There are much simpler explanations for why you aren't selling a particular item besides the idea that tested economic models don't work. Again, the point wasn't that you will make money on whatever you decide to make in whatever timeframe you pick at whatever price you decide to sell it. The point was that crafting isn't a "money sink" just because you invest a lot of time/effort into learning how to make something. Any manufacturing enterprise (including imaginary ones like this one) involves spending upfront resources just to gain the capacity to produce a product. In real life these are things like factories and labor and materials costs. In game these are things like re-engineering costs and purchased schematics. The important part, however, is that you tend to recoup those costs over a long period of time. No one is guaranteed to make money in the long run for a variety of reasons, but if you plan to make money, you have to plan on doing it over the long run (talking crafting again). If you get it back fast, then that's awesome, but chances are you won't. So that's what I meant when I said it tends to be the opposite of what many crafters say. The fact that you sink costs before making things isn't what makes crafting worth less over the long run. The fact that those costs are sunk, and therefore don't increase over time, is what allows you to make money in the long run. But many crafters invest their time, expect short term results, and when they don't get them, declare the whole activity to be "worthless."

Or the ones who figured out the rate at which you get credits is more than enough to afford all of those things and still buy nice things.

You missed the point. The BOP recipes that he's talking about would make BOP items that were better than equivalent items (pvp/rakata/ops whatever). That's the benefit. There's no need to make the items resellable because that breaks the incentives for people to do those other things. Instead of the best reward going to someone who participated in an Op, they would go to anyone on the server who could purchase it from a crafter who participated in an Op.

FYI: Not every lower level biochemist actually *has* the schematics for the reusables. I have biochem, and I would rather just buy the reusable for my current level than spend time trying to learn it, provided the price was reasonable (i.e., cheaper than it would cost me to learn and make it myself).

The opposite is true. Crafting is difficult to justify in the short run, because that's the only place where the investment is out of sync with profit. Once you learn what you need, you don't have to do it again. After that you spend a tiny fraction of the time just queuing up items and listing them. People who complain about crafting as a "money sink" are the ones taking a short view. In the long run it tends to behave as the OP described. It's just how manufacturing works. You have to invest a lot up front in making a product, and make it back and then some in smaller pieces over a long period of time.

This is only partially correct. Alchemists did not have a statistical advantage over other professions because every profession had a "perk" that none of the other professions had, which all amounted to the same statistical bonus. Alchemists did, however have an increased effect and duration on the elixirs/flasks they drank, which gave them a statistical bonus over non-alchemists who consumed the same items. See Mixology. A non-alchemist wouldn't get the same effect from a flask (i.e., stim), but they would get a different bonus from their own profession that was equivalent.

Absolutely. But crafting materials can be turned into gear, which ultimately leads to the same place.

Player choice just means there are multiple ways to play the game and advance. It doesn't mean (nor should it) that it literally doesn't matter what you do because everything yields the same results. The fact that there are some things unique to one or more playstyles doesn't invalidate the choice to engage in the others. It just makes it more compelling to try different things. Instead of looking at it as punishing the guy who doesn't want to PvP or the gal who doesn't want to PvE, look at it as rewarding the people who experience both. Sure, they don't want to "force" you do do something that you don't like just to play the game, but they want to encourage you to experience all the game offers, and that means giving you a reason to step out of your comfort zone.

Okay, but those three things are enough to make it profitable.

This is incorrect on a couple of levels. The first is that they can't always get better from vendors. Techblades are a prime example of this. Another example is that there are "holes" in what the vendors sell, even when their best items are equivalent to what crafters make. For instance, a vendor might have a level 13 "skill" barrel and and level 18 "patron" barrel. A crafter might have a level 15 "skill" barrel. So a level 15 character might want to buy the crafter barrel rather than go with the lower level barrel with the right stats or waiting until higher level for the barrel with the "wrong" stats. The second reason is that people don't always have enough commendations to buy every single upgrade on a tier, even assuming that they are available. They might have skipped quests or flashpoints. They might have chosen different rewards. It could be any number of things. But at the end of the day they may have enough to get boots or a barrel but not both, or they might have enough for themselves but not their companion(s). Having a companion with updated gear makes leveling so much better when you aren't in a group that it's not even funny. They are so much easier to gear up through the GTN, provided that crafters stop wallowing in self-pity and actually put the stuff up for sale.

