This is false, just because there is inflation that does not mean you earn more, usually its quite the opposite.. For example, if my primary source of income was from questing, then I won't benefit from inflation because quest rewards do not rise with inflation at all.

Inflation has to do with increasing the money supply. Rising prices, whether needs or luxury items are the result of inflation. And that my friend is inflation so what you're talking about is still a result of inflation.

I believe there will be a shutdown mainly because the economy is getting worst by the day. The dollar rise is starting to reverse, GDP is low, Inventories are high, A lot of lay-offs have been announced, and the FED is scared to raise rates because they see the pitiful outlook of the economy. All this will affect EA's future outlook of this game and not only of this game but their entire company. Granted I think there's still time, probably looking at 2017-2018, probably 2019 at the most. When the bulk of this recession hits (like in 2008) and the dollar reverses, I don't think any non-manufacturing (or even manufacturing) US company that is mainly supported by US consumers will do well at all.

Yeah the conquest material is used to make 216 un-moddable gear, such as complete sabers and weapons or armor. But there's another purple material that are only acquired from ops that allows you to create the 216 or 220 armoring, hilts, barrels, mods and etc. The mat currently runs at 1.6-2mil each and the item itself sells for more. Remind you this is just for ONE mod, armoring, hilt or barrel.. Pretty stupid if you ask me. You're just better off getting the comms for them with maybe the exception of a hilt or barrel since you can't get the main hand version from comms, but still better off using the conquest material to get a whole one or just doing an ops run. Man I am so glad Albion's closed beta is about to begin, time for some real crafting!

I am starting to wonder if this is even a bug.

The rakghoul event is next week on the 10th, not next month.

This is true but most players probably won't care too much about that especially since the difference isn't huge.

I would still pvp. But I like how GW2 did their pvp all stats are equal but players still have the option to choose their stats/gear and build. No need to grinding valor or pvp comms just to get gear in order to be competitive in pvp.

You sure he will still be able to transform into a rakghoul? I mean the whole purpose of the quest is to cure him. I highly doubt he'll have his transformation, just like HK-51 doesn't have his auto kill shot anymore. All companions are standardized.

Influence for companions aren't that much of an issue, at least for me. I already have 7 companions at rank 32+ with my highest being 45. The thing is it only gets easier and easier because of your companions craft benefits. With everyone at least being R32 I can run UWT missions in under 9min getting blue and purple rank 5 gifts fast. And UWT has two mission grades that provide rank 5 mats so I am using all my 6 companions. The best way to do it is to use companions that use different gifts that way no matter the gift you receive it never goes to waste. For example i used: Lana - Culture Arts/Imperial Memorbilia Scropio - Tech Nico - Underworld Senya - Luxury Xalex - Military Gear Choza Raabat - Republic Memoribila Yuun - Trophy I haven't used anyone for my court and weapons gifts simply because I plan to stockpile them for future companions, especially since I have 7 companions already (I use one for combat) and the max I can use at a time is 6 for crafts. But I could use the weapon gifts on Lt. Pierce or Veeroa Denz but if I recall Jeasa WIlliam uses them so I am saving them for her. I think the bigger grind is in the alliance companions, right now the cap seems to be at rank 20 but i have a feeling more ranks will be unlocked after a later update which will be a pain if that's the case. But we'll see.

If you're not going to raid then there's really no point in getting anything but 216 gear from comms or FPs (which I think are the same as SM OPS stat wise). The only except of gear you will need to purchase from crafts will be the MH weapon as you can't buy them with comms.

MMO economies do get strange (outside of dev changes) only from themeparks. Though this doesn't seem to be the case from sandbox mmos and I speak of the true sandbox MMOs. For example, Eve online's economy has been stable for over it's 14 year history, there has not been any substantial periods of inflation or deflation, but rather they've been flat. http://cdn1.eveonline.com/www/newssystem/media/65910/1/Indices_2014-02.png http://www.mmodoghouse.com/blog/eve-proof-that-free-markets-work

Correction. Germany went in to hyperinflation after WWI not WWII. Also I don't think this game will get to hyperinflation, high inflation yeah but I don't think it'll get to a point where money is worthless. Though I do think there will be more inflation on the way, because it seems as if I am making a lot more credits from H2's than I did prior to 4.0 dailies and etc. Though I could be wrong on how much I am making from H2's though but certainly feels like it.

