SWTOR Cartel Pack Changes with GEMINI Pack

Dulfy 135 Comments Jun 29, 2016

Bioware has posted some clarification regarding the cartel pack changes with the newest GEMINI pack.

Cartel Pack Changes with the GEMINI Pack | 06.29.2016, 01:47 PM

Hey folks,
Yesterday, we made a few changes to how Cartel Packs work with the release of the GEMINI pack. I want to share the changes that were made to the pack.

Grand Chance Cubes/Bronze Items
The primary feedback we have heard from players over the past few months is that you would prefer to receive Bronze items rather than Chance Cubes. For that reason, one of the first things you will notice is that we have re-introduced Bronze items back into the Cartel Pack. Although you can get amazing items out of the cubes, we took your feedback and made the following changes:

We have introduced multiple Bronze items into the GEMINI Pack.
To allow for the addition above, the drop rate of Grand Chance Cubes has been greatly reduced.

Pack Pricing Changes

You will notice that with the GEMINI Pack, the price has moved back to 300 Cartel Coins. As with any price change we want you to understand why it changed. The short explanation is that we have item slots to the packs, packs contained fewer slots with the launch of KotFE and therefore the pricing was lowered. Now that we have added items and value to the pack in the form of additional slots, we adjusted the price to match. Here is a more detailed breakdown.

Pre-KotFE Packs (2 pack items) – 300 Cartel Coins discounted to 250 Cartel Coins for launch

Pack item
Pack item
Additional items including companion gifts, etc.

KotFE Launch Packs (1 pack item) – 200 Cartel Coins

Pack Item
Companion Gift

GEMINI Pack (2 pack items) – 300 Cartel Coins discounted to 250 Cartel Coins for launch

Pack Item
Pack Item
Additional items including companion gifts, etc.

You may also notice that Hypercrates are more expensive than before. We added 6 more packs into each Hypercrate with KotFE and so the price is reflective of that change. The price per pack in a Hypercrate is actually lower than the pre-KotFE numbers. Thank you for your understanding and support! As always, the team will continue to look to your feedback regarding packs and their content.

-eric

Genbuthesaint

Oh, that actually makes sense.
Jo

Don’t care. I’m not giving them another cent no way no how. I don’t care if the packs give more now, they still cost more and after this light v dark bs they deserve nothing.
Guest

I actually said in another thread they would say the increase in price would be because of “added value”.
- Paulo Gomes
  
  And right you were mate…
Disqus this

“Added value” of bronze items? No wonder I don’t buy those things.
qwerty

Anyone have pictures of the new companion customizations?
Sarigar

As much as I love to support Bioware, all this make-believe math for increasing the price of imaginary items is pure bullshit.
- Bright Shattered Ice
  
  Not really. The Grand Chance Cubes were actually a fantastic idea to put older items back into circulation. It stabilized market prices on some highly sought after older items and reduced the amount of useless drops from the crates – the bronze items, which crater in price within 2 days of the release of a new pack because they’re so plentiful. But since a ton of people (probably including you) complained loudly, they’ve reverted the packs to be identical to the “good old days.” Whereas before you had a pretty good likelihood of getting something interesting from the chance cubes, now everyone will be desperately trying to sell crap armor boxes on GTN in a race to the bottom. Congratulations, complainers – you’ve won.
  - Guest
    
    Not really, the chance cubes just kind of fixed an older stupid fuck up, getting rid of the old packs. They could have left them in the game at a higher price thus encouraging sale of the new ones but giving people the chance to get the old stuff. Who cares if there is a bunch of crap on the GTN? People can get stuff that you think is crap but they may like for cheap.
    - Jefe_Bergenstein
      
      Well now they can get the same 5 fucking bronze items over and over and over til they choke on them. I hope they enjoy getting 10 of the same chair emotes out of a crate. Totally better than a cube you could instantly sell for 3-400k and buy something better.
  - Sarigar
    