People who realize that the point of imaginary money is to spend it on imaginary things. It's not like people need to worry about saving up for retirement. People are too used to thinking of in-game money in the same ways as real money. If you spend all your money in real life you usually can't just decide to go get more, the way you can if you find yourself out of credits.

How's that different from only some force-using specs getting certain abilities? It's not like every spec of consular/inquisitor can "pull people to them with the force" (to use one of the OP's examples) even though they all should have the "same" access to it. The game makes concessions because it's a game, and they need to worry about balance in addition to fidelity.

Everyone buys crystals from artificers because they can't get them from vendors.

Low level orange "heavy" armor looks like light armor. You can keep that on and mod it for iconic combat (guardian) and look. Sages are only "ionic" if your only model is old Obi-Wan. Luke spent most of the films wearing normal Rebel Alliance clothes or pants/tunics that can be approximated in game. Vader wore heavy armor. Yoda didn't use a lightsaber at all (or fight, really) so up until the second trilogy people assumed that he would fight like a sage if given the chance (i.e., pure force). There weren't any other Jedi in the original trilogy. It's also worth noting that this game is not set in the setting that you describe (because if it was, there wouldn't be as many Jedi as we're used to seeing), and it was clearly advertised as such. I grew up wanting to fly in a X-Wing but I can't fault this game for not having them.

That depends on whether you count the Clone Wars movie.

No it isn't. You only "stack" willpower when you have more than enough health for the encounter, which includes whatever cushion that your healers need for "oh snap" moments. Tanks act as a cap on the raid's dps, which is why adding willpower scales very well in terms of threat. First, each point is 50% more effective because of your technique. Second, it increases the ceiling for overall raid dps by the total number of players who are trying to dps. For example, if there are 4 dpsers and 1 tank, adding 100 dps to the tank increases total raid dps by 700 (100 from tank, plus 150 * 4 dpsers). Obviously, increasing the ceiling doesn't do anything if your dpsers are maxxed out on the dps they can do. But they should be getting upgrades and learning how to play better along with you, which means they will start increasing the dps they can put out. You need to stay ahead of them.

But the healer can't compensate for the lost dps that comes from the actual dps players having to throttle themselves to keep from pulling aggro off you, and this dps is multiplicative and cumulative. If you do 100 more dps, then every dps can do ~150 more dps without pulling off you. This gets further multiplied by the number of dps in your group. If you have threat lockdown (meaning that every dps can go all out at maximum efficiency without pulling from you) then it comes down to personal preference of course, but it is a mistake to assume that current threat lockdown will continue when the dps players are gaining threat at a much faster rate than you are (they aren't gearing for survival at all -- only dps, even on secondary stats), or when they are simply getting better at playing their specs. As a tank, it's easy to focus on making things easier for your healer, and there's no faulting anyone for caring about that. But they aren't the only ones you need to look out for. Again, as a tank, your job isn't just to survive. It's to make sure that everyone else survives, often by literally stealing the spotlight from them. You need to create the best environment for the healers to to their jobs AND for the dpsers to do theirs, which means that every close call can't mean you cater to the healers. You have to throw a little appreciation toward the other guys from time to time. Nothing is so humbling as when you, as an overgeared health-stacking tank, watches an overgeared dps-stacking damage dealer spend half the fight getting the attention from mobs that you're supposed to be getting, and watching your healer scramble to keep him up. All that extra health cushion doesn't amount to anything if the boss keeps getting distracted by squishier targets. It helps to build some threat cushion too.

WoW has several +percent health mechanics. They didn't break anything, and they were more powerful than these (typically, they are "increase maximum health by 30% for x seconds.").

