All I can really comment on is the changes I have personally seen.I was lvl 400 armstech and getting an acceptable rate of successful RE's,anywhere between 20 and 50 tries with an occasional lucky hit,then suddenly I was getting the worst luck imaginable and crafting over 200 assault cannons over a 10 day period without 1 single successful schematic but a load of "you already know that schematic" messages which I'd never seen before. So,I must have been very lucky to begin with and then at some point I killed a black cat with a shamrock under a full moon on Friday 13th. That's when I came to the forums to see if anyone had noticed a change and there was this thread saying exactly the same thing I had been noticing and ,miracle of miracles, a dev posts in the self same thread stating that RE wasn't working as intended....didn't say it was broken,didn't say they'd stealth nerfed the rate and made an error in the code but would anyone really expect him to come out and say "we ****ed up,you noticed,we're sorry"? Of course not,games developers are like politicians and rarely come out and hold their hands up and admit to a mistake because it reflects badly on the game and may affect sales figures.

Maybe ask the developer who posted saying the RE system "isn't working as intended" but I guess he might give you yet another reply you don't want to hear and choose to ignore.

Also,has anyone noticed how hard (impossible?) it is to get a tank shield for your melee companion with +Aim on it? Plenty of +Str though.

See,this is the attitude of the youth of today,you complain at the drop of a hat

Yay,I finally learned the purple lvl 50 Hawkey NanoOptic reflex implant ,crafted 5 blues and 3 gave me a duplicate schematic and 2 gave me nothing,started making 5 more and voila ....first one gave me the one I wanted.It's only taken me around 10 days and god alone knows how many RE's to get it. Made me a happy bunny I can tell you

Did False emperor HM 5 or 6 times with the same party and every time we got a smuggler chest from him when we had no smuggler (|I'm a trooper).A friend did it with a smuggler in the group and voila,no smuggler chest but they did get a trooper chest when they had no trooper in the party......go figure.

Ah yes,the notorious "bell" hat.Wonder if that was designed by a gfx artist who was serving his 2 weeks notice before leaving for a new job cos NO ONE would intentionally design that and expect players to want it or wear it for anything other than a joke.

Look,I had max armstech before I switched to biotech and maxed that in about 3 days so it's not like I'm just comparing low level RE'ing to high level.I know how frequently I saw the duplicate schematic recipe while raising both crewskills and I know what sort of percentage was needed to RE to purple and it's definitely far,far worse over the past 2 weeks or so than it ever was before. I'm not new to crafting and want everything handed to me on a plate,I'd just like the system they say isn't working as designed to be fixed so I don't have to throw mats and credits at a broken system.

So my 120 RE's of a blue implant in 2 days and 4 duplicate schematics is normal? Odd that I never saw a "you already know that schematic" before a week or 10 days ago.

Ignore the trolls,the OP has a valid point. Why should one class have an advantage over another in any situation? I'm biotech and need loads of red goo and mutagenic paste.If I just use companion missions and farming nodes I can't keep up with my use for crafting,if I buy off the GTN the prices are just crazy and the amounts are too low so I farm them for myself. It doesn't matter if they have, or will,nerf the drop rates from mobs I'll likely still spend 3 to 6 hours every 2 days farming for my mats.Now consider a guy with a maxed out orange companion weapon versus me with Tanno Vikk,it may not seem like a huge difference and be "on a par" with others but if I kill 2 or 3% slower and have to spend 3 - 5% longer healing up than someone with a fully equipped moddable companion weapon that adds up over those 3 - 5 hours and I'm the one at a disadvantage. We don't want to make our companions OP,we just want them to be equal to other peoples and we want the chance to use the companions we've been given for the jobs they were intended to do.

Too many new crafters are saying they think it's fine,they've got 3 or 4 purple recipes after only 20 or 30 RE's,this may seem like the norm to them but those of us who've been doing it (in my case I swapped from max armstech to biochem about 10 days ago) know what the success rate used to be and know that currently the system is,indeed,broken. I'm not asking for every RE to give a purple but at least give us a sporting chance of critting RE and not learning a schematic I already know....It's for this reason I stopped RE'ing,just collecting/storing mats and waiting for the fix before I start crafting and researching again and I bet I'm not alone in this.

Yeah,it's not broke,messed up or actually not working as designed which is why a Bioware employee took time to post in this thread that the drop rate and RE'ing a recipe you already know isn't how they intended it to be and it will be fixed in an upcoming patch.The word fixed kinda implies it was broken,to me anyway. [EDIT]Sorry if I sound mean but it's early and I'm only halfway through my first coffee and haven't had a cigarette yet

Well if that's true it means it's some problem with his OS or drivers....his problem can't really be anything else if only difference is a SSD and a dvd rom.The loading should be the only difference a SSd makes.I suggest a full reinstall of Windows and all relevant drivers and see if that fixes his problem.

I had max armstech,loads of purple barrels from lvl 15 to 50 and I couldn't sell them on the GTN,they kept being returned time after time...couldn't even sell purple aim and cunning barrels for 20k each.As for weapons,I couldn't even sell mastercraft assault cannons (aug slot) for 30k each!

Red goo and mutagenic paste on Hydian Way are being listed on the GTN for silly prices......1.5k to 2k per single mat