It wasn't even needed in the early stages. I got about 90% of my gear from other activities outside of crafting. The 10% still wasn't even needed was more like a bonus. Of course I speaking of prior to the comm changes, yeah comms were scarce back then, but I did fine with quest gear for the level grind which btw you had to do just about every quest in order to level appropriately which only meant more gear from quest rewards. As I got towards the endgame I just ran FP. But there was a time period that crafting was more beneficial or 'needed' in a sense and that was when augmented gear would only appear from via crafting. After they added in augment kits crafting was pretty much wounded and only got worst when they added the CM and now this. Crafting was never the forefront of this game (and never is for a themepark MMO), the story was and for a time operations but they maybe phasing that down some too. Finally, I never said themepark MMO and crafting were not compatible I was comparing the crafting activity from themeparks to sandbox and the activity and even the worth and effort pales in comparison against sandbox. But I wonder have you ever played a Sandbox MMO?

For your first comment. I am not a fan of the iostope idea at all, however, I think they can alleviate some of the problems if they increased the drops. Perhaps make them drop for every boss and bonus boss in a FP? Second comment. This is the price we pay for being able to craft basically raid gear(w/o set bonuses) without actually raiding. If the gear was easily craftable then the content will be made trivial since many players will be entering in raids with raid equivalent gear. So it's only natural they created a huge barrier to get crafting gear. This is a problem that just about every themepark have.

In regards to your 5th point. From what I recall crafting never was something that was ever needed, its always been a side-filler, something you did in order to fill a missing piece of gear but it never was a primary source of gearing up. Now for a time being, back when the game first launched crafting was a primary source for customization, but that has long since been gone. Quite frankly, if you enjoy crafting and selling products in the market, a themepark MMO isn't the MMO you should be looking at. You should be looking at something that's more of a sandbox like Eve online. A past example of these games there were popular would be Star Wars Galaxies (never played it but heard of it) and Ultima Online (this one I did play) or perhaps the upcoming Albion Online. If you find yourself in an MMO where the primary means of progress or gearing up is through the game itself (as in quests, drops, or npc vendors) then I can tell you that crafting will just be a side-step. Yeah people will do it and some people will make some money from it but the activities pales in comparison to the other games I mentioned.

In terms of space, I am referring to legacy storage. Yes for the immediate space in my backpack I need more slots to hold the mats and the component but this space use is very short term. But for me I had literally hundreds actually thousands of mats in my legacy storage and personal storage. The component changes freed up a ton of space for me. I don't even bother to decide how much of which components to make. Granted I haven't fully did all the crafts or crafting so far (been busy with the alliance and FPs), but to make anything via crafting (that I am aware of) you need components. So there's no point on sitting on materials unless you're planning to sell them directly or use them for a quest. But honestly, I keep churning them out because the cost to make a component is around 4k - 5k on my server and each kit sells for around 8k-9k. Those are huge profit margins, not to mention I have a really good chance to crit? It's a no brainer, the component changes is what's good about this crafting change. Now the other stuff yeah I can see the frustration. A lot of it I don't even like.

That's what you do if you want to have available space. Granted I only have 3 crafters (synth, armor, and artice) with the rest being mission runners, however, the first thing i did was crafted all my mats into components to reduce space, not only that but with my crafting companions being rank 20-40 I crit them quite often getting FREE MATS. Besides there's very little reason to not immediately craft the mats into components.

Now just that, but you also have a good chance of getting additional mats. To be honest I don't see the complaints in regards to the components changes. In fact people should be rejoicing it. I mean chance for free additional mats, reduced storage space requirements (for mats), and a new market that one could probably profit from due to better efficiency. I don't see the problem with this change and It's actually quite amusing that people are complaining about it.

We don't know they decided not to enable this feature. It could be bugged and for all we know tomorrow's patch could resolve the issue.

I don't think this is a patch. The patch isn't until tomorrow morning? I think what we have is a case of a server crash.

I believe so. I done their mission and I managed to finish the heroic FP for the planet alderan and when I did one of the companions was moved up to the follower list. However, all he could do was craft or do missions. I was not able to summon him in combat. It said something about unavailable due to story or something. Perhaps if I do all the heroic FP i get to unlock them all or perhaps they're use just for crafting purposes, dunno yet.

I think the main issue I am having with the crafting changes are getting the Isotopes. I thought they should of added 1 Isotope drop per boss at the very least. As for the components eh, not bad. I kind of like it as now I can just craft the three mats into 1 item, saving myself some room.

So far there's no way to get Vette or Jasea back.

You are more than likely to be correct on this.