    That wasn’t what I was talking about, but thank you for contributing, and for the unwarranted, mealy-mouthed insult.
    - Bright Shattered Ice
      
      You’re welcome.
    - Bright Shattered Ice
      
      Actually, you are right. I withdraw the unwarrented insult.
      - Sarigar
        
        I appreciate that!
  - Ben Gimson
    
    “The Grand Chance Cubes were actually a fantastic idea”
    
    I stopped reading there. No, they were absolutely not. Hence the change.
    - Bright Shattered Ice
      
      “no, they were absolutely not.” Very persuasive.
michael fearless

“Although you can get amazing items out of the [chance] cubes…”

You can also win the lottery, but it’s probably not going to happen. Good riddance to those.
- Ark
  
  xD I got a Throne, a White crystal, a cartel skiff, and a few gold armour sets (the relaxed vestments set primarily that I didn’t have before), so. Idk. Heh. I guess I won the lottery a couple times
  - michael fearless
    
    I got a companion customization, another companion customization, and this one time? A companion customization!
    
    So yeah, it sounds like you do better with RNG’s than most. Or at least, better than me.
    - Bastardodcadena
      
      i got exp boost and companion gifts… pretty luck to me…yay…
      - Charlie Brown
        
        I got a rock…
- HadesClutch
  
  I always get a kick out of TOR’s dev team and their apologetic behavior. Just makes me wish I were in the same room as they threw ideas around and went over to slap the guy who came up with these shitty ideas – right across the face.
Vel’rathis

And by the way we have nerfed the rewards from weekly heroics so you can’t earn enough to buy this stuff from the gtn! The entire cartel market needs a rethink. Use the GW2 model. All armor sets/mounts/weapons available for direct purchase only, that way Designers are forced to come up with decent designs that are marketable, rather than re tinted assets in game.
Jonathan Doe

I don’t think this is accurate.
If i am remembering correctly explorer packs had more items and cost the same as the first alliance pack.
I don’t really keep track of pack prices, but i’m almost sure what Eric is stating is false, wasn’t there uproar about the new pack, precisely because it had less items and cost the same, when the first alliance pack launched?
- Kubrickian
  
  Well they got rid of the several varieties of xp boosts at that time which oddly enough they would have use in the L/D event.
  
  Separately, they still have 6 or so vendors on fleet that take cartel certs with reputation. I enjoyed being able to get a nice item if I wasn’t lucky in the pack from the vendors from the reputation and certs accumulated.
Wyrmidon

I won’t lie, I’m gonna miss the chance cubes. I made a real fortune on them. Now it’s back to ugly, worthless armors that won’t sell even for one credit.
- Darth Rassilon
  
  same here. gonna miss those credit making cubes
MEX

People on forums already complaining about the change and want higher chance of cubes back 🙂

People are like that.
Even if someone invents cold fusion reactor which will generate huge amounts of power almost for free, they will complain it is working too load 😀
- StrangeDais
  
  This made me lol.
- danielo
  
  well, is it loud?
Ry

Just lol at this.

“Lets get rid of the bronze tier because customers wanted better value item, and we are moving to two tier system: Gold and Silver only. Oh wait, now we have a super-rare class, which already existed, but now gives us an excuse to have an item of 0.000000001% drop rate. But don’t worry, this three tier system is ‘much’ better in quality than the old three tier system…. because we won’t acknowledge what we said before about moving away from three tier system.

But wait, now people aren’t really buying our crap anymore, and we aren’t making as much money because our player base are leaving the game. So we are going to increase the price of the packs, so we can make money. Oh by the way we are adding back the Bronze tier, because…. we can. Enjoy the new 4 tier system. We promised you we won’t have the three tier, system. Instead of having the two tier system like we told you about, we are instead moving in the opposite direction and going to have a 4 tier system. Feel free to unsub, because we have idiots who will buy our new and improved cartel packs for more money that will more than make up for it.”
John Smedley

These guys are just fucking terrible. They take a shit “event” and pair it with a massive nerf to heroics, a buggy chapter, a dog shit gambling pack and a massive price hike to said dog shit. Where is Cersi Lannister when we need her?
- angry europeistani from eussr
  
  I was about to say: what heroics nerf…read those recent patch notes…omfg.
  Why did they do this?! I would kinda understand nerfing for h2s done with groups but solo also? WTF.
  
