This past evening I RE'd three separate max-level recipes from blue to purple. Pretty much the same story every night last week. For some other guildmates... Not so much luck. It is clearly a static percent chance to upgrade a schematic. I'm not sure why anyone would choose to believe they "deserve" to get a schem upgraded simply because they used a certain volume of resources. After all, no one forced you to RE the items you created. You could have used or sold them as well. If the disappointment of not getting what you want RIGHT NOW! is too much to bear, then perhaps crafting in this game is just not for you. (And get ready for even more disappointment in real life.)

Sadly, yes... Those out of the way vendors were selling our Chef's Brandy and cakes. Less so for the armor and weapons, and My droids were those preferred among the dancers and musicians. (To whit, I was the only DE on the server with the best of the best Phelobtinum to make DPS Droids. Same goes for our Chef... except his foods were CLEARLY better than any others made. so much so that most other places stopped making their own and just bought his... Sadly he had a much better supply train than the rest of the competitors who wanted to see him out of action. Interestingly, and sadly... based on the Excel sheet I kept from my time way back when... My net profit from being the second bet DE on that server, and the primary supplier for the biggest Entertainer troupe across any of the servers was... 10K creds I gave most of my droids away and I loved it. I think I'll not find that again.

There have been lots of replies for SWG... And they are correct, to an extent. I've never invested so much time into a crafting profession as in that game. Sadly... The crafting is apparently what killed the game (and by kill, I mean the @ss-r@p$ that was the NGE). Too many children and "gentle adults" who were late to the game took exception to those of us who had managed to (through good planning and resource management) create the best of the best products with little to no competition. I'm not sure how it worked on anyone else's servers but on ours, out town had the best Chef, best Armorer, best Weaponsmith, and one of the two best Droid Engineers on the server (the other was the DE Correspondant, I was the other). Our success, and ability to continue being successful discouraged new players from even trying to go into crafting.... And while yes, this was awesome for us... Not so awesome for the new kids. So yes, while I do believe that SWG's crafting/gathering system was the best I've ever seen, I can understand how it could be less than new-player friendly. Other than SWG... Nope nothing compares.

Crafting is not, and never has been (in any MMO to my knowledge) an investment in the character being made. It is an investment in any future characters to come (personal and friends) and post-end game money-making. The expectation of profitable crafting as one levels a character is somewhat laughable. Perhaps this is an option in some other poorly designed games, but I'm happy this does not seem to be the case here. If one chooses to focus on crafting, they can not possibly expect to keep up in gear. If One chooses to have the best gear through purchase, they should not expect to be able to "keep up" with crafting. These are simple choices built into the game, and built into most games of this type. This should not be a surprise, nor an alarming discovery except to those who have had everything handed to them on a platter in their gaming lives. Crafting is an investment in the future. If future profit does not interest you, skit it. You'll be fine.

I'm hearing " I don't like crafting, therefore crafting is boring!" Protip: You're allowed to change your crafting/gathering skills at any time. Feel free to do so if you feel Artifice is not for you. I, on the other hand feel that the full potential of Artifice has not yet been explored or developed. I'll stick with it for another WEEK before making a judgement on how successful or unsuccessful it might be. PS, Yeah I was in prelaunch, bfd. Its been ONE WEEK... If you honestly think you can judge a game on that much time you're a fracking genius and should be doing much more with your life than complaining about a game most folks are happy with. (Or who are at least intelligent enough not to QQ about a game ONE WEEK into its launch).

ok, bye.

Congrats on playing on a poor computer and/or internet connection. There have been no problems from either myself or any of my gulidmates as you have described. Sometimes when a problem is presented, the best place to look for blame is inward.