I ran the mission "A Traitor Among the Chiss" and I got the drop for the companion droid H2-WF. Because of its poor choice of Influence Gifts: Maintenance = Love; Technology = Like it is next to impossible to get Influence with. I have eleven characters that I'm constantly running gift missions with and I've only seen a couple Maintenance gifts ever over the several years I've been playing. And I have far too many companions that LOVE Technology gifts like Treek to waste them on a companion that gives minimal influence for them. It was mentioned to me that you can use stuff like Jawa Scrap to buy companion gifts and this seems to be the only reasonable method to gain influence with H2-WF. However even then I'd never be able to get enough influence to use it as a companion. The only thing I'd ever really use the droid for is crew missions but he isn't available for that. That needs to change; crew missions would be a way to gain (slow) influence with H2-WF. I know there's a Cartel option for raising a companions influence to 50; but I'd much rather use that on companions I actually enjoy having with me when I'm playing. So again; in short; H2-WF needs to be opened up so he can be used in crew missions.

AshlaBoga, you are still missing the point. By making the best pieces you can make with each craft BOP they are encouraging the hardcore players to rotate through and max each and every craft that might be useful to them in turn and ending with Biomedics so they can get and use the various medpacks and stims that are BOP. And additionally encouraging the rest of us to skip crafting at all since it's pretty much a waste of time to only do one craft and a huge pain in the butt to retool through four or five crafts with each and every character. They should be encouraging us to share our crafting with each other instead. I LOVE the crafting system, except for this one thing that completely sucks.

Actually he likes Cultural Artifacts the most, followed by Tech items. There may be others that work to but those have been extensively tested by me at least.

Darth-_- how in the world does this thread affect PvP? That is other than dilute the endless whining of people who only do PvP from being the only thing on the forums? If you actually read what I said, I've STARTED many HMs and only finished a couple - because the gear of my whole guild is insufficient to the task. IF we could share the special items that each crafter can make instead of wasting time rebuilding each craft from scratch for it - it would help us to be able to complete them. The game is not served with the current player theorem of every single character maxing out every single craft to make themselves the best PVE gear that can be made. Fact is that the current system of the crafts just serves to convince me that my characters from now on won't craft anything, they'll just take gather skills so I can rob my environment of matts to sell on the gtn for the fools who don't realize the pointlessness of the current crafting system. When I started the thread honestly I had NO PVE gear and hadn't even figured out how to purchase it. I couldn't get through ANY HMs to get the comms to do so - instead I have a near endless supply of Tio Crystals that are worthless by themselves. Most of my level 50 Guildies are in the same boat. You can't finish an HM or Ops without good PVE gear, which you can't get unless you can finish an HM or an Ops. Since then the one guildie who actually manipulated me into trying HMs quit the guild because nobody else has good enough gear for us to finish any HMs with him. I don't care about the credits I'd theoretically be able to make by selling the Rakata stuff, I can make 100k in about an hour in the Black Hole and already have purchased everything I really care to that can be purchased with credits that way. What I really wanted by posting this thread was what I thought I was getting when I bought all the Rakata Synthweaving Schems - the ability to craft USEFUL stuff for alts and guildies who could use them. Instead what I have is the ability to craft Rakata belts and bracers for my synthweaver's companions - most of whom I never use. What the current crafting system along with the current PVE gear purchasing system encourage is people to quit the game after reaching level 50. I am certain that if SWTOR did a thorough check of their player numbers they'd see that themselves. The current system only encourages bull-headed players to stay on - both by having us waste time rebuilding entire crafts with each and every character to get the special gear-bits that only somebody who has that craft can make for themselves, and with the "Need to finish an HM to get gear so you can finish an HM" system. I don't want to see that. I want to see the people who join my guild keep playing. Being able to help prep them to go on Ops and HMs and stuff would help keep them around.

Ok here's another argument for removing the BOP from the crafted gear. Once you have reached level 50 with a character you have three options. 1. Retire the character and never play it again unless you want to craft stuff for new characters. 2. Play PvP - which I have no real interest in and since Synthweavers can't craft anything really useful for PvP anyways the choice is immaterial to my argument. I know I am not alone in not having any interest in PvP, I have too many bad experiences with PvP in other games, and from what I hear from my guildies who DO PvP it's very one-sided because the Republic side doesn't have the coordination that the Imperials have. But again, pretty immaterial to my argument. 3. Run Hard Modes. IF us Synthweavers could craft gear for our friends we run these with it would motivate all of us to run them even more since we'd be able to get a real reward out of it fairly quickly. I've run about a dozen HMs so far and only been able to finish about two because me and most of my guildies just don't have the gear needed. And of course you can't GET the gear until you finish multiple HMs. Being able to help our guildies and friends with a few pieces of gear at least would help us all out. Even a slight improvement in our survival increases our interest in running them.