  About event…100% agreed.
  - Kubrickian
    
    They nerfed heroics because they wanted to herd the most amount of people possible for L/D event. Notice they didn’t nerf bots exploiting the treasure hunting missions which in turn supplies the gold sellers.
    - angry europeistani from eussr
      
      Ya most likely and also to force ppl to buy cc-sell crap for ingame credits.
      Yes, chinese gold farmers can farm still untouched but legit methods for credits are discouraged by bw/ea.
      Oh and also they didn’t announce this nerf…players discovered it and Musco told that they accidentally omitted this…ya riiiight.
      
      Now I can’t find any motivation to do this crappy “event”.
      - me
        
        so what is the nerf I dont see it any where for heroics?
        
        Darth Ji’inx
        
        Heroic missions reward less credits to 65s then they did before the patch.
        
        me
        
        the one thing we want to grind…naturally.
        
        angry europeistani from eussr
        
        Was 12-18k, now is 7k…FAIL!
        
        Adam
        
        They cut down the credits earned by running them by 2/3s.
- Shawn Hargrave
  
  Its like i said EA relies on very stupid people who dont realize theyre bieng swindled and defend there right to be swindled!
  - Chance
    
    Dear asshole. Stop judging people who want to play a game. If they want to play SWTOR, they don’t need cunts like you undermining them. Thank you.
    - Shawn Hargrave
      
      Heres what i meant by “stupid people” example A here who cant handle criticism on top of it. Tools like this are why you have events like you do /smh
Seph

Do they really think that we can’t see the real reason that they increased the price? “It has more packs”… What, so their cost went up and they had to pass it on to the consumer?? I mean, price increases are their right as a business. But please don’t talk to us like we’re idiots.
- Becky
  
  They’re returning to the pre-KOTFE model that was making them more money, that’s all.
  - Darth Ji’inx
    
    Compared to the pre-SoR era, we are actually getting more packs for less money (6.9k CC for 24 vs 6.3k CC for 30). Still, I’m not too happy with this unannounced change.
    - Becky
      
      My first thought was “yeah! those freaking cubes are not so prevalent anymore!”… then my second thought was “oh, what do I care, credits drop from the sky and I buy everything off the GTN anyway”.
      - Bastardodcadena
        
        you buy to someone who wasted CC… thats not solution…
        
        Becky
        
        Why? They have money to waste, I don’t.
Whitedragon

The funny thing about that little white speck on the top of chicken shit. That little white speck is chicken shit too.
Ben Gimson

Remove those extra packs then? Having to buy the highest CC package (short of the super-pricey one) and now another cheaper package to get one hypercrate is shite. Again changing things nobody asked them to change.
ray

Don’t care. Never pay for something that you don’t know for what you buying. Go to store “i want new 32″ LCD monitor” sry mr, you have only mouse worth $10 for $600 you spend, next time maybe you will be more lucky and roll gold pack with LCD monitor. Please buy next pack for $600 and roll. No way 🙂
- Darth Ji’inx
  
  That’s not the same thing. When you buy the monitor, that’s a direct purchase of the item. When you buy a pack, you know upfront that you are not guaranteed the a big ticket item like you are when you directly purchase it. The difference is direct purchase vs purchasing a chance.
  - Jonathan Doe
    
    Monitors have a production cost, same thing for trading cards, digital lockbox content only costs the time/effort it takes to code it and implement it, further copies cost 0.
    - Darth Ji’inx
      
