ok well, looks like at that level its slightly worse, but that isnt always the case, but really my assumption is that crafted will beat it eventually, after all, you can get 2 effects added, in addition to whatever special effects the belt comes with, and in theory a slot. only problem is, they still havent made any higher level recipes that can compare with raid stuff, soooo your gonna lose out on stuff if you arent a custum user once they add the ability to take armoring off the purple drops.

people say these kinds of things but its not really the point, i definately agree that there is a problem, and will always be a problem when any game that has crafting, doesnt allow it to create similar level gear that you can get from other activities, after all, the point of crafting is to make items. However, that doesnt mean that an MMO RPG based on star wars mythos, should have a highly detailed, drawn out complex crafting system. It also doesnt mean the rest of the players should have no other feasible way of obtaining equipment for their charachters. I never played SWG, but from what you guys say, it is way to involved for anyone who is not a dedicated crafter, while i would like some improvements, and innovation in crafting, it should not be under a hardcore premise. What most of you suggest is the exact same thing as hardcore pve players who feel the whole game should revolve around players versus monsters, and should come from extremely complex super hard mode bosses that take immense amounts of time, resources, and the luck of the draw to beat. While Im not saying these types of mechanics dont have a place in the world, would it make sense to make that the focus of this game? not really. The game isnt about that. Its primarily and online role playing game, in the universe of star wars, its not a manufacturing sim, and while you may love a manufacturing sim, you shouldnt as a developer develop a game for one audience, and make a manufacturing sim a core part of gameplay.

long post, i read some skimmed some, initially i was agreeing with you, but when you went into the whole ignore all story thing, i was like, oh this is an rpg, it was billed as such, rpgs are actually games you know, a decent amount of people like being a part of a story and doing stuff in that framework. regardless though, i agree that a game that wants people to keep playing, has to have some mechanics that dont get old very easily. The dailies being boring is spot on, in fact i was a bit surprised with some of what they chose as dailies, they had some more interesting other quests, that you might have to repeat like 5 times before they bore you greatly, instead of most of them that they chose that you never have any desire to do again ever. crafting is also illogical, but i think this occured as a last ditch change when they decided raids should have the best gear, i mean a lot of the schematics exist in the dats for stuff we cant make. My solution? get rid of the gear focus of progression for endgame content. Give people skills, traits and abilities directly to their charachters for their work. IE beat the boss, you have a chance to gain "insight" or "understanding" do it repeatedly and some one who is more knowledgeable (npc) can give you "insight" which you can use to get traits for your charachter like say, dmg reduction, shorter cool downs, even new skills. Its essentially the same as gear, however it doesnt bump heads with crafting it also doesnt burn up your inventory. Crafting should be controlling the effects and looks related to items. There is no reason to have a crafting system at all if it cant give you gear in the end, or customize your looks. Its like become a master crafter if you wish, but realize you will never make anything as good as "insert raid drop here" I also think it would be more fun, and logical for raids to give skills and traits, and you learn certain things from certain encounters, rather than it magically drops a bunch of items it should never have had, escpecially in a game with jedi, you mean a jedi is only as good as his robes?

uhhh that was math, i dont hate math, some would say i was good at it, but that was math, not crafting. I mean, i guess gun creation could be math, but even then it really isnt. Truth is a lot of people have differnt things they want out of crafting, from what you guys are saying swg is like crafting wise, i would rather not have it in this game. The obtaining of resources seems like a job, honestly i find it annoying enough here, and even i will admit its easy. I mean there is a lot of things i would change about this game, from what yall say swg is not the answer.

they are there because the game tells them to go to a warzone at level 10. as soon as you hit the ship before you know anything else it has a quest telling you to queue up, it doesnt tell you you will be matched with people 30 levels higher. also the game is billed as one you can use pvp to gain levels. your beef, really lies with the developers. If they didnt think people should pvp at 10, they shouldnt have gave them a quest telling them too, or they should have made a lower level bracket. To be perfectly honest though, levels arent so important, its more about the class and when it gets its good stuff, some classes can do useful stuff at 20, some dont really make sense till 35. Some only get bad *** till 41. back to the topic, deserter debuff isnt too much to ask, its not even a real penalty, though its just as annoying as if people afk do nothing or try to throw the match. There are a number of solutions, but really quitting shouldnt be beneficial, and now, it kind of is, because as many have said wins is the most important thing in order to get your gear. the loss of valor is annoying but, you get less when you lose anyhow, and for an imp, its like 2 or 3 kills in illum to make that up.