It will have an icon of an opened padlock next to it indicating that it was "unlocked" by the mission discovery item.

They were thinking that the items would be used by people who could use them, and not by people who couldn't. Both of those skills expressly say that they need a double-bladed lightsaber to use. You can't rely on the animation over what the actual skill description says.

This is where the logic train keeps derailing. Why is it that being unable to raid, and therefore unable to craft certain items without raid-gained materials and schematics means you have to quit? They are going to make more content. It might not happen before you exhaust all that you personally are capable of doing, though. This is true of every single game there is that relies on content delivered from the game company. What happens when you do all the content available to you at least once? The same thing that happens when you finish Halo or Mario Brothers or Frogger. You either stop playing until new content comes out, or you go back and repeat content (perhaps from a different perspective, or to pick up something you missed). You have at least 8 different stories to play before you're "done", even assuming you don't raid, or PvP.

It's not the same at all. But the point is it doesn't have to be. People are right that players probably care more about their own characters than their companions, but that still doesn't mean that they don't care about their companions. If you sell something, you don't get a message saying, "I bought this from you because it's the most important thing in the world to me right now." You just get credits. The reason they end up in your mailbox is immaterial. Plus, if you accept the logic that players will never spend credits on gear because they will only use commendations (and I'm by no means saying that you have to accept that), then the only thing that anyone needs to spend money on are consumables, vanity items and stuff for companions. Credits don't do anything for you if they sit in your inventory, so why not buy some droid and ship parts?

No, that's not what they are saying. They are saying that X is the value where the healer can keep you alive 100% of the time, not where you can be kept at 100% HP all of the time. For all they care, you could spend most of the fight at 50%. All that matters is that you don't perish. The math doesn't make sense any other way. If you have 40k health and take 5k damage, it takes a 5k heal to get you back to 100%. If you have 30k health and take 5k damage, it takes the same exact amount of healing to get you back to 100% -- 5k. More health affects the amount of time the healers can wait before starting to heal you back to full, but it doesn't affect the amount of healing you need to get back to full. That's a function of boss dps. Another complicating factor is that people keep talking about willpower as dps, and tanks don't "need" dps because it's not their job. Willpower is threat. Threat is absolutely part of a tanks job. The part of the discussion that gets short shrift is that the dps players are upgrading along with you. If you have "enough" health (we've been calling that 'X') and you upgrade +10 end and +5 willpower, while your dps players upgrade +5 end and +10 willpower (or cunning, or str, or aim) then their threat is increasing at 2x the rate that yours is. But you only generate 50% more threat from your stance. As these upgrades continue, they will start to creep up on your threat. Nothing wastes healer resources more than a dps who ganks aggro, especially if they die and make the fight last longer. Similarly having dps players who throttle back because they are afraid of pulling aggro from you also makes the fight last longer than it needs to and wastes resources. WoW addressed this (I'm not treating a game that millions of people play like it's Lord Voldemort) by mechanics that turned end (there, stamina) into a dps stat for tank specs who actually were taking damage, so that they gained more threat to keep pace with dps players who were upgrading). We don't have that mechanic here, which means that you're doing a disservice to the whole group by refusing to consider dps stats once you have a comfortable level of health for the encounter.

The reason you want to do it sheds light on the reason why you can't. For one, the developers only need to worry about the balancing impact of a crew skill on one class at a time, instead of the various permutations of multiple skills. Similarly, once you eliminate "hard choices", you end up with no choice. There's no reason every jedi tank(for example) wouldn't be artifice, biochem and cybertech.

I truly am sorry that you aren't enjoying yourself in game as much as you could, but I don't know that you ever will if you're going to equate "not doing everything I ask immediately" with "not making any effort." They are making changes to support RP, and they are a high priority for the devs at that. It just so happens that PvE/PvP players might also benefit from those changes. It seems kinda selfish to only count efforts that don't apply to any other players besides RPers, assuming that such things even exist.