      That is irrelevant. The same principles apply regardless of physical/digital items.
- Risqu’e
  
  Not the same at all. if you want to compare it to a physical purchase its more like baseball cards. You buy a sealed package. You know what cards are possible to be in there, but you have no idea which of those cards are actually inside. Some are more rare and desired than others.
  - Darth Ji’inx
    
    Well said.
Pam Corson

of course they really want u to spend more than $40 on cc or gift cards now
Kubrickian

It’s a shame that the cartel pack purchases go to EA for development of other games. The game itself is only funded by monthly subscription fees.
- Darth Ji’inx
  
  Source?
  - Kplz
    
    Are you that ignorant of the state of the game and population? Changing gambling packs when the game is in a massive content drought is the last thing they should be doing.. just my opinion
    - Darth Ji’inx
      
      You do realize that subscriptions have drastically increased since KotFE came out, right?
      - Darth-Robin
        
        you also realise that can be seen with a very sceptical eye
        if subscriptions were increased due to kofte by how much then?
        
        if the amount of subs only increased by 1k or 10 and bioware is saying the subs are higher then 3 years ago or since kofte came out, you know what that is called, its called shady
        
        Darth Ji’inx
        
        Even so, increased subscriptions are an indicator that the game is doing fine.
    - Trumpcat
      
      Is of no use. He finds that paying $15 monthly for 15 minutes of cutscenes and playing rescaled 4 years old multiplayer content is a good bargain. Maybe nice if you’re just starting out, but not so if you’ve been doing the same things for years.
      - Darth Ji’inx
        
        You’re making assumptions about me, tiny paws. Back in the days of large expansions, there would be months with no new content, yet people still subscribed. We pay $15 to support the game and have full access to the content. So, no, we are not paying $15 for new chapters, we are paying for the game itself. The chapters are just new content.
        
        Note: KotFE Chapters are an hour long on average. I’ve even timed the last few to verify this. If you are going to slander some aspect of the game, at least be accurate about it.
        
        Trumpcat
        
        Being one of those who subscribed for 4 years since day 1, I can definitely say what I subscribed for:
        
        – Progressing endgame content, which was periodically added. I have the Dread Master mask, I have the Brontes wings and other Nightmare Mode rewards. I was levelling to experience different stories. Grouping to kill world bosses, do flashpoints, heroics. Collecting items, credits. Exploring.
        
        Having done all of the above many, many times over, 4 years is a very long period, should I feel that I’m slandering the game for saying that being subscribed on the 5th year for the fun of doing say Eternity Vault, doing the same Ilum heroic, same levelling zones, same flashpoints is idiotic, stupid and insulting to me as a customer?
        
        Sorry, no. This game is pro-new players, anti-veterans. Any veterans that are left are either masochists or folks who never did the little endgame content it offered over the years.
        
        And I am not even beginning to describe the social aspect of maintaining a guild in a game which fails to retain its players long-term.
        
        Excuse me for disregarding the “new content” of running SOLO through a tube facerolling mobs while going from one cutscene to another. I can watch those on youtube.
- FacelessOne
  
  Is there any proof? Not that i’am saying that you troll but i really like to see proof.
  - DerpDude
    
    Do we need proof ?
    Even though it’s just a theory, looking at the state of the game it sounds true to me =P
    - Darth Ji’inx
      
      Does the average player know how much it takes to run/maintain this game? I doubt it.
      - Ben Gimson
        
        Pennies compared to how much they get from subs + CC purchases.
      - DerpDude
        
        No they don’t, but when you look at how poor the game is despite riding under the banner of EA you can’t stop wondering where the money is going from the cash shop and subs.
Darth Ji’inx

I’m confused:

First Chance Cubes replace Bronze items in packs. Many people complain that they hate them because when they buy a new pack, they want new items.

Now that we have NEW Bronze items, people complain because Bronze items are supposedly worthless and the Chance Cubes actually made them decent credits on the GTN.

