True but giving the players those tools effectively allowed us to farm ever more efficiently. Those old maps still took some time to finish but many of the AE maps such as those super or freakshow farms took at most 10-15 minutes per run. It essentially relegated PS to a purely reactionary role as they had no idea how players will adapt to the latest patches/fixes. IMO that was probably not such a great idea and the main reason why I can't think of any MMO developers implementing the same ideas before or since.

SS/Fire brute ftw. And the various Freakshow farms before the fixes, yum. Oh and the fire farm after. Meh, the list goes on. Seriously I can't figure out why PS put in AE. Was it because they thought "aw f*** it, the game will probably shut down in 2-3 years so let's just throw this bad idea in and have a fun experiment"? Or did they actaully believe it was a good idea to let the players build their own content despite being aware of the long-running popularity of TV/Nemesis farming (on CoV side at least)?

Weird double post, deleted.

An expedited leveling path is nothing new to MMOs of the modern generation. The hardcore leveling grind we saw during the first and second generation of mass appeal MMOs such as EQ/AC/FFXI/DAoC is pretty much dead and buried with the exception of some Asian (especially South Korean) MMOs such as the Lineage series. If you thought leveling is quick in TOR, you should have played CoH/CoV after Mission Architect came out. 1-50 in 3-5 hours if you really tried. *That* was ridicilous and it persisted despite various efforts and months of patching by PS/NCSoft to fix each new exploit/bug that would pop up thanks to a rather resourceful scenario builder base.

You are underestimating just how many people are buying them and *will be* buying them once preferred/F2P finishes their SH rollout. On my server right now there are at least 4-8 pages of various types of Universal kits for sale during any given time of the day. Heck, even during the dead hours of overnight, the 5-10 I put up on auction are still sold 9 times out of 10 by the time I get home from work and log on the next day. Even right now I am experiencing at least *some* success in dictating prices by continuously monitoring whether someone undercut me, canceling due to low listing fee and re-adjusting my pricing strategy. With less people making them and less competitors, who is to say that I won't experience more success in dictating the prices? As it is right now and individually speaking, the amount of mats in my holds (all 5 pages of legacy filled to the brim with some overflows into regular holds) rivals the raw material stores of some guilds. With 4 slicers and 2-3 mules of each gathering/crew mission that I rotate religiously, it is unlikely that I will run out of material anytime soon even if I should choose to kick up my production into another gear. Yeah, you might have guildies who are willing to help you out by making them but what if you need 20 or 30 of them? How many guildies do you know of are THAT generous and charitable.

Yep, nerf crafting conquest so many people will stop bothering with invasion force and uni/industrial/synethic kits. I on the other hand will continue pumping them out by the dozens on a weekly basis and do my utmost to force a progressive inflation of prices. Hmm, now that I think about it, I might actually be inclined to increase my production rate since the GTN supply of raw materials will be unchanged but my profit margin with each finished product will be even greater. Excellent. Enjoy the limited availability and increased cost if you're not a crafter

Crafting actual items has to be rewarded with conquest points on a per unit basis. Why? Because it supports the entire in-game stronghold-related economy. Right now the going rate of decoration components such as universal kits, Dark Projects or Invasion Force are heavily suppressed due to high availability. Taking away the incentive for people to craft them could easily translate to a two to three fold increase in GTN prices. Have fun paying 150-200k for Universal MK-3s or 800k for Dark Projects if you're not a crafter. Speaking as a crafter and without speaking for others, *I* can assure you that should the supply of those above items be constrained, I will not be so charitable by setting low benchmark prices. In fact I will do the exact opposite and raise the prices as much as the demand will tolerate so I can laugh all the way to the bank with buyer's credits.

A hook limit of 500 is insufficient for a place that is easily twice as large as Nar Shaddaa Sky Palace in terms of decoratable square footage. I'm currently sitting at 97% complete but some areas are still looking fairly empty (such as an entire wall inside the ship hanger). In contrast my Nar Shaddaa stronghold is only 82% complete but most of the rooms look "complete" and in some cases, cramped. And it's not like I just threw down a bunch of basic chairs, mounts or trophy pictures to fill up space. The overwhelming majority of my decorations are of the non-basic variety whether it is from FPs, operations, rep vendors, crafted or the cartel market. I have even taken down some exterior small lights and replaced several 3 hook-count couch/cafe table/couch combinations with 1 hook-count lounges to squeeze out more space under the cap. I understand that there are certain performance issues associated with hook count but I still hope that eventually down the road (and hopefully soon), an increase of 50 or 100 hooks for Tatooine would be possible.

Double post.

