As some have said, comparing RE chance in a vacuum of the crafter world, one may be able to debate the value of raising RE chances. But its not in a vaccum. the fact is you can get Epic quality gears for much less effort in other disciplines. the problem is that relative to every other means of obtaining high level gear, crafting is far inferior. Keeping the RE chances at max level low, may make your items more valuable versus crafters, but versus raiding, commendations, pvp and all the other ways to get gear its a waste of time. also the op is focusing on earpieces which have a lot less competition than other crafts, so his view is a bit a skewed. synth armormech arms and artifice are competing in almost all their gears with every other form of gear obtainment, so the fact that RE is low is a huge blow to crafting. keep in mind making crafting something that only 3% of the populace do, and only 1% is successful at almost guarantees that it will be ignored for future content, getting the best gears, and customisations. The developers will not put a signifigant amount of content that people want in the hands of such a small amount. So instead of just thinking about how much competition you have from other crafters, you need to start thinking about where crafters stand in competition with other forms of items coming into the game, because if you cant compete, and most people do other things to get those items, the developers will give less and less to crafters.

most, if not all of the gear styles already have an orange schematic in the dats, it would require no/little extra work the other points about social and pvp gear are valid, but it assumes a bit. most likely top level pvp gears will already have augment slots at level 50, and they will have an expertise augment in there. Social gears will need different answers, but social gears need some tweaks anyhow they are currently light armor, and no putting a guardian mod in light armor doesnt make it heavy armor, it makes it a light armor with guardian stats and a certain rating. for example light armor with a 70 rated mod may be 250 armor heavy armor with a 70 rated mod may bee 350 armor *not exact numbers just a representation. this may change in the future but as of now, social gear in battle is limited to light armor users. the main problem i have with custom crits, is it will invalidate most other crafting for those disciplines. synth weaving and armor mech, makes no mods, if the only thing of value they can make is an augment slot, it invalidates everything else. If crits are handled the same way as it is now, then the level 19 augment slotted orange will be way easier to obtain in cost and speed, but give the same benefits as a level 49 custom craft. What they could do is make augment slots come as second item when you critically craft an orange, with a level limit on the augment slot item equal to the level of craft. so if you critically craft a level 11 orange armor, you get the armor and an orange lvl 11 armor slotter item, witch allows it to slot any augment at or below level 11. This will make critting worthwhile, give reasons to craft high level armors, and crit them, and allow them to use the slot on whatever they want.

people who want off the rails flight sims, ehhhh whetter they do it or not, understand that it would be a fairly large project to do it. Another major thing is, in the movies they usually had one person flying and another at the guns, right now since flight path is predetermined, your primary control is on aiming, but if you have control of flight, you either have to come up with some sort of system that controls flight from aiming seperately, or you have to make it so you can only shoot in front of you. Essentially its all possible, but dont think that it would be an easy thing. Also i really question how much of the population really wants a flight sim in an MMO, keep in mind in general these two genres have vastly different demographics. Even if they do add it, they probably will have to minimize the content/rewards there, so people dont feel they are being excluded from content in an rpg, by a flight sim like game. also if they do change it they will have to deal with the people who actually like it, and some who may love it. Though they can do that by making the flight sim modes into different, and also non essential side stuff. but point blank is all of this is no small venture, it will take time, money and planning of no small amount. So is this where you want their resources allocated?

i think the orange aug on armor must happen, however it wont help synth/armor much if it isnt implemented right. and it will hurt every other non customized gear if there isnt ways to add slots. also supposedly almost every armor has a custom counterpart, but we see very few of these, there needs to be more ways to get custom schematics of different looks. i think that critting an orange recipe or, if they choose to make a add slot item, needs to be a top level craft, and it needs to use top teir mats. otherwise, people will just make mostly the low level ones and use that mostly. other problem is, since critting isnt easy, does purple offer anything stat wise that you cant get custom? i havent done the research, but if it does not, you are almost always better off getting an orange slott over a purple slot, because that will have more potential.

Custom slotted armor needs to be obtained specially, and probably only at max level crafting, otherwise your orange gear will be worn forever whether you like it or not, because it has an augment. Also orange recipes are too rare and uncontrolled to make it really feasible as a cosmetic choice. the fact is most crafters will only find a few peices. perhaps if orange was obtainable by reverse engineering learned purples or something, or there were crafting quests with oranges as rewards.

"casuals" are the ones who make almost every product that is a smash success a smash success. Super blockbuster movies? appeals to casuals Multi million dollar clothing companies, casuals itunes/apple casuals The goal of almost every business with a product is to get casuals to love your product, thats where your biggest money will come from. Its basic economics.