Both are good points, but which is it? Do you want Cubes or new Bronzes??
- Risqu’e
  
  They just want to be handed all the platinums lol
- Sarigar
  
  Bioware is bad at balancing, they always seem to go all the way to one end or the other. Some chance cubes are fine: 38-40 per crate is not fine. But 15-20 per crate? That’s interesting and provides some variety.
  
  Jacking the price up by 900 CC because they added some new bronze items is pure chickenshit, though. Crates have been 5400CC for a very long time, with occasional variances, long before the chance cubes appeared. If I am not mistaken, 6300CC is the highest they’ve ever charged for a crate.
  - Darth Ji’inx
    
    Actually, pre-SoR Hypercrates were closer to 7000 CC for 24 Packs.
    - Ben Gimson
      
      Yeah but that doesn’t mean it’s the right way to go. They’ll lose a fair few sales over this I imagine.
      - Darth Ji’inx
        
        I didn’t say it was the right way to go. It’s just comparatively better than it was awhile back.
        
        RodoHermoza
        
        but before packs loots a lot of better rare items. Last pack maybe only 1 decent armor set, rest is just junk.
    - Sarigar
      
      Even though I abhor sentences that begin with “Actually”, I appreciate being informed. 🙂
  - William Bolitho
    
    Actually, I enjoyed having that many cubes show up. Ended up with armor sets and other items I had missed before.
- Jonathan Doe
  
  Different people want different things, some want in game credits, so they want something they can turn into credits using rl currency, others just want nice items, the former don’t really want the cubes they just want an easy way to turn money into credits, the latter don’t really want the cubes just a way to get nice items without paying absurd gtn prices.
  
  The real problem is BW keeps creating undesirable items and making the desirable ones harder to obtain.
  - Darth Ji’inx
    
    Damned if they do, damned if they don’t…
    - BrianDavion
      
      they could avoid all this if we could just buy items on the store outside a random pack!
      - Darth Ji’inx
        
        Three problems:
        
        1) Direct purchases cost more CC.
        
        2) They would literally have to put thousands of items on the CM.
        
        3) People who have already spent a lot of time/credits buying them off the GTN or lots of CC buying up tons of packs to get them would rage.
        
        BrianDavion
        
        ohh yeah they’re commited now. but that doesn’t mean I have to like it
- ROCKING RED REAPER
  
  Well I don’t know about other peeps but I enjoyed the grand chance cubes at least I always got rare drops like the Naga sadow set and the zakuul knight set among other really nice things but I wouldn’t have mind if they lowered it so we could have the chance to get some other stuff from the packs but unless we actually get some decent stuff at bronze rank then we’re worse off then when the took out bronze and replaced them with the cubes cause now we got to contest with both but I could be wrong I haven’t bought anything from the new pack not much of interest they!
- frickenWaaaltah
  
  It’s funny, but I think the groupthink was just beginning to come around to appreciating how nice the Grand Chance Cubes are/were.
  
  One thing I noticed is that Grand Chance Cubes were actually far better than the pack items at getting you in-game money.
  
  Pack items always flood the market when the pack comes out to the point that even some gold rarity items can usually be picked up for cheap. If you want to get a good price on the GTN for the stuff you don’t want, you have to hold it ~3 months or more.
  
  Whereas the Grand Chance Cubes have a huge loot table of old items so that is never a problem. They do drop a lot of cheap stuff like dye, titles, facial expressions, color crystals, sniper rifles and autocannons, etc, but when you get armor sets or mounts or decorations you’re likely to be getting something that there isn’t too much of on the market, so you can get a great price for it right away (or of course keep it if you like it).
  
