000,000 credits via crafting would take a very long time.

Crafting the very expensive items on the GTN is like real life business... you have to be extremely rich to even be able to make them in the first place. Since it is now a lot harder to get extremely rich via crafting, there will be less crafters down the road and the prices of craftable-only items will eventually go way up.

It was never intended that crafters price gouge the leveling segment of the game. You guys killed yourselves IMO, as I expressed eariler.

 

You want to make good credits in crafting... pick a niche at the higher levels of the game. Plenty of people are doing it. That is where the credits are and always have been. It was a fluke that you could scalp the low end mods market for as long as you did. It's over... move on. The economy is fine overall... it's just some crafters cannot or will not adapt to a changing market. The low level economy is actually healthier now that all the price gougers are out of it. Healthier for the consumers.

I honestly have no idea who you're talking about when you talk about "you guys" and "gouging" the "leveling" segment of the game. No, granted, I've only been playing a few months, but my experience in that time, up to 2.0, is that, largely, prices for modifications from levels 10-50 were generally too low... except for, perhaps, the advanced purples in the key mod categories... armoring, hilts, barrels, etc... where there were multiple benefits to a mod piece other than the inherit stats of that piece (armoring adds armor level as well, and hilts/barrels also add weapon damage). Sometimes, but not often, these items were priced out of step with their rarity and availability, simply because they were items that people needed but could not get otherwise in vendors.

Barring those few exceptions, prices for basic mods have always been (again from my few months experience prior to the 2.0 update) priced at the low side of reasonable, with most blue mods and even some purples being placed at a price-point that could be considered barely profitable and only worth bothering with if you were serious about earning a living crafting. This is due, in large part, from competition with non-crafters who have always been able to flood the market with items that they received through no effort of their own, and thus place no value on the item but receive nearly 100% profit in the sale. Crafters have always had a much higher entry point to the sale due to the cost of securing mats, and the time and expense related to that and to developing the schematics necessary to build items to sell.

Any person who says that prices on the GTN are generally HIGH must be HIGH themselves, because objectively it simply isn't true. Taking a serious view of the matter, you can establish a true hard baseline for prices based on the only inflexible economic standards in the game, and from there build expectant prices and values for goods to be sold in the aftermarket. Contrary to the belief of some, there IS a fixed minimum value for items... that established by two basic fixed standard systems in the game that nearly every player deals with.

The mission/gathering skill costs/reward system establishes a fixed margin for the minimum materials cost for every crafted item in the game. From this, we can extrapolate numerous tangible and calculated costs for each item - to include minumum mat build cost, average cost to acquire schematic, average cost to upgrade schematic, per item cost increase for schematic upgrade investment distribution, minumum inherit value added for schematic upgrade stat increases, minimum inherit cost added for schematic upgrade investment, perceived value added for statistical item upgrade rarity... and so on. The reality is, real life concepts apply here, and all factors are quantifiable and qualifiable...

Each crafted item has an inherit value.

Beyond that, a baseline pricing structure is established for tiered item via the vendor systems. Though most people won't bother with it, you can buy appropriately leveled green items at vendors on every planet. Check out the prices for their mods. Taking this cost as a baseline, noone can say with any seriousness that prices for tiered items on the GTN are inflated. Again, it can be specifically shown that they are not for the greatest majority of crafted items. Most such items sell at or down to well below the planetary vendor cost. As such, GTN prices for most items read like more of a garage sale or flea market than a true manufactured goods store, despite, in most cases, the superior availability of higher quality items through crafters on the GTN for common to semi-rare goods.

The mentality is one of walking into a mall, going to a clothing store, and telling the clerk that his prices are too high because you saw a shirt at a thrift store once that was the same color as the one you want in his store, but obviously at the thrift store price. Of course, in any real-world situation, you'd be laughed out of the store, and it's likely you'd never have bothered in the first place because someone's second-hand cast-offs simply don't have the value or quality of the newly made item. In the game, however, there is no shortage second-hand cast-offs with no degraded "quality" being flooded onto the exact same market as the newly manufactured goods. The freely received and second-hand mod is the same as the work-produced crafted item, but with none of the cost to the seller that the crafted item has.

No, sorry... anyone who thinks prices on the GTN are high on average are morons. Should the GTN ever be shut down, and you be forced to buy items from NPC vendors instead, you'll certainly be singing a different tune - longing for the day when you could buy vast quantities of mods on the GTN for below production cost.

