Star Wars: The Old Republic news » Cartel Market Changes Coming in Fallen Empire!

Hi all!

I wanted to take a moment and let you all know of some exciting changes coming to the Cartel Market with the release of Knights of the Fallen Empire. We are touching almost every portion of the Cartel Market in some way or another, and below are some of the bigger changes that we hope you guys will be excited about.

Our primary goal behind most of the Cartel Market changes for 4.0 is making things easier to understand at a glance and making things more accessible. Below are a few examples of how we are attempting to address this goal:

• Players have had feedback on navigating the Collections interface for a while now, so we are focusing on making some quality of life changes to make it easier to use.
• Cartel Market item rarities have caused a lot of confusion in the past for those who have not spent a lot of time with it, so we want to make those rarities simple and easy to understand for all players.
• Players have been asking for a long time to have more access to previously released items and packs that are no longer available on the market, so we are going to make everything available on the market at all times (more details on that below).

Collections Updates

We are happy to have the opportunity to make some really great changes that will make the Cartel experience even better based on feedback from you, the players. Some of these changes include:

• The ability to filter items in Collections.
• The Collections interface will now start out automatically collapsed.
• The number of Outfit pieces that you have unlocked will be displayed.
• You can now purchase collection unlocks on the character that originally unlocked the item.

Rarity Changes for Pack Items

Currently, we use the terms ‘Rare’, ‘Super Rare’, and ‘Ultra Rare’. Moving forward with Knights of the Fallen Empire, these rarities will be changed to ‘Bronze’, ‘Silver’, and ‘Gold’. We are hoping that this will help address any confusion over what rarity level any specific item is.

Why the change? Currently, all items found in a pack are presented with either a Silver or Gold Cartel Market emblem. In the case of our Super Rare and Ultra Rare items, there was no visual distinction on the item itself to indicate the difference in rarity, which was understandably confusing. By moving to Bronze, Silver, and Gold, we are streamlining not only how we talk about Cartel items, but how we present them within the inventory system as well.
Some of you may recall that we have three different Cartel Market emblems on the items in your inventory, and they are – you guessed it, Bronze, Silver, and Gold! By making this update to our rarities, we are hoping to more accurately communicate item rarities across the board. Bronze quality items will now be associated with a Bronze Cartel Market emblem, Silver quality with a Silver emblem, and Gold quality with a Gold emblem.

We are touching almost every item in the Cartel Market to make sure their rarity actually matches the player popularity. This means that it is not a simple Rare = Bronze. Rare might be Silver if it was more popular than we originally anticipated.

Changes to Monthly Pack Contents

Alongside the other changes we have talked about, our regular pack shipments are also going to be seeing quite a few changes. Let’s go through them:

• Better quality items in each pack – The baseline pack items will now primarily be Armor, Mounts/Vehicles, Decorations, and Toys. We will add other item types as well, but only when they are high-demand items.
• Two items per pack – Each pack now only has two items in it. One item will be from the bullet above, a mount or some other “bigger” item. The other item slot will be a Grade 5 rare or artifact level Companion gift.
• New Superpack – The new Superpack contains 5 packs, allowing another option on purchasing packs. In case you want more than one, but less than a Hypercrate. Speaking of…
• Hypercrates – Hypercrates are still around, but they now contain 30 packs so you can get even more chances to get that rare item you are hunting for!
• Pack Embargos – When a monthly pack is removed from the Cartel Market, it is unlikely to return to the market in that form. However, the specific items that are found in that pack are all automatically placed in their corresponding Bronze, Silver or Gold Pack. Ex: The Example pack launches on September 1st with an example mount. On September 1st, you can also now get the Example mount out of the Silver and Gold Mount packs. On October 1st, the Example pack is embargoed from the Cartel Market, however, the Example mount will remain available in the Silver and Gold packs for the rest of time.

Introducing Bronze, Silver, and Gold Packs

We will be introducing new Grand Packs that are permanently available on the market are updated every time we introduce a new item. These packs will change how items are available which are introduced and embargoed from the Cartel Market, including both pack and direct sale items.

For the main categories we will be releasing Bronze, Silver and Gold packs for each one! The categories for these packs are as follows:

• Armor
• Decorations
• Mounts

Bronze Packs will contain an item of either Bronze, Silver, or Gold quality (just like a Grand Pack now), Silver Packs will contain an item of either Silver, or Gold quality, and Gold Packs will contain an item of Gold quality! This means you may purchase a Bronze Mount Pack and obtain items such as the Ikas Falchion or the Savanna Vorantikus, or go straight for the Gold Mount Pack and ensure you are walking away with nothing less than the best!

These packs will contain items from all existing (pack and direct sale) and new Cartel market items! As we add new Mounts, Armors, and Decorations to our new Shipment Packs, those items will also be added to their respective Bronze, Silver, and Gold Category Packs. This allows for the best possible list of options available to obtain the item you want in the Cartel Market.

For any category that does not have enough items to be split into Bronze Silver and Gold packs, we will be creating permanent Grand Packs. These packs, such as the Grand Pets Pack, contain only the item type the pack itself mentions. We have found these to be an enjoyable addition to the Market, so we are expanding the range on them!

We will be offering permanent Grand Packs for the following items:

• Weapons
• Crystals
• Galactic Starfighter
• Emotes
• Pets
• Companion Customizations
• Titles
• Dyes
• Toys

These packs will contain items from all existing Cartel Market items of each category, from the Crime Lord’s Cartel Pack, Wild Space Explorer’s Pack and all Direct Sale items. If you ever wanted that Savanna Nekarr Cat Pet from the Pursuer’s Bounty Pack, or the Advanced Purple Outline Crystal from the Architect’s Stronghold Pack but grew tired of waiting for a pack Embargo, now is your time to get them.

Miscellaneous Changes

That will cover most of the changes which we are seeing to the Market, but we have a few stragglers left to go over:

• The current list of available direct sale items will be pruned down quite a bit.
• We will occasionally bring pack highly sought after pack items, such as the Temple Guardian Armor Set or the Dune Sea Bantha, as short term direct sales. This way, if you don’t want to take a chance in buying a Grand Pack, you can just directly buy that item outright.
• We have rearranged the storefront categories to be more in-line with the new Cartel Market plan. This new layout will also make it easier to find the categories players look for most.
• All 1 credit items from the Cartel Reputation vendors will be removed, but they will still remain available as part of the new Grand Packs.
• All items from Cartel Reputation vendors that are not specific to that reputation will be removed. These items are still available in their respective Grand Packs.

We hope you like the changes we are making to the Cartel Market and to Collections. We believe that these changes will give you a much better user experience whether you buy items from the Cartel Market, from the Galactic Trade Network, or just trade things with your friends.

Dan Bunten
Producer