  You can also just sell the cubes yourself, which have a pretty high value unopened, and buy what you want. Bronze drops from a new pack will never get you an average of 300k-400k credits like you can with the cubes, even if you wait a long time to sell them.
  - Darth Ji’inx
    
    I always open my Cubes. I’ll typically get a few things I don’t have and sell the rest for a decent profit 🙂
- ROCKING RED REAPER
  
  Lol I actually LOVED the cubes got to pretty awesome stuff in em like the Naga sadow set and THE Zakuul knight set which by itself is 1400 cc what the should’ve done was lower the drop rate or make it so u can ONLY get 1 IF u get 1 in a pack not add the bronze back in! How I see it could be worse now cause we got both bronze and cubes to contend with so the pretty much annihilate the chance of a platinum since they were a myth with just cubes! Biofail could’ve played it right but they listened to the idiot’s that don’t even know what their asking for!
Fieramosca

Just a reminder. This started with reducing the gear rarity from 3 tiers to two. From Bronze, Silver and Gold, to Silver and Gold. To have less tiers of rarity, I think.
Now we have 4. Mission accomplished.
- Zachary Williams
  
  platinum drops are a myth, there are still only 3 tiers.
Quinn “Fellow Gamer” Gillespie

Welcome back Bronze.
Missed ya.
Shiv

dunno if anyone noticed, but the packs before the gemini pack already came with 2 pack items plus the comp gift and the jawa junk crap, not sure how they can say they were only giving 1 pack item in those, when it says quite clearly in game they give 2 for every other pack that came out before the gemini pack.
Trumpcat

Nobody makes you buy packs. Don’t like them, don’t buy them. Case closed. D’oh that whining.
- Darth Ji’inx
  
  Will you make packs great again? XP
  - Trumpcat
    
    Listen, Ji’inx, I’m common sense, that’s all. Packs are stealing jobs from the crafters, from vanity farmers, from everyone. They ruin the game economy. You have no reasons to run content anymore, all nice things are in packs, it’s all packs. It’s disgusting. I would immediately remove all packs and I would bring vanity items back in the game content, so you have to play and earn the things you like. And you will have to sub for it.
    - Shadowbroker
      
      This made my day, way more than it should have. LOL Trumpcat for Eternal Emperor 2016!!! Make SWTOR Great again!
      - Trumpcat
        
        It’s a movement, folks.
    - Steen
      
      Dude this is sick in a good sense! 😀 You won the internet
      - Trumpcat
        
        Crooked Musco disapproves.
    - gog
      
      I decided to try out ESO after seeing so many here deciding that it was the greatest thing ever. While the character customisation is better generally in TOR, I absolutely love that they tied the dyes into achievements rather than making me pay for it. And ESOs cash shop don’t make me wanna throw up in the same way that TOR make me wanna do.
      
      One of the main reasons I stopped buying from the cartel market about a year before I unsubbed was due to them putting way to much cool stuff there and not enough at all in the game itself.
      - Sarigar
        
        I’ve been enjoying ESO as well. Their graphic optimization leaves a lot to be desired, but even still it is a good-looking game, and fun to play.
        
        gog
        
        Same, I’ve also spent a ton time in skyrim/morrowind so feel more at home there than i did in TOR initially. Nothing will beat playing TOR up to lvl 50 the first 2-3 times for me, love the imp class stories, but TES still seems to have a nice story. Plus, it’s the open world and that it feels more alive that is the big draw for me.
        
        Sarigar
        
        I know nothing about the lore, so I’m just smiling and nodding when the NPCs go on and on about stuff that happened somewhere to someone. 🙂
        
        gog
        
        Haha, petty sure a lot of people had the same reaction everything about Revan before the expansion unlike those of us who had played KotOR before. The lore in ES is pretty cool and goes pretty deep since they’ve had a few games to build it on if you’re into that kind of stuff. Ulfr’s book from skyrim is still the best one tho
      - MikeM
        
        Black Desert destroys ESO.
        
        Fred Garvin
        
        …
    - CJ
      
      HAHAHAHA you do know that KotFE is younger than 18 months right.
      
      And to go back to your first statement if you dont like it dont play it. Case closed.
      