I'm sorry that one time there was an item you wanted that some jerk priced too high for you to pay... and hell, he MIGHT even have honestly overpriced the item, just because he knew he could, even though it wasn't right to do so or the item simply wasn't worth that much. Those people do exist. But to apply that view to the majority, and to act on that perception when it clearly isn't reality... that's ridiculous.

The effect is one of driving DOWN the very real and tangible value of an item due to perception and apathy, rather than any factual or economic reason for doing so. The item isn't "overpriced" simply because you don't want to have to pay that much for it. A good real-world example is electronics and cars... when people hear that the next video game console is goint to cost X amount of money, they freak out - they say it's too much and they don't want to pay it... that the company making the console is greedy and gouging its customers just because they can - and all that despite the fact that the console is being sold for less than the cost of the components inside of it, and the "greedy" company LOSING money on every single one of them they sell. Like I said... just because you don't want to pay that much, doesn't mean that it's not worth that much... in the real world, though, there isn't someone else coming along who got 6 free Xboxes just for showing up at a store once that he's willing to sell you for $100 less each than Microsoft is.

...

 

There are never enough comms to equip yourself and your companions, so the GTN might take a slight hit, but not a major one.

 

As I previously mentioned, there are never enough comms for buying equipment for yourself and your companions, so I doubt it can be game breaking. In fact I just means that you don't have odd comms hanging in their inventory, also you get better mods and equipment from crafting, which has never broken the game.

...

IMO, not true at all. It's been my experience that keeping your mods for two "mod levels" is more than enough to keep you geared enough for all PvE levelling content. That's 4 character levels. Accumulating enough comms to keep your character thusly outfitted is simple, and buying them is a 5 minute detour to the fleet. You may not be able to keep you and your companion up to date, but keeping your companion equipped in green quest reward gear is also more than enough to handle all levelling content.

Otherwise, players MUST be prevented from earning comms from lower level missions, using mods earned from lower level missions on higher level gear...

If such a thing were implimented, I'd cancel my subscription. This would be a game breaker for me. The game is designed to REQUIRE me to keep my gear up to date or bad things happen when I try to fight. The game is also designed such that if I do all of the quests, I'll out-level the content. The game's GTN also charges a crazy amount of credits for mods. If you put that all together, what you end up with is that someone does all the quests, outlevels the content, can't get Planetary Comms, goes broke trying to keep gear updated with the GTN, and ends up quitting because I can't play the game as intended any more.

I won't say I don't buy mods on the GTN now, I do. But AFTER I spend my Comms. If I had to spend credits for all of my Mods, I simply wouldn't have enough credits.

If such a thing were implimented, I'd cancel my subscription. This would be a game breaker for me. The game is designed to REQUIRE me to keep my gear up to date or bad things happen when I try to fight. The game is also designed such that if I do all of the quests, I'll out-level the content. The game's GTN also charges a crazy amount of credits for mods. If you put that all together, what you end up with is that someone does all the quests, outlevels the content, can't get Planetary Comms, goes broke trying to keep gear updated with the GTN, and ends up quitting because I can't play the game as intended any more.

 

I won't say I don't buy mods on the GTN now, I do. But AFTER I spend my Comms. If I had to spend credits for all of my Mods, I simply wouldn't have enough credits.

It's kind of a backwards statement you're making. If you've managed to find yourself overleveled for the planet you're on... as you obviously have, and has been my experience through nearly all of my playthrough... then clearly you don't even need the comms you are earning to complete the content you're being exposed to. Thus, you have a surplus of items you have access to, not a lack of said items.

You've already completed all the content/story/leveling that the comms were designed to get you through, and in fact moreso than intended because you've been thorough. You need neither the comms, nor the items you'd be getting from those comms. Why should you continue to gain rewards for content that already no longer presents a challenge to your character? The comms system is unique in this regard, in that it's the only system that continues to reward you even once you are no longer appropriately leveled for the content. There is a point at which you will stop receiving experience from doing missions and credit rewards as well, but you will never stop receiving comms.

Even as a level 55, I can return to Coruscant to run a Heroic, or do a runthrough of Esseles, and receive the same commendation rewards for those missions as I would have if I were level 11. Clearly, any rewards received from those missions would be of no use to me at my level, and certainly under the old system the best I could hope for would be to dump any comm rewards onto the GTN for some paltry credit reward that wouldn't have been worth the time I put into the mission. In the new system, I can take that comm earned in a level 11 mission, and trade it for a level 55 mod. Worse, because I'm so grossly overleveled for the content, I can breeze through it without breaking a sweat. No challenge at all. That's not right. It's an abuse of a system that is designed only to make sure that you can meet the challenges of the planet you're on... NOT give you the best possible gear for your level.