your measurement is off, rakatta is comparable to battle master, champion is comparable to columi. If you have a mixture, your not comparing it right. The other thing is the gears you get from these things, has stats decided for you. You think the stats suck because you dont like them, there are playstyles that may prefer them. Also keep in mind you can change mods and enhancements. that said, without expertise, rakkatta would definately be best, with it, i think battlemaster wins in pvp, the difference in stats between bm and rakatta doesnt seem large enough to equal the bonus dmg and defence from expertise. but who knows until you do the math. with the scaling though, it would definately seem like you would get more dmg from expertise versus primary stat, now endurance versus expertise, simply if you get a little more than 11% more hp, then it is better defensively

I see a lot of people talking about GW2, and saying its something its not. It goes both ways good and bad. One thing, guild wars is not just a pvp game, its also pve, and its about as in depth as the story is here, in fact some ways very similar minus voice acting and choosing responses. another thing guild wars will not be everything everyone hopes it will be, i see people saying guild wars will have X and Y and i have kept up with it, a lot of people are mistaken, it wont be the game of your dreams, but probably not of your nightmares either. Graphics of GW and SWTOR are probably going to be on the same level honestly, but GW is going tohave overall, a more realistic style, that may or may not appeal to you. Really though i think they both give you two different flavors, i think you can have both. As for swtor, hmm it has some potential, but i doubt it will realize it, the best way for it to realize its potential is to push its limits, however my feeling is the plan on SWTOR is merely to refine itself. Just refining what is here and the mechanics already at play, will not make it great, but it can be pretty decent and kind of fun even if it fails to live up to its potential. The real killer is the games bugs, that they cant seem to fix despite multiple attempts, the hacks that are becoming more common, and some issues with endgame balance in crafting/pvp/flashpoints/exploration etc. A lot of the interesting things while you are leveling dont really happen once you hit 50. Exploration, Solo friendly stories, crafting etc.

Ok somethings that are being lost in the discussion here. Firstly they said its not working as intended. This means it is not achieving its function. Understand some things, the rate of learning is not the same at all levels. talking about how easy it is at some levels may or may not be relevant You dont know how it is broken, the fact that it seems fine to you, may be because it is working as intended for you, but not for others, the way in which its broken may effect some users more than others. Computers cannot truely generate anything random, they have a pattern and they apply use of some value which they think should be random. However, sometimes that value isnt as random as they think it is or they have bad equations. People who think schematics need to be incredibly rare, not really, the mats control the schematics, not matter what you do, it takes 60 times as long for an item to be created from a low level epic to a high level. how so? well it used to take 2 minutes to run a mission for blue mats, at level 400 it takes about an hour, also things tend to use more mats when they are higher level. now consider some high end schematics, which take 30 minutes to an hour for 4 people to farm 1 drop. Rarity does not need to exist in schematic obtaining. Schematic obtaining should infact be a form a progression, not a form a rarity, IE its an extended means of leveling up, or training your craft, its how you specialize. Rarity is governed by the distribution of the items that are needed to make stuff. And for the whole rarity, and should be hard angle, stop comparing crafting to what you think it should be. the fact is crafters are competing, and often failing to compete, with dailies, quests, pvp. The reason why your items have no value? its not because of competition from crafters, its because your item isnt worth much. I think the RE rate needs to be fixed, i also think all RE items should tell you if they can yeild a schematic or not. You should be able to RE things you didnt make for a chance at a recipe. Also you need to unlock crafting of higher teir gear, i understand you want people to have a reason to raid, but what is the purpose of a part of the game for item creation, if it cannot create any items of value.