      You do know why ppl are complaining about stuff or did that just fly past your head when you started to bitch about things,
      - Trumpcat
        
        Please, remind me what mmo content did kotfe bring? No, rescaling heroics and ops from 4 years ago doesn’t count. Last mmo content came with Shadow of Revan (and my God, was it poor and buggy), since you’re good with mats you can count how long ago that was.
        Besides, my comment was meant to be humorous, which others got but you seems to not have. And I do follow my advice I don’t pay anymore.
        
        Alex Tegnazian
        
        mr cat plz tell me why they have still given me 32+ chance cubes in a hypercrate of 30 packs??? and i get screwed? if the cubes werent in these it would be 100% better
        
        Trumpcat
        
        I would gladly explain, but I am against all nice items being in packs instead as rewards in content itself. So I wish to do no service to the packs explaining anything about them.
- Fieramosca
  
  That’s why I don’t buy packs. I buy the few stuff I want from the GTN. People who buy packs should be grateful, so they can earn credits.
  🙂
GiftoftheMagi

O…k…so if they are offering 6 more packs per Hypercrate, I can see why there would be an increase in price. However, I call BS on the onw Pack Item prior bit. I have on several occasions gotten more than one. Maybe it was a random chance element that they have now eliminated in favor of making it a certainity.

And yeah. Thank Cthulhu for Bronze items being back.
- Bobuster
  
  Notice that the post mentions “KotFE Launch Packs.” The ones at the launch of 4.0 only had 1 item per pack. More recent packs have had 2 items per pack; they had the same price as the 1 item packs until now.
  - gotcha
    
    Otherwise the pricing wouldn’t sound reasonable 😉
MTCason

So they give us more items worth LESS than the previous composition of the packs and want to charge us 20% more for the privilege of unloading all this junk that won’t sell on the GTN? I don’t know who complained about Chance Cubes. I never did. They were a veritable goldmine. And at least from them you could pull items that would sell easily for millions of credits on the GTN. Not so with this flood of bronze trash.
- Lindsoal
  
  I agree, R.I.P. chance cubes….oh wait, old packs always come back out 1/2 off so ill just wait and buy them to get double chance cubes and make that much more money, forget the new packs!
  - MTCason
    
    The problem with that is that old packs no longer come back out. Once they’re gone, they’re gone for good now. Everything gets thrown into the Chance Cube loot pool. Musco mentioned on the anniversary marathon stream he did a while back that this was Bioware’s new philosophy towards packs. So not only will the really good loot be rarer and rarer amongst the Chance Cube loot table with every new pack that comes out, but you’ll have an even harder time pulling a Chance Cube to obtain that rare loot in the first place.
    - Peter Smith
      
      before Kotfe, they regularly put back in old packs on a discount that had been unavailable for a long time.. but since Kotfe, they havent been doing that anymore.. they might start doing that again.
    - BM
      
      They have changed the way packs work so many times, we all know their philosophy can change again.
- Darth Ji’inx
  
  Many people complained about Chance Cubes because they wanted to get new items when they opened a new pack, not old ones. Before this pack, most of the the complaints were about Chance Cubes being in the packs. Now that we get less of them, more people are complaining about the lack of Chance Cubes.
- Tsais
  
  I bought a hyper-crate once.
  After my storage was turned into a landfill with impossible to sell garbage, I was healed of this unregistered and probably illegal lottery once and for all.
  
  My bank account is grateful for the instant cure of a potential affliction!
CJ

who the fuck complained about this. It will now be next to impossible to get things from the old packs. FUCK!!!
- Peter Smith
  
  They might very well intend to sell the old packs again from time to time, just like they did before kotfe
- abaddonsmummy
  
  Who?
  EVERY MUPPET HERE!!!!
- Liam
  
  I hated the chance cubes because i already had what i wanted from old packs. Instead of chance cubes, they should just sell the old packs,, so those of us whove been here a long time aren’t getting screwed.
Rokanis

I feel like this is the infamous Contraband Slot Machine all over again. When that thing first came out I swear it was like the second coming of Christ for SWTOR. Universal crafting mats were dropping from those things like candy from a piñata and it made crafting items so much more affordable. Cartel Market Certificates also dropped very frequently, and made buying things from rep stores much easier to do.

