I know the fan boys are going to spin their heads around like they need an exorcism, but this crafting system is the worst in any MMO I have played in the last 12 years. Good things first: I like the core structure where you use companions as the means to crafting. This was a nice touch. It frees up a player to do more fun adventuring rather than the mundane watching of a timer. I like the modability of crafting items and gear. This allows players to find a "look" or update current gear. There are enough skill areas to cover needed aspects of the game and decent separation between the skills. Negative aspects of crafting: Very little in what I craft has any value. For instance, my vibroknife will not reverse engineer into a higher pattern. This is a key gear item for me and it is fine if they only desire greens, but where does it say I cannot reverse engineer this? I spent stacks and stacks of ore trying to reverse engineer thinking it was bad RNG to fail repeatedly. Time and resources wasted. Because the knife is useless, the only thing in Armstech of any use to my IA has been the barrels. Even this has not been any significant advantage. The few times my friends have asked if I could make them some blasters, the time to reverse engineer and then make just the blue versions is very prohibitive. They end up half way through their levels before I can get them their upgrades. So, this forces a crafter to try and anticipate the needs of others and craft in advance, or at least reverse engineer in advance in order to address guild needs. This is assuming the items you a destroying even has an upgrade! The high end dungeon drops which must be farmed for level 50 gear = vomit. RNG on reverse engineering can be brutal. Best, a few tries. Worst has been 43 tries on a single GREEN item. The reverse engineering button is bugged and unavailable for hours at a time. I use to be able to farm ore, make barrels and vendor them for a very small profit margin. Recently this was stealth nerfed to a sheer loss. My barrel I was farming mats and making gave me a modest profit of just under 400 credits for a decent amount of time. Now, it grants a net loss of over 100 credits. This means that weapons, armor, bio etc, cannot gain you ANY profit not even marginal profit for your time and effort. EVERY single person in my guild has stopped crafting they find it that much of a waste. If I could do it over again I would have got on the slicing bandwagon and never looked back. The above is just what is on the top of my head because of the frustration I am feeling and in no way a complete list of the bugs and futility of crafting in this game. Why on earth would anyone want to put themselves through this much garbage for such minimal return? It is an enormous money sink with rewards very slim if any and does very little to be relevant to my needs as I level. Final grade = Implementation of a decent core structure is a failure. At best a D. For a game that has some brilliant moments, this oversight sticks out like a garbage heap.

I will disagree with the ego train in this thread about Snipers being capable soloers. Adequate perhaps if you work really hard at it or stay a minimum of 2 levels higher than your quest chain. I have played with the same group of guys in MMOs since the very early UO days and we have played numerous MMOs so we know each other well and capable players. In a group I am valued cause I bring good dps. Yet, when it comes to soloing they each do the content with considerable more ease than my sniper. I do not mind the challenge though, I figured it was going to be the roughest solo leveling class when I played the game in beta. If you work diligently on yours and Kaliyo's gear, you can make it through solo quests alright if you keep them 1 or 2 levels below you. One of the issues I have as a sniper is if I can setup and get the first shot off I seem to win consistently. However most quests move right from a cutscene into combat leaving me vulnerable. I have to setup, knockback and choose my target and by then the mobs have 3-5 seconds on me. It may not seem like much but it is just enough to turn the tide. I will say that mid 30s were the worst and if you use your shields effectively your survivability goes up considerably. It is a tough class to level but pretty fun and kaliyo's story was just awesome. Our companions, either kaliyo or Scorpio need some attention as they are too squishy with mediocre dps. if there was a companion that could hang in the fight just a little longer, our leveling proficiency could improve a good deal. We aren't broken, but comparing classes my friends play to my sniper I am certainly the least proficient for solo gameplay.

Personally, I think the Auction mechanic is one of the worst I have encountered in any MMO. I also think crafting in general is atrocious as well. Even if you ignore the bugs it is just god awful for being something useful while you level. Having trade skills being so poorly designed will kill the market and then add the horrible interface to the auction and you have a largely ignorable game mechanic. Before the fanboys go ape*&^*, I would add the storylines are probably the most fun I have had in any MMO in recent memory. There is much to enjoy and relish in this game but crafting and the AH or certainly not one of them.