Tactical FPs with HM option like Czerka Lab and Meltdown (which random groupfinder loves) also have miserable drop rates. Nearly 3 weeks of running those regularly (HM and SM) now and have only seen 2 cores and no banners drop. Combined with the miserable drop rate of relics in Tython/Korriban and the abundance of research data in Manaan, I'm getting to the point of being inclined to believe that BW is simply incapable of getting loot in tactical FPs right.

Would be interesting but comm rewards can not be a part of it (or conquest points for that matter) Otherwise it would become easily exploitable as a way for 16 guildies or buddies to farm comms. Take Voidstar for example, one attacker would be the designated bomb planter/core runner while everyone else just have a battle royale far way to load up on medals. The match would be finished in under 10 minutes. Huttball is even faster as you just have people chain yank or form a ball passing conga line all the way to the end zone.

I just ran straight across the river and through the exhaustion zone 3 days ago while finishing my galactic datacron achievement. It's doable.

Is it just me or is NS stronghold very laggy during peak hours? GTN and legacy bank windows taking 3-4 seconds to open up. Clicking on the attachment or credits in a piece of mail only to get the error pop-up. All of this is happening while my latency is at 3-4 bars or between 100 to 150 ms. I haven't really noticed issues like these in my Tatooine stronghold and I'm uncertain with regards to the DK one as I don't spend much time there. Is anyone else experiencing what I described above?

Pretty much this. Once I hit the decoration limit (90% for Tat and 76% for NS) and come across other better things to put in, I will start taking them out.

The BW RNG is very special, didn't you know? It's the same RNG that provide us with 5 rich gift crew missions in one sittings, such benevolence! I am just so moved by these random acts of generosity, tears are welling up in my eyes. All game developers should follow BW's magnanimous example and make the gaming world a better place.

This is the reason why I'm holding off on purchasing jukeboxes from the GTN (for months if necessary) until more options come out so I can sample the songs they play

Eh, I didn't really want to hijack his thread and start listing off a bunch of solutions that may not jive with his suggestions. After all, it is quite clear that the OP and I both believe the current system is in need of some tweaking. On that note, I did start another thread a week ago about this very topic with solutions attached. Shrugs, I've been around the internet block for a long time (since the BBS/MUD days) and as such I have developed a certain level of bluntness and sarcasm when dealing with internet forums. Maybe that can come across as aggressive but well I don't know, I treat it as a mechanism to retain my sanity heh.

I'm not criticizing his methodology. How he run his crew missions and crafting habits is of course none of my concern. It is just so happens that my way runs into the unpleasant combination of random mission system and re-zoning quite a bit. I will even go out on a limb and say that I am far from alone in this. Where I did take exception were certain specific sections of his post such as not taking into account GTN pricing and lowered availability during certain hours while purchasing particular mats to fill the gap. Then I pointed out an inconsistancy with his statements which seemed to suggest two entirely different things (that he in actuality does use the re-zone method from time to time even though he is never in such wanting for specifics mats to bother with that hassle). A bit nitpicky perhaps but it just goes to show why using absolutes can be a bad idea sometimes. And finally, I disagreed with his assumption that few people bothers with re-zoning because I don't believe he has any realistic way of tabulating that type of statistic. Everything I have said so far is to point out the fact that just because a system is "functional" doesn't mean it can't be improved upon.

Far from it and certainly not in the detail that he did in his post, complete with ending it in the presumptuous I make millions a week without trying with my way(paraphased), somehow insinuating that it is superior. Great, here's a cookie. Go feel special elsewhere because my credit account is certainly not impressed. In any case, I have not detailed even once what I craft, GTN pricing strategy, or the mission pattern I use to supply the mats to support the continued manufacturing of those items. The most I have done is mentioned that I sell excess mats from time to time, run certain tiers of underworld missions or that I make universal pre-fabs and MK-9s. The primary purpose of my posts thus far is to point out the flaws and inefficiencies within the current randomized crew mission system and why it really isn't effective at creating a "mats bottleneck" that some people have suggested was BW's intent behind the system. I have plainly stated that such a system is an unnecessary QoL hassle on multiple occasions so I'm quite uncertain as to how you mistook that for me pushing my crafting "methodology" onto others.