It's a funny arguement to make, because your endgame content has always been about plowing through content designed specifically to challenge players of your level... there was not way to overlevel the content and receive an easy reward... and the rewards you DID receive were small and slow to come, so that you'd have to continue the grind if you ever hoped to reach the next tier of gear. From 10-50, leveling your gear has always been easy, because you were always heavily rewarded, and were given an option to prepare yourself for the challenges ahead even if your rewards no longer suited you by participating in an economy system with other players in the same situation.

Now, however, endgame content has become more like 10-50 content, with rewards being thrown at you left and right from 50-55, such that once you hit the true 55 endgame you're already well prepared for the content you'll see there. And any pretense of challenge or leveling in the 10-50 region has been completely removed in 2.0... instead offering the player every opportunity to obtain free gear on demand. Getting gear was never a problem before 2.0. There was no shortage of funds and opportunity thrown at you if you were willing to participate in even a fraction of the content available to you. What we have now is a system designed to reward the player who doesn't want to participate, but wants the benefits anyway.

I honestly have no idea who you're talking about when you talk about "you guys" and "gouging" the "leveling" segment of the game. No, granted, I've only been playing a few months, but my experience in that time, up to 2.0, is that, largely, prices for modifications from levels 10-50 were generally too low... except for, perhaps, the advanced purples in the key mod categories... armoring, hilts, barrels, etc... where there were multiple benefits to a mod piece other than the inherit stats of that piece (armoring adds armor level as well, and hilts/barrels also add weapon damage). Sometimes, but not often, these items were priced out of step with their rarity and availability, simply because they were items that people needed but could not get otherwise in vendors.

 

......snip....

 

Any person who says that prices on the GTN are generally HIGH must be HIGH themselves, because objectively it simply isn't true. Taking a serious view of the matter, you can establish a true hard baseline for prices based on the only inflexible economic standards in the game, and from there build expectant prices and values for goods to be sold in the aftermarket. Contrary to the belief of some, there IS a fixed minimum value for items... that established by two basic fixed standard systems in the game that nearly every player deals with.

 

....snip...

 

Since you addressed a very long response to me.. I'll respond.

My context: one of my minigames in this MMO is buying/selling the GTN earning a profit from price spreads. As such, I am extremely familiar with the stable market prices of a wide range of items in the GTN. I buy items that are listed at default prices (it still amazes me at the number of people that do this) and remarket them at stable market price (I do not price gouge, as I do not believe in it, and the market most often won't let me anyway). There are natural stable prices ranges for almost all items in the game.. though some are greatly distorted through market demand sometimes... which is part of the nature of a healthy supply/demand economy.

The dynamic in the GTN surrounding equipment mods is that there is always some float of supply for various mods Green/Blue/Purple. Beginning in the summer of 2012, some crafters began to exploit the demand by learning and crafting blues and purples in the sub-50 segment of the market. They did not do this because it was fun, or to be generous to the player base, they saw an opportunity to make large profit margins from raw materials and their valuable RE'ed ability to make lower level mods. The reason this worked is there were a lot of credit rich 50's rolling alts and willing to throw money at the GTN to get mods for their alts equipment. Moddable equipment also flooded the market as well from game patches.. so pure demand for mods also ramped up beginning last summer. This was good for enterprising crafters, and good for credit rich 50's but it froze new players out of the mods to a large degree.. even before the Fall price surges.

Now, prior to the crafters taking an opportunity to advantage off of demand in the market... most blue mods in the market were simply people who were cashing in otherwise worthless planet coms for mods to resell on the market. So prior to the crafter surge..blue mods were pretty reasonably prices (typically 2x of free market price on crafted green mods, as people just wanted to quickly convert some useless planetary coms into some credits). But 50s started rolling a lot of alts by late summer and had a lot of money to throw around and crafters saw it and went after it. Crafters fed a demand.. which I am perfectly fine with... and blue mods level 30 and below were plentiful and inexpensive. But as Fall rolled around... that changed. More crafters began to sell purple mods along with blue and over a period of a few months (this was after all the server merges were completed and servers pops were busy and stable) the prices for blue and purple mods began to get marked up to extremes, except where there was a lot of competition from world drops. Rare and Artifact mod prices, particularly armor, hilts, barrels, and mods saw price increases in the level 13 to level 35 range of 5 to 10 times what they were before. They sold slower too, but they sold for high profits.. so the crafter base fed the market.