So at this point its too late to change the story line for every charachter, sooo what are the solutions? probably best solution is to come up with alternate storylines and adventures that you can use to level, of course you will still have to do the planets for your class quests, so they cant completely seperate it. also class quests and others were coordinated to take places in the same places as you go through them, so just doing class quest might feel a bit empty. lets say.... they tie some new quests or a different progression to Legacy. So once your legacy name is unlocked you get access to new areas/planets/adventures. These legacy adventures... should probably scale with level and party size, and have some different mechanics in place. your reward exp/items/quest rewards, should scale with level as does the difficulty This way its viable for any level ranges, and can in fact be different as you level. I would also try to make a branching adventure, where your choices effect the course of the adventure. In most stories the course of adventure is the same, although the choices may be different. Which bonus objectives you go for could be based on your choices as well. The branching should also extend to taking you in a different direction. Think of it like this, a sith and a jedi would basically have the same options, the choices would set them on different paths, not the fact they were a jedi. for ex, kid is dying, you help the kid you go down a path of helping the kid, you let the kid die, you go down another path, you kill the kid and people are after you. Essentially if your going to have to repeat the content, you can take it any number of differnt ways story wise, content wise it will be different most of the time, but even when its the same, what objectives and your play style will alter it. for example a stealth class will go for the be undetected bonus maybe and seek to clear an area fighting only the big bosses, and get bonus exp/reward for that. A fighter might seek to trip an alarm and fight waves of enemies in the first room until the boss actually comes to get you himself (a survival mode essentially) and get bonus exp for that. Blah blah, already too long a post, but just how i think they could handle the issue of repeatable interesting content incorporated into the current system, which might not feel that grindy, but still works with a story/adventure heavy focus. The story arc doesnt need to be super long, remember this unlocked through legacy, and these people have already done leveling at least to 31, you could make it unlock at a legacy level that means they got at least enough exp to have gotten to 50 on one chr. Lets say its a 3-5 part story depending on which paths you follow. and can take you to various different locations (with different play mechanics depending on locations)

yeah you are, but most people are, so no big deal.

When i say you are ignoring the path, path of good and bad is essentially based in actions, and in action, sith are basically following as close to a definition of evil as we can come up with. fir pain power and emotion, as a path to enlightenment might be neither good nor bad, but the siths as it is represented currently and in the past in all its forms in practice has been one of evil. Also the ultimate goal of the sith is a self centered one, of becoming all powerfull and thus free, wheres as the goal of the jedi is to become one with the force. Which even though i said it was the same goal before, is really not come to think of it. Fact is, in practice the sith are evil, while i do think its possible to extrapolate a path based on some what sith idealogy that isnt evil, it wouldnt really be the current or past incarnations of the sith that exist in this fiction. It isnt so much that the sith get lost on the path, and become sith path is set up to make one more evil, if you try to solve the problems with self pain (which would amount to sacrifice) they would say you are a fool and not very sith. if you try to rely on love, joy or happiness (emotions to manipulate the force) they would say these are weak emotions that make you weaker. if you tried to gain power through building trust and loyalty, they would say you are a failure. The sith path as basically about destroying people, harming themself and others, trusting no one, building fear anger and despair in all those around you/self, while exalting self and pushing everyone else down, in practice, for all sith, this is what they are taught, this is what they actually believe, its not just a saying, they really are essentially evil. jedi are actually more gray than sith.

all indications are that all stories are happening at once, some charachters and happenings are represented in passing in other stories at the very least. However the world stories (anything that is not class) is offered to anyone, and is probably not considered to actually belong to any one charachter

once again, real world comparisons arent accurate because sith arent these type of things, also what your doing is ignoring the path since your saying they end up in the same place. But the path is the point here. the sith are essentially evil because they have to be in order to be proper sith. Until some new sith is formed, it basically is a path of doing evil to gain power so one can become the ultimate power and thus be free of everything. It would however be interesting to see some one who was so powerful they could basically achieve the sith code without following the actual real path sith take, while still being accurate to the code, but that hasnt happened yet in any of the fiction.