Then people, mostly SWTOR’s cash cows who made their credits selling crafting mats, complained that the Contraband Slot Machine was tanking their economy and their profit margins. BioWare, in its infinite (misguided) wisdom, then decided to bring the almighty Nerfbat down upon the machine only a couple weeks after its release. Drop rates were cut by more than 50% for pretty much everything except the reputation tokens, which were the worst things that dropped from those machines. The consolation? They added a reskinned walker mount to the machine that has a lower chance of dropping than those new crossguard lightsabers.

Now the Contraband Slot Machine is a gutted husk of its former self, practically worthless to all unless they don’t have the first cartel pack reputation maxed out. Since the recent cartel pack changes, this machine is really the only way to get Cartel Market Certificates, and considering how much stuff is available to buy with them this is a true shame.

I guess I must be in the minority that actually liked chance cubes. Yes, they dropped a bit too frequently, but they were very useful for making credits. I got some pretty nice things out of them that were far more valuable than any of these new bronze items that have been added. The removal of these chance cubes, coupled with BioWare’s decision to no longer bring back old cartel packs, will make the prices for older pack items rise exponentially in the near-future. This is bad, especially when GTN prices for pack items are already so inflated compared to how they were pre-KOTFE. The consolation here? A few more packs added to hypercrates and a price increase of nearly 20%

Basically what I’m getting at is that BioWare has a horrible tendency to utterly fail at finding balanced solutions to problems like this. They create things that are overall pretty nice, but then screw up the delivery of said things, leading to a broken product. Then, in an attempt to “fix” the problems that they created, they come up with solutions that are way too extreme and end up causing more harm overall to the SWTOR playerbase. They seem to fail at comprehending what “moderation” is, and only ever go for the most radical solutions. They only cater to those who complain the loudest, rather than coming up with an amicable solution that most if not all parties can agree with.

Well done BioWare. You’ve managed to lower my expectations to a point that I didn’t even know was possible. Guess I should’ve have expected anything more… /endrant
abaddonsmummy

‘We hate chance Cubes. The old ways were the best’
Bioware listens and gets rid.
‘Bring back chance cubes’

This community makes me lol (and occasionally weep)
- Kaliyaa
  
  Well, the unfortunate truth about society is that people are much more likely to say something if they are unhappy. Happy or content people just stay quiet. Most likely it is a different group. Although it might be hard to admit, BW actually needs to STOP listening to the community and just focus on making the best game they possibly can. Something that THEY would actually want to play. Otherwise theyre just spinning their wheels getting no-where…
- yamil
  
  I knew that shit would happen LOL I;m glad they brought em back, was sick of getting those damn cubes last time i got a hypercrate which i’ve only done like 4-5 times since cartel started alot of those packs came with 2 cubes and all i got was shit in them…. sure you might get something good but really chances are verrry slim
Sick of EA sell to Disney!

They’re full of shit! I wasn’t fond of chance cubes personally. But I never stated that on the forums. The main issue here is that they raised the hypercrates from 5400 to 6300 for no good fucking reason as far as I can tell. ALL Kotfe hypercrates have been 30 packs.
- Kay
  
  It’s all about money to them. They say they listen to our feedback but that’s just to shut us up so we’ll buy more. ;D
King of America

Not sure if they’ve changed the probabilities or not, but I’ve never got a platinum item before; on one Gemini hypercrate I got two vented dualsabers, a vented single saber, and a Gemini tuning (is that platinum?). Admittedly one of those dualsabers was from a chance cube.
- Overmind
  
  I don’t call them scamcrates for nothing.

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