Knowing the crit rate you can calculate the probability of a "crit-less" streak. Let C be the probability to crit (15% is 0.15). Let N be the number of attempts. Then the probability P of not critting on those N attempts is: P = ( 1 - C ) ^ N For example, failing to crit even once with 15% crit chance on 7 attempts has the probability ( 1 - 0.15 ) ^ 7 = 0.32057... or aproximately 32% chance. So, almost a third of all players will have a no-crit streak on the next 7 attempts (if they have no companion bonus). In fact, one in ten players will have no crits on their next fourteen attempts! If you have a thousand crafters on the server, that's around one hundred people gnashing their teeth and breaking keyboards. This is what the probabilities looks like: N Chance to NOT crit on N attempts with 15% crit chance 1 85,00% 2 72,25% 3 61,41% 4 52,20% 5 44,37% 6 37,71% 7 32,06% 8 27,25% 9 23,16% 10 19,69% 11 16,73% 12 14,22% 13 12,09% 14 10,28% 15 8,74% 16 7,43% 17 6,31% 18 5,36% 19 4,56% 20 3,88% 21 3,29% 22 2,80% 23 2,38% 24 2,02% 25 1,72% I am not a game designer, but I think it would be a good idea to use some kind of mechanic to limit the effects of extremely bad luck. On our hypthetical server of 1000 crafters, 17 people have not critted in the last 25 attempts. That sure does not sound like fun to me.

The purple armorings from Ilum works fine in my crafted level 11 orange. Why would it not work the same for level 50?

UT missions go for 80k+ because mandalorian iron goes for 17k+ per piece and you are pretty much guaranteed 4, plus some extra stuff. Everyone just has too much money.

I love the concept of orange gear, but I have to agree with you here. It's a really difficult nut to crack (1) BW wants people to be able to personalize their look through orange gear. (2) BW wants hard-earned purple recepies to produce attractive products. (3) BW wants both (1) and (2) to be viable for PvE and if possible PvP. I am not sure how to solve this. I know I want (1) because some armor sets are butt ugly and otherwise we would all end up looking identical. On the other hand, if orange ger is best-in-slot, we all end up looking the same because there are too few orange schematics. If (2) is best-in-slot, then we all end up looking the same and/or looking like clowns. If it's not, what is the point of having non-orange schematics? It's a mess honestly. I don't see how they are going to make it work.

I dont know what the RE chance is, but for sake of argument lets say RE has a 5% chance of giving a schematic. In probability theory a probability is always a number between 0 and 1, so it would be written like so: P[schem] = 0.05 The probability of NOT getting a schematic is P[Fail] = 1 - P[schem] = 0.95 To get the probability of failure N times in a row, you have to multiply the failure chance with itself N times, P[100 fails] = P[Fail]^N So for example, for the above 5% RE chance and 100 attempts, the probability to fail all 100 attempts would be 0.95^100 = 0.0059 or roughly 0,6% To put that in perspective, lets assume we have 3 million players doing 100 RE per week. Statistically, if we collect data over many weeks, we should expect an average of 0,0059 * 3000000 = 17761.59 players to experience 100 fails in a row each week. There are many methods to create a hard cap on consecutive failures, and I encourage BioWare to implement any one of their choosing. The current state of affairs is not good.

I have two theories: (A) The game devs logged on to the forums and went "guys, we have a whine thread about biochem here, lets nerf that". (B) The devs did a query of the server databases, plotted a graph of player levels and crew skill distributions, perhaps filtered to only players possessing Tionese Crystals. And then they didn't like what they saw. Right now I am leaning towards (B) but I am open to aguments.

For armormech on the republic side there is maybe a dozen orange schematics for heavy armor that I have been able to find. In the beginning I got some from underworld trading, but for quite some time now the GTN is the only place, got no idea where those came from. The "all green items available as schematics" was clearly an empty promise, or something that will be available in a content patch some day in the future.

I am a trooper and I hate parts of the Tionese / Columi / Rakata sets. As someone suggested, maybe there should be an item to add an augment slot to any gear. I wouldn't mind if it required a biometric crystal to make per piece, I just want too keep my good looking armor. Augment crits on orange gets the job done, but feels a bit "easy". And thats coming from an armormech.

You and me use a medpack (that costs X credits on the GTN for me, and is reusable for you). Me: * have to replace it for X credits, hesitate to use it unless Im sure I need it You: * does NOT have to replace it for X credits, can spam it whenever off cooldown * can sell me a medpack for X credits. After having used N medpacks, the difference between you and me is that I am -N*X credits lost, and you have at least N*X credits saved, plus N*X credits earned. So the net difference between you and me is at least 3*N*X credits. That is the amount of credits that you can spend on gear and mods that I cannot. Thus you have "made" that much money off your profession.