you have some interesting ideas, but really the sith are evil. Its not just a different institution, and its not just the movie sith. Now if you compare it to real things, it wont work because its not real. Being kind is not sith, some sith do it, but its frowned upon Not being self centered is not sith. Causing pain, sadness suffering and hatred in oneself and other gives sith strength Sith purpose is to gain as much strength as possible, so doing the above is reccomended. Its not just a simple case of different idealogies, sith are genuinely aligned to things most people would link to evilness, in the histories, in movies and etc. Maybe one day a new sith will be born that is more of simply a style choice, but as it is and was, they are basically a force of evil.

prolly late here, but the sith dont really embrace love, its seen as making one weak, they will use it sometimes but so do the jedi. The passion they refer to is generally to lust the attachment is a selfish one. Basically the problem with the sith isnt just that they believe in using emotion, its that they decided that fear anger etc, are stronger emotions and are therefore more useful, In fact the problem with sith is it is ultimately about power, any means towards it, and glorifying power. Palaptine really wasnt an off sith, he was par for the course, he was just really good at it. The whole jedi versus sith thing is tricky though, i dont know all the history, but i do believe they were in some fairly crazy wars. I will say jedi is not as perfect as they had hoped, but its far different from the sith which in almost all incarnations in the Star wars universe has been essentially an evil organisation, whereas at best you can say jedi is sometimes evil.

this game isnt a never get hit game, they have multiple enemies at once, often spread out, using range, also most tanks dont start with aoe taunts. not to mention soloing, and of course the obvious pvp. If no other classes got hit you wouldnt see defensive abilities in almost every class and skill tree. Its essentially an error and no mods do not give you heavy /light/medium stats currently go test it out.

again, you havent really explored the itemization in this game, for most crafts, and most crafted items, at max level it takes literally less time, even if you already have the recipes to produce an item as compared to getting an artifact item outside of crafting. running a purple mission at level 400 takes approx an hour and may not even give you purple materials, the synth itself will probably take an hour itself. Doing a your dailies give you commendations, which you can use to get the same gear. the reason RE needs to go up, is because epics arent rare, and they arent crafter only. Compare it to getting 4 commendations. or running a lashpoint and getting several completed rares per run. spend 1 hour, get 5 epics, money, exp and commendations, craft for 1 hour get blue material. whether one thinks the game needs to have hard to get items is irrelevant, because it is not hard to get epic level items outside of crafting.

Im just saying, it takes how long to do a hardmode? in one hardmode how many good drops does one get? now keep in mind 1 purple armor drop is dropping the equivalent of the mats for a purple armoring a purple mod and a purple enhancement. aside from this you get other random purples, and this is just one hour. also if you are getting a daily done you are getting credits AND comendations in that same time. fact is one player in a few hours, can get more epic gears not crafting than crafting. Right now there are certain items that have less competition from this, like earpieces, but by and large, the RE chance doesnt put crafting at a respectable clip compared to other forms of getting similar items. If RE doesnt change or schematics dont change, people will continue to abandon and ignore crafting, and the developers will likely put less content into crafting, after all if every hates and ignores crafting, you cant put really cool items into it. people will demand that they can get everything cool from fp or commendations.

i think he means for the item to add the slot to the actual gear, not for use every time you want to add an augment. ie use item, on level 11 orange, get level 11 orange with 1 empty slot.

Im not exactly sure what is the problem you are trying to solve? as far as people being able to buy prestige, 1. dont know if thats a problem 2. dont think the orange situation will add to the problem if it exists 3. pretty sure some of the mods will not be craftable, for example whatever set bonus items, will likely be raid only, and expertise mods will likely only be obtainable in pvp. so the money people wont really be able to but them. 4. as far as specific item looks, they could just put the custom versions in the appropriate content, and most likely will. btw, im not 100% sure but i am pretty certain that item level determines the cost to repair, and when you put in high level mods in old gear its item level goes up, so you are still paying elite prices when you use old gear with high level mods. (should probably test it, but i been using some old oranges, and my gear repair bill is definately going up...)

