By far the best update post Legacy of the Sith, 7.0.2 brings the highly anticipated Weapon Slots in the Outfit Designer, but what about everything else? TL:DR at bottom.

As I broke the news near a month ago which sent Twitter and Reddit into a feeding frenzy of discussion. It appears that the ‘PTS’ renaming of currencies is officially live. Say goodbye to Medals of Commendation and hello to Conquest Commendations.

Weapon Slots in Outfit Designer

Nothing else to say other then gratitude, a feature that Bioware has teased lightly for some years is now a reality! I’ve been holding onto old weapons for years in the hopes that this feature would eventually see the light of day, and I’m sure for many players, a celebration shall be raised with all those finally able to equip their Tulak Hord lightsabers without losing stats at level 80!

Currency Changes in General

Controversial debates of Currency Renaming aside, Bioware took a great step in the right direction by raising the cap of Conquest Commendations from 999 to 2500 and the weekly allowance from 999 to 1500.
They have also given us the ability to trade Conquest Commendations to Tech Fragments 1:1 at a vendor on the Fleet which is phenomenal.

Now if only they’d raise the Flashpoint, PvP and Operations currencies from 999 caps to 2500, heck, I’d pay millions just to increase it another 100.

Currency Changes in Content

Lets start with the good, gone are the [WEEKLY] quests of requiring 4 games won, from now on losses count and wins count x3! Unranked PvP (Warzones) have had their WZ-1 Accelerants, Tech Fragments and Daily Matrices increased across the board of all missions. Each Operation boss will also now drop a preset amount of Tech Fragments based on their difficulty set and boss order.

Tech Fragment rewards have been lowered in Ranked PvP and GSF, additionally RPM-13s, the crafting ingredient for 300 iR Gold Augments have been completely removed from the Ranked PvP weeklies.
Likewise in Operations, OEM-37s, the other crafting ingredient for 300 iR Gold Augments have been completely removed as loot drops from raids.

Instead they will now both be directly sold on the Fleet for 4,000 Tech Fragments each. The crafting recipe involved in 300 iR Gold Augments has also retroactively been changed from requiring 7 OEMs and 14 RPMs to just 5 of each.

Inflation and PvP Ramifications

It’s no lie that one of the largest reasons for this change is accessibility, only a handful of dedicated high-end players are actually motivated enough to farm Nightmare Operations and Group Ranked PvP for these materials, which generate billions of credits each augment.
The other largest reason is one more sinister, that has bled through all the servers and festered into a major issue, exploiting.

Group Ranked PvP after the release of Legacy of the Sith was (outside of a quest on the Fleet), the only way to obtain RPM-13s, where the [WEEKLY] quest awarded 5 and was completable 3 times a week (Meaning you could earn 15 a week per character).
This blew up incredibly as servers filled with end-game players, farming each other in organised groups around the clock to amass hundreds of these materials and generate tens of billions of credits each.
Bioware recognised this behavior very quickly and silently deployed a fix that disabled use of the /stuck command in PvP in an effort to curb, or at least slowdown these PvP material exploiters.

After all its one thing to earn these materials legitimately through play, and another to grab friends and methodically orchestrate match fixing against each other in a competitive leaderboard environment.

The Outcome

While I cant say the change to making materials cost Tech Fragments and changing the Schematic to requiring less overall materials will actually slow down or lower the credit inflation associated with it, at least Group Ranked PvP from now on will actually be played by those wishing to play legitimately or at least without the harm of exploiting queue to farm materials.
However I believe the queue will become incredibly desolate as it’s no secret that perhaps 90% of the Queue these past few months were exploiters.

Lowering the cost of an RPM/OEM down to a flat 4,000 Frags will probably, at least for a little while enable the more casual or relaxed endgame players to earn 300 iR augments at their own pace, however I believe that this burden falls more along the retroactive Crafting change and not the OEM/RPM method of possession.

TL:DR

The Good: Weapons in Outfits at long last and PvP receiving currency increases as well as mission rebalancing.
Conquest based currencies received a cap increase.
Retroactive schematic change to make Gold 300 iR augments more attainable to everyone in greater quantities.

The Bad: Group Ranked PvP is going to lose an overwhelming majority of it’s population (for the best).
No indication if the RPM and OEM drop rate changes will cause GTN price hikes which may lead to an increase in illegal gold-bot buying.

The Bugly: Can’t say I’ve experienced any bugs with the Weapons in Outfits on the PTS. It seemed to work in its last week of testing A-OK.
Bug Crunching and NPC tweaking across the board this update from Class balancing to NPC health reductions in flashpoints!