Now... in a supply and demand economy... prices shift based on the balance of supply and demand... but crafters working the rare and artifact market were small compared to demand.. so they were free to price gouge and did so. I am very familiar with pricing trends in mods because I too level alts and I'll buy them from the GTN if they are fairly priced.. and if not.. I'll makes my own greens for leveling alts. So believe me when I say I followed the mod market fairly closely. In the last month or two leading up to 2.0, even the prices for green mods on the GTN were getting absurd.... as people were priced out of the blue and purple market and still needed mods (and many could not make them on their own, which is their own fault IMO).

I'm not faulting crafters for taking advantage per se of a demand imbalance to supply. That is their right, and consumers in the end will only pay what they will pay. But I will not be sympathetic to crafters who did and then complain that 2.0 put the power to obtain mods back in the hands of the consumer. If they thought it would last forever.... bad planning on their part. Time for them to find another niche in the market.. NOT complain that the consumers were given a break by world mechanics of supply.

Bottom line.... crafters distorted and burned the sub-50 mod market (because they could in a supply/demand imbalance) and the only thing that allowed them to continue to do so was a lack of world supply (drops, comms mods, etc.). 2.0 changed the supply model for mods.. and hence prices consumers were willing to play are actually returning to prices from early summer of last year. Overalll for the economy... that is a good thing as it feeds the consumers demand at prices consumers like.

People who says mods were /are expensive in GTN should check the green items planet vendors are selling. The problem with this market is the lack of convertibility of the damned comms. How much credits does a planet comm worths? If this question has different answers for different items, then there is a problem with the damned economy ala Soviet Russia

Planet comms are not mean to be a credit cow for you. They never were.

And as for local planetary mods vendors...which sell only green mods..... they have always been over-priced vs the player market in the GTN. That is deliberate by the developers as they do not want to undercut the low end green mods market in the player economy. But early this year... even that market in the GTN was being gouged and people were being forced to buy from the local mods vendors on the planets more and more.

knat - a genus of African evergreen shrubs characterized by thick leaves and white flowers

gnat - any of various small usually biting dipteran flies

Just FYI.

Planet comms are not mean to be a credit cow for you. They never were.

 

And as for local planetary mods vendors...which sell only green mods..... they have always been over-priced vs the player market in the GTN. That is deliberate by the developers as they do not want to undercut the low end green mods market in the player economy.

Misunderstanding or ignorance, I don't know. I am not saying make them cash cows at all. Overpriced compared to what? What about implants or crystals? Why are not they sold in comm vendors? Augments? Aren't they overpriced? Why can not I buy augments or kits with comms?

Misunderstanding or ignorance, I don't know. I am not saying make them cash cows at all. Overpriced compared to what? What about implants or crystals? Why are not they sold in comm vendors? Augments? Aren't they overpriced? Why can not I buy augments or kits with comms?

I was responding to your question of how many credits is a planetary com worth.

I should have known better then to even try when I read the "damned economy ala Soviet Russia"

I was responding to your question of how many credits is a planetary com worth.

 

I should have known better then to even try when I read the "damned economy ala Soviet Russia"

But it is all part of the same thing my friend. when there is no free convertibility available you have to be careful what you are supplying with that currency. Iet's say 1 barrel = 1 implant at same level in GTN before. when you gave a barrel for 7 comms and you can not get an implant for 7 comms as well ,it is inevitable that the market will be distorted. if you are saying 1 barrel shouldn't be equal to 1 implant, that is what I am asking. What is the criteria for this decision?

Only problem with this theory is that crafting was never very profitable to begin with. It has always been more of a credit sink than a license to print money. Best "profit" item any of my crafters can make is a color crystal that sold for roughly 100k a few months ago. It's now common for the 2 day timer to run out when it's listed for 65k. The materials to make that 65k crystal cost roughly 60k off the GTN. Acquiring the mats via missions could cost much more, depending on your luck at getting the required purple mats.

 

The real credit generator in the game is the CM now.

 

Not counting the timer for placing CM items on the GTN, you could quickly and easily convert a $15 armor set into roughly 1,000,000 credits. Accumulating 1,000,000 credits via crafting would take a very long time.