Screaming_Ziva, you are correct, I had to do a bit more research since I own exactly one piece of real PVE equipment - the Rakata bracers that really were only very slightly better than the Critical Arch Savant Bracers I gave to Nadia afterwards. Rakata isn't the worst PVE but it's still not the best, which means it's not worth keeping past when I can get better. Definitely not worth all the time and effort I put into Synthweaving. The Rakata bracers haven't really done very much to improve my survival in HMs, nor really will the rest of the Rakata gear.. Especially considering that by the time I get all the BCAs I would need to produce a full set I could probably have purchased most of a set with comms. And lets completely ignore burning through multiple attempts to get a critical and get the augment slot that supposedly I can get anyways for far less effort when 1.3 comes out. The core of my argument still holds, there is no good reason for any crafted items to be BOP when there are better items in the game already. I am going to also note for the trolls that I keep saying "I" and "My" because I can only speak from my own experience in this. But if I find it frustrating I'm betting that other synthweavers are also having the same experience. Fact is, I talked with several members of my guild who are also synthweavers and they agree that this is problematic. My guild includes 137 characters - though I couldn't say how many actual players that is, but about half are Jedi of one stripe or another - and if you do the numbers we've got many Synthweavers and many people who could benefit from out being able to share our craft. As others have mentioned there is already a growing trend for people to peak out a craft so they can get the best gear they can that way, then switching to the next craft for the next item. So what real purpose is served with this?

Lithium, the key phrase in your own argument is "WAS the best" It isn't anymore by far. I did not say the Rakata wasn't good, but it's not the best there is. And as is, the reward for my hard work of pushing my Synthweaving to 400 is a huge amount of credits spent on gathering missions and companion gifts so I can make a few pieces of gear only I can use, and isn't the epitome of PVE gear. I didn't even mention that most of it's as ugly as nearly all the Consular gear is. There are very good reasons why a large portion of Consulars are wearing Nar Shada Slave Girl Outfits - and a lot of them have to do with the fact that so many of us find the regular consular gear ugly. It isn't even gear ONLY a Synthweaver can acquire, anyone can with a lot less effort.

I realize this isn't such a new topic but I wanted to make it easier for my guildies to chime in. I have an Character (Jedi Consular/Sage) who does Synthweaving (400 level) and when I had the credits for the Rakata gear schematics I grabbed them all thinking I'd be able to craft stuff for my alts and my guildies, and maybe even sell a few on the GTN. Then the other day somebody pointed out that these are all Binds On Pickup, which means as soon as my crafter finish's crafting it, they are HERS - PERIOD. If these were Elite PVE gear maybe I could see a point to it, but Rakata gear is starting PVE gear only, so she'll use the one and only piece she will ever craft only until she can get the next grade up. 8k credits for a schematic that gets used once is worthless, and that's not counting the almost twenty other schematics I purchased that I won't ever use because the gear is heavier armor than she can wear - or for the wrong advanced class. The rarest component on these is the Biometric Crystal Alloy (BCA) - which of course is a Final Boss drop on some Hard Mode missions. I have to slog through an HM to fight my companions for a chance at ONE BCA so I can craft one Rakata piece - that the only thing I can do with is sell to an NPC vendor for less than the other mats cost me. Now I understand that the BCA is no longer BOP so I can even buy it on the GTN at outrageous prices, so that removes the only other real reason why these should be BOP - that the special material is BOP - which it isn't anymore. To reiterate, The Synthweaved Rakata gear shouldn't be BOP because it's not the best PVE gear available, and now none of the components are BOP either. I am sure that Synthweaving isn't the only case with this, it's just the one nearest to my heart right now. One suggestion I saw was an idea adopted by another well-known MMO I won't mention - that BOP items be allowed to be traded for up to 2 hours after being acquired. Assuming I could then trade, mail, or put it on the GTN within 2 hours of crafting that would work fine.

I agree, this would be really nice. One of the things I really liked about Neverwinter Nights was that you could buy dye kits that would change the color of specific materials to different colors from base to customize your own gear so you could stand out.

I agree heartily considering that these items aren't even the very best available. My Synthweaver Consular now has about twenty Rakata schemetics that are completely worthless to her because only she can use them, and she can't use MOST of them because she's limited to light armor. Rakata gear isn't even the peak of PVE gear so there is no logical reason why her crafted stuff should be BOP. In fact orange gear with the armor mods from Daily Commendations and good purple mods and enhancements are better than Rakata gear. If you take into account that orange gear has more easily acquired materials it's far easier to make them en-mass and get a crited one with an augment slot - even further outstripping simple Rakata gear. The only thing this BOP crafted items does is remove an item that crafters COULD sell on the GTN for decent credits. I know my other level 49/50 Purple grade items don't sell at all - even when I go for the suggested retail price - which doesn't even pay for the matts used.