Actually, i disagree, every charachter is powerful, however, keep in mind that this game has a stage of a galaxy with multiple planets, the idea that there is what, 1500 powerful people across a whole galaxy is actually a really small number. Also when you consider each charachter is dealing with a different facet of the whole picture. Its a huge war, many things are happening all the time. All 16 plotlines are occuring in the same time frame, and they all fit in with each other without bumping heads (aside from the side stuff that eevry chr can do) As to the story being good, its going to vary from storyline to storyline, and also different people will find different things interesting. Also its not meant to be the ultimate storytelling experience that rivals the classics of literature. Its actually meant to be pulp, and thats fine because thats what it is. Now while a more interesting deeper story with great charachter motivations and what not is a nice idea, it doesnt fit into the make your own role world. Such world will always be limited by the idea that a person is going to make their own choices. Different people want different things, honestly, i see the complaints, but really overall i approve of the direction, where your whole entire leveling experience has content, and overall the progression is natural. As for the people who prefer a less involved leveling process, they actually took care of that, you can level from 1-50 fairly fast just doing dailies, heroics, flashpoints and pvp. You really never have to do a side story after the first planet. just because quests are there doesnt mean you have to do them. Another path is to do all the side stuff on a planet on one charchater and skip it on the other. For example i have only done most of taris on one charachter. On another did full taris, and skipped nar shadaa except for class quests. The game has options, and spacebar exists as well.

im not really focusing on endgame here, i concede, and even applaud that there are some rare hard to obtain schematics that require a number of factors to properly utilize at a high level. but there is still a major problem from 1-49. synthweaving for example you have one recipe for a bodypeice at 15 and another at 23, thats a pretty big gap. while there are recipes obtained through other means in the middle there, the only thing the game actually tells you, is that investigation finds schematics. i have like 170 investagtion, and i have seen 2 schematics, neither of which was for synth weaving. If you are supposed to reverse synth drops, they should tell which can actually yeild schematics, if the main source is from flashpoints or monsters, they should probably mention that as well. but to be honest i have rarely seen useful schematics on sale. what it comes down to, is the balance is skewed poorly if you need to spend 200k and 20 hours to obtain a level 26 headgear, when it only takes 4 hours to outlevel that headgear, and 2 hours to obtain a compareble headgear from a vendor, or a flashpoint. Y

problem is, while gathering items is fine, i would want to know if i have a chance of finding teh schematic, some items i would npc rather than destroy if i knew i could never make the schematic.

short and simple. 1. crafting doesnt make the best gears as most levels 2. most crafts have huge holes where they cant make anything good for a certain level range 3. Schematics are too rare, and/or not very intuitive in how you can gain them. 4. Some items can be REd but you cant learn the schematics that way. Either everything you can RE should be able to grant a schematic, or there should be a way to tell the user what has a chance of granting a schematic and what you can simply never learn. 5. SO FAR it doesnt seem like some crafts have anything special about them, biochem is actually a good crafting design. it is the best at temporary charachter improvements, cybertech as well. slicing gives you the most money (maybe will need a buff later) but most of the rest dont seem to have any benefit. feel free to add to the list here. I think the crafting system if fixed will enrich the game as a whole.

truth is, even post nerf slicing is still one of the better gathering skills, because as more and more people realize crafting is fairly flawed in a number of ways, other gathering skills are worth less. slicing still makes money overall, which most crafting and gathering barely does.

how powerful would your item have to be, to be worth that time? fact is people can get fully specced gear in like 20 minutes. on the flip side, looking at some of the other threads, you do in fact have to do some things like that for the rarer special crafted items. see the magenta crystal that i think, requires you to fly one place get a special effect, beat a boss, go behind him and gather the crsytal, and also to beat a boss and get a schematic from him somewhere else, assuming this isnt the only item like this in the game, they do in fact have things like what you want for crafting

honestly i agree with his post, in terms of how it was meant to be, the reason why slicing was OP is because crafting was too weak, they based your rewards for slicing on what they expected people to be able to make off of gathering/crafting with gathered mats. problem is, crafting doesnt make that much money, so therefor gatherers cant sell their goods as high as swtor planned, however if this ever changes, and crafting becomes something that people want to do, be it for profit or special items, then gathered items costs will go up, and slicing will stay the same and be pretty bad. right now though, i think slicing is still pretty good, because most gathering is not that good. Its definately the only thing that one can level without losing money or depending on GTN market.

I was thinking about it a lot, and i am overall on the side of crafting being able to make gear as good as anything else out there. However i do understand the need for a strong incentive for raid rewards. So my solution; have raids drops gears and parts that give bonus stats and effects that only function in raid areas. So essentially the best gear in the game for raids will come from raiding, but as far as regular pve, that will be from quests crafting and raiding. Also drop some customizable parts so that a raider can choose to have those same top tier effects in thier favorite orange sets. so essentially say for example the best of the best hardest to obtain crafting item, is in the same teir of the best of the best hard to obtain raid item, for normal stuff. But in an operation or flashpoint, it has extra stats, making it better than a craftable, inside the raids. The mods that give this effect to other non raid armors should be in a new slot and not require a craft to add. essentially this allows crafters to make the best stuff not for raid, and make the unique stuff raiders will want to socket with their special raid mods when they want a specific look. crafting gear will still be relevant, but not overpowered, and not required for a non crafter to progress. but crafting gear wont be any gimper than a raider in non raid scenarios btw, i think the set bonus and special abilities should probably be available outside of raids, i mean, it sounds like it alters the gameplay and gives you cool new mechanics to mess around with, and while a raid dude could theoretically do more dmg, you shouldnt limit special abilities, or new combos (from decreased cool down times for example) to people who want to play with 8-16 other people on a regular basis.