hence my solution, make crit crafts of orange gear give the orange gear and a seperate item which adds a slot for augs limited to the level of the initial craft. so essentially crit crafts are as rare and as useful as before, and solves the problem of people only needing to crit craft one level 11 item and be geared for life.

because you havent really looked, you are going on your own assumptions about the system. The issue is, purple mods while leveling arent worth a ton, becuase you level fast, and at cap they are obtainable by other means for almost every item and craft, in a way that is much easier than it is to get in pure time. every purple needs purple level items to be gathered, the only way to obtain these is to either do repeated mission runs, or to RE a purple item and get lucky, or to have it drop from content. at level 400 the missions that have a chance of procuring these have 1 hour long wait times, and low chance, if you can get the missions from slicing or on the gtn you can guarantee it BUT those themselves come from a random chance from a random long time mission so it doesnt change the over all equation much. Point is, even aside from the endless REs it is faster time wise to get commendations, run a hardmode flashpoint or etc to put the epics in the game. So while you are looking at your crafters as competition in fact you are competing with comedndations and raiding and even without RE at all, they can bring the items into game in less actual time. Even if you could RE fast, you still couldnt mass produce items because the purple mats required limits the amount that can exist at one time, and that amount is much smaller than getting these gears outside of crafting. The thing stopping items from flooding the market is not RE its purple level materials. Essentially crafters are mostly just messing around with each other, and by and large most of the rest of the community is getting their gear from quests, hardmodes, and commendations.

there is a cost factor, but honestly i dont think there should be one, at least not a prohibitive one. if pvp costs too much to die, people wont want to do it. I think from the perspective of an Eve player you see everything as a money grind, but most people dont want that in this game. i honestly dont really want to have to spend excessive time grinding money activities just so that i can have fun. that is waaaayyy to close to real life.

many people have suggested incremental gauaranteed RE chances, this would make the craft into a different kind of grind, and while that isnt necessarilly bad, I dont think it should be the only way. so i propose that for REing you should be able to choose to gamble RE or to grind RE, whereas gambling is a gamble, and and grind has a set amount of experience or tries or whatver to next level. Also a third option should be something that requires neither but uses some other form of content, puzzles quests etc, that can grant you a better schematic upgrade. (not necessarily REing but another means of obtaining the same types of schematics, ie redoubt _______ this would give you 3 primary methods of advancing crafting gamble grind task i think it would be a good spread.

ok some one else provided the proof of what i said, and it is in fact the case, go test it yourself. as far as synth armor, basically the only value they will have is the orange armor making, making rakata will be pointless because as long as its easier to make a level 11 orange, and get the mods from raids/heroics/quests/commendations. The key to my solution is that it still uses the critical mechanic, and it locks the extra item to a level requirement, this way if you want to use a level 11 custom gear at top level you can. but someone, somewhere had to critically craft a level 49 gear if you want to put a level 49 augment in it. might not have been clear so ill give you an example level 11 critical orange gear synth gives 1 level 11 orange gear, custom in armoring mod and enhancement for any level item 1 level 11 augment slotter gives any custom gear an augment slot that can add an augment of up to level 11. So lets say you love the level 11 gear and want to wear it forver, you need two things the level 11 gear and a level 50 augment slottter. the level 50 augment slotter only comes from a level 50 gear synth, so someone had to critically succeed on a level 50 synth to make this more clear you can use any level slotter on any orange of the same type, you could use the level 11 one on a level 50 armor or vice versa, its a seperate item that would come when you critically craft you still have fully customizable gear, you still have critical synth working, and you still have the same metric deciding how often you can bring in a slotted armor of a certain level into the game. another advantage is that custom gear would be priced based on how hard it is to obtain, to a consumer a level 11 slotted item has roughly the same actual value as a level 50 slotted item, at least with this suggestion, the slots will be available to the right level crafters who put in the expected amount of money/time/materials into the item. as far as pvp gears my assumption is they will probably already have a slot, for the expertise teir, so the pvper using customs, will essentially be the same as one who is not. as far as raid gear, thats kind of tricky, because it is likely way easier to get a raid drop than to critically craft a level 50 item.