If they just keep buffing every time they balance, and never nerf anything, what will that do to the game? 100k hitpoints and guns that do 30k crits? Any company that take game balance seriously can not be afraid to nerf stuff when it is needed. Because the alternative is a out of control growth that will only turn the game into Bantha excrement.

First of all, thank you for all these changes. I was about to give up hope, but this shows that you are working on the issues that exist. I have one input to the above red highlight: We will have to craft a large number of orange gear to get these crits, please let us reverse engineer orange gear to recover some resources. Orange gear without an augment slot will be very difficult to sell.

Fixed that for you. In other news, SWG crafting still best evah.

Too bad it practically never works. I have stopped using it alltogether.

* Balancing all crew skills for both PvP and PvE, when they do so very different things, is close to impossible. * Making all crafted items BoE is not only very easy, it would also remove the need to balance them at all. Therefor I support BoE for all crafted items. To satisfy the "raid to deserve it" crowd, you could do like this: * Biometric crystal alloy drops just like now, and is BoP. * There is an additional mod slot in high end crafting gear that says "biometric crystal". Without this crystal, the item can not be used. * As we all know, if you put a bound mod in an item, the item becomes bound. That way you still have to raid to get the top notch stuff.

A dedicated PvP'er should beat a dedicated PvE'er on just raw skill and experience. If not, then the whole PvP system is too much about gear and too little about skill. The ONLY effect of expertise is to make skill matter LESS. After all, getting expertise gear is only about putting in TIME, not about skill. A pro boxer does not train hard to get purple shorts and gloves (set bonus!), he trains so he knows when to punch, dodge, jab, or go for the body. To get good footwork, strategy and reflexes. PvP gear is like giving all boxers that played X matches [boxing gloves with steel reinforcements] instead of regular [boxing gloves] (regardless if they won or not). Is PvP is about roleplaying boba fett versus unnamed tooper #6 ? Or is it about skill?

They should make all crew skill items BoE then I don't care how powerful they are.

I noticed this too.

Why would anyone be against fair fights? Arguing against it is saying "I want the odds stacked in my favor". With a population dependent buff to the losing side, all fights will be fair - one side will have numeric advantage, the other buff advantage. And the populations will probably balance out fairly quickly, because the only way to herd hundreds of thousands of gamers is by ingame advantage. Asking nicely is not going to do jack.

Easy fix: Make all crew skill items BoE. Then there will not be any need to balance dozens of items across four professions for both PvE and PvP (a nightmare job if you ask me).

Crew skill items BoP: * BioWare must somehow balance many different types of items for both PvE and PvP. * Players will skill the crew skill percieved as "best". * Much complaining. Crew skill items BoE: * Balance between crew skill items becomes less important - everyone can get the items so it evens out. * Some will take the "best seller" skill to make money, but supply and demand will eventually bring prices in line across skills. * Players will choose crew skill after what they think is fun. * No one *has* to craft, grinding credits in space missions works too.

This has happened to me too. Very annoying.

Not really complaining about the PvP state of SWTOR (I come from EVE), but what you suggest is not a solution. There is a level 50 sith waiting at the medcenter too. I had to use psychological warfare (read: almost naked guy attacking you with /kiss, /hug and /clubdance) to get rid of him.

If you have a million people doing random events, it is statistically very likely that someone is going to have almost only successes or almost only failures. Toss a coin, how likely is it that it ends up the same side five times in a row? Pretty unlikely, right? Now toss it 200 times and suddenly it becomes very unlikely that you would not have a streak of five at some point. There are ways to avoid extreme cases, such as cumulatively adjusting the odds a little bit after each consecutive failure or success. The result is still quite random, but you reduce the extreme streaks in either direction.

Biotech 400: your character now regenerates 100 hit points every second. The above statement is not exactly true. However, Rakata medpacks currently give 5k instant heal and 4k over time on a 90 second cooldown. That is 9000 hp per 90 seconds. Thats effectively 100 hp per second. As long as you have taken damage, why not push the button? It's free. As an Armormech Vanguard, they would have to nerf bio / buff armormech pretty hard before I lose the haunting feeling that I have the "wrong" crew skill. My prediction is that no crew skill will ever give as much combat usefulness as Bio. Everyone takes damage. Everyone can benefit from stims and adrenals. Every class and every situation in the game benefits. What could they possibly add to armormech that equals 100hp/s heal and unlimited stims/adrenals?

To all the people disagreeing (or even smacking) the OP: How can it possibly be a BAD thing if all the crafting professions are made equally useful? I'm armormech and the ONLY use I see for the skill at 50 is making orange gear for fashion fanatics (myself included). And I could do that on an alt. If the biochem stuff is no big deal (as some are arguing) then it can't be a big deal to give equivalent abilities to the other professions.