Except there isn't always reasonably priced mats on the GTN, especially during non-peak hours. Selling overstocked mats is one way I also use to fund the purchase of certain mats that I'm low on and can't replace fast enough trough missions but again, there is a turnaround time involved. Besides, the profit that I generate from selling mats is pittance when compared to crafting actual items. Now, every dedicated crafter of univeral pre-fab kits will find themselves in dire need of underworld fabrics/metals at some point, especially the grade 6 variety. The price of those mats can fluctuate quite dramatically given the low per mission yield and long completion timer. For example, on my server the cost of ciridium can go from 1500 per unit and all the way up to 4k depending on time as well as on different days. If the only ciridiums on the market cost 4k per unit at the lowest, would you still buy it even though that would eat into your industrial or universal pre-fab mk-3 margin significantly? You just said: So if it takes several passes to get the materials I really want, that's fine, and now you are saying that you will never want for materials, certainly not enough to use the re-zone method. Just which is it? Consistancy please. Forethought and planning would also dictate that you should always be running missions to gather certain grades of material which have the highest potential of being depleted in the near future based on your crafting preference. In that case, it is perfectly reasonable for crafters to target specific grades to support their chosen area(s) of expertise as opposed to going with your "I'll just run whatever mission that is available in any tier so I don't have to re-zone" blanket approach. In fact, that mentality is more suited for the mats suppliers since it could generate a lot of excess mats of a particular grade if your RNG happens to fall in a certain direction for whatever reason. I wonder where you get the confidence in this belief from. Since we are on the topic of anecdotal evidence, I have characters in 2 different guilds (one large and one medium sized) and almost all of the serious crafters including myself (about a dozen or so) use the zoning method with varying degrees of frequency when we are not doing a FP, Op, etc. I guess we are just special. I hope you realize that this statement of yours is actually in direct support of changing the existing crew mission system to become more "convenient" and less of a hassle for the crafting population. Finally, I believe you are missing the entire point of this discussion or at least the portion of it that I'm involved in. Whether you use the re-zone method or not is irrelevant because other crafters do and the bottom line that it is an unnecessary QoL hassle that accomplish little in retrospect. You are not the only one who makes millions a week through crafting so don't assume that your methodology is somehow the correct one.

Actually not quite. Yes, upon mission completion the list will randomize again but the list also refreshes itself over time whether a mission is in progress or not. I think the timer is roughly 5-10 minutes(?). I never bothered to time it before as re-zoning is faster. If the system is designed in the fashion you mentioned, the above would not happen since every mission above tier 3 has a longer completion timer than 5-10 minutes. Forget me. If that is BW's solution then it is one that nobody should want. Choking off the supply chain on that scale would make mats and product pricing shoot through the roof. It would not be an exaggeration to say that crafting system would be crippled which is also why I very much doubt BW would resort to that kind of "fix".

Well jeez, make it clear that the whining part was intended for the OP. I thought you were saying that my posts were the whining ones even though I thought I was pretty precise in detailing the failings of the existing system. Now I will admit that my criticism of the existing system is a bit different than what the OP was talking about, guess I should have been a little more clear on that.

So if even you do not believe that this system is working right, just how is asking for it to be changed... whining?

Given the plethora of instant travel options available in game right now, the bolded part literally equates to a few minutes, most likely even less. Again I ask, just how is the current random mission system providing this magical bottleneck of mat supplies? I will reiterate again that as a purported "time sink" or "supply bottleneck" feature, this current random mission setup is a total failure when compared to the singular abundant mission tiers. Oh right, asking for a more efficient and better designed system of supplying crafting material is just whining One should always be complacent with "oh that's just life" and never strive to improve upon something if it is flawed You will have to pardon me for not partaking in such a... "casual"... life outlook. With that said, I'm not new to the SWTOR block. I started at launch and despite my one and half year absence, it has been more than enough time for me to discern the obvious flaws within the existing system. I will also say that it is the dedicated crafters who are supplying the products that you want or but not wish to make yourself. So unless you never buy any crafted products off the GTN, save your contemptuous indignance for someone else. P.S: The game is nearly 3 years old and this crew mission setup has never changed. How many MMOs can go this long without at least modifying or improving upon a feature of the game, especially one as critical as material gathering? Given BW's history, can you honestly tell me with a straight face that you have full confidence that they "got it right" in one single stroke, from the very beginning no less? Comedic.

Maybe it *can* discourage casual crafters or mats suppliers but let's face it, those aren't the people who control the market economy. The more dedicated crafters and suppliers are the ones who hold sway over the pricing of mats, products, so on and so forth. Take a look at the GTN listing for various high demand mats such as grade 6 blue/purple clothes and underworld metals as well as products such as Universal MK-2/3 fab kits and you will see that day after day, it the same roster of players who are putting 5, 6 or even 10 listings up for sale. Dedicated crafters and suppliers are not going to be discouraged by having to re-zone 3 or 4 times to get the crew missions they want. With that said, having to do such a thing repeatedly will remain a constant thorn on their sides and that annoyance is simply unnecessary given the limited effectiveness. In fact, I will unequivocally say that having only 1 abundant mission available for grade 6 underworld metals and clothes is having a far, far greater impact on the GTN pricing of those mats. If BW truly wants to bottleneck the supply chain then a far better way to go about it is to make that mission structure the standard for every tier.