 

Crafting the very expensive items on the GTN is like real life business... you have to be extremely rich to even be able to make them in the first place. Since it is now a lot harder to get extremely rich via crafting, there will be less crafters down the road and the prices of craftable-only items will eventually go way up.

Why I never got into crafting... I will not disagree with you, and my wife is a huge crafter so she is also worried. However, the costs to buy lower level stuff was way too expensive, even if the crafters were not making much profit. I am not a expert, I am not going to do all the math to determine their profits. What I do know, is the game feels better to me now. I feel I earned my commendations and I should be able to use them in a way that feels more rewarding.

My experience has been, by the time you finished a planet, you had all these comms to spend but on mods that were already too low lever for the next planet, and became frustrating. Now, we can go onto the next planet and buy the level appropriate gear/mods, and IMO, much more beneficial to the community as a whole.

Also, it was possible, when you are leveling multiple toons, which my wife and I do, we would use the coms to buy the mods needed for another toon, for their proper level, still avoiding as much as possible buying them from the GTN. In reality, nothing has changed, its just more convenient now for the player to play and level up.

I do not know what the percentage of crafters are compared to non crafters, but I would venture to say, non crafters are in much greater numbers, thus the benefit is now for the many, not the few.

Imagine how the people feel that make crystals for leveling when +41 crystals showed up on the CM and in Cartel Packs. Talk about killing a profession.... much worse and I will never support selling of anything that can be a stat benefit in the CM (crystals and armor with mods in them).

Do I use the crystals? Yes, but if they were removed, I would not loose sleep over it.. Just using any advantage a person can, even if I do not support that advantage. However, using earned comms to make my toons better for the planet they go into, not leaving, is something that should have been in place from the beginning.

Well, to be fair, you find a lot of blue items, or at this stage of the game, I have mods, mostly purple for almost every single level available, bound to legacy now. Yep, I spend a lot of money moving the mods around, but whatever. I have a max level cybertech, I think I was first to max on my server back at launch and made a lot of money selling the level 50 purple space upgrades, but I only ever plan on crafting for myself.

I make purple grenades and purple med packs/stims. That's it, it's is absolutely not worth making purple mods whilst leveling or going and buying them on the GTN. You level so quickly in this game through questing, space combat, or pvp (where now, I swapped my level 28 +41 expertise purple mod light sabre for a level 13 blue I had in storage and did more damage) that it's not worth spending a lot of money on purples, or probably even the level appropriate mods. It's only necessary to fully kit you and your companion if neither of you are heals, and you want to do heroic content solo.

I make greens until I get the blue I want, and then the only odd blue that I can't get from planetary coms. What's the cost for the lower level mods? 2 and 7? I only bother with augment kits on my pvp toons.

So, to keep a companion and yourself fully modded, let's say every second mod grouping, you are looking at 168 comms per cycle. That's a lot; that's more than you make on one planet. So you still need the GTN to have appropriate level blues for you and a companion. If you skimp on your companion gear it's half that obviously. Meanwhile, doing that you still need to buy ears and implants, and you will gtn your blues. I guess I don't see the big deal, it's not that huge of a change from before.

That would be a gnat not a knat.

beat me to it

It's kind of a backwards statement you're making. If you've managed to find yourself overleveled for the planet you're on... as you obviously have, and has been my experience through nearly all of my playthrough... then clearly you don't even need the comms you are earning to complete the content you're being exposed to. Thus, you have a surplus of items you have access to, not a lack of said items.

I think what you are not understanding is that some people don't want to see how hard the game can be. I prefer things to be easy, concentrating instead on the story and the exploration. Also, my level doesn't directly determine how easy the game is, my equipment does. Why should I be forced to swear in frustration and pull my hair out to play the game in a way I don't enjoy? What difference does my play style make to you?

Also, I don't do end-game content. Once I get to that point, I reroll. What you are proposing is that somehow, my play style and how I enjoy playing affects you. It does not. Get over yourself.

Gladly, a crafter can generally make more varieties of mods within a level range, than what is available from the comms vendor. When you see a mod with X endurance and Y cunnning for lvl Z at the comms vendor, you can bet that crafters can make a variation of the same quality level, but with slightly less endurance but more cunning.

The mods from the comms vendors are all of the high endurance variety. Especially players who outlevel most of the content they do could care less about the endurance, but would rather improve their damage output.

Only a tank might want the comms vendor variation. And tanks rather kill stuff faster too while they're leveling. So I'm pretty sure there's still a market for crafted mods. You just don't want to crraft the exact same model as the ones those vendors sell..