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

On Hydean Way the GTN is flooded with things for certain classes but NOTHING at all for my class/skill set. If people would look at what's missing from the GTN and made those items I bet the economy would be better than it currently is. Now there's a massive amount of tank gear on there but nothing at all for DPS at max level.

Wonder if we'll see any kind of compensation for this latest mess up? I was maxed armstech....took me 93 RE's to go from blue to purple lvl 50 assault cannon (sad I know but I kept count) with no duplicate recipes,cost me well over 2m for mats and god knows how much time farming for metals. Last week I bit the bullet and decided armstech would never be a viable crewskill and dropped it for biotech (oddly not so much for the consumables but because I haven't been able to find the implant I wanted so guessed I'd have to make it). Things went ok until I got the blue lvl 50 recipe I needed and started churning them out with my all-maxed-affection crew and got the "you already know that schematic" message 4 times in 2 days and NO other purple recipe,not even a cruddy one with presence on which at least would have told me the system still worked. So I've been farming mats for nearly a week only to be told now that I've wasted all my time and cash trying to make something in a system that they (I believe) tried to stealth nerf and managed to break? What about my purple implant? What about the ~4 million if not more I've pumped in? Bet that's something I'm never gonna see again. It'll be an even bigger kick in the teeth if those of us who've drained our coffers,our alts coffers and spent gametime getting mats will be rewarded for our hard work by people who've not had to go through our pain being handed an easy way to get what we've sweated blood and failed to get!

I must be cursed....had my issue with crafting a purple assault cannon last week and now I'm trying to research a hawkeye reflex implant with as little luck. So far I've had NO new purple recipes since Sunday but have had 4 "you already know that schematic" messages.Getting sorely tired of this BS,I used to love crafting in TOR until the last 2 - 3 weeks

I7 2600k @ 4.8Ghz watercooled Asus Maximus IV Extreme mobo 8Gb Corsair Dominator watercooled 120gb crucial SSD (OS and SW:TOR only) 2 x Nvidia GTX580 in SLI watercooled Corsair 1200 w PSU I get around 111 fps most places,down to around 60 on Fleet. I get all kinds of bugs such as quickslot,dialog choices and everything else onscreen being unclickable until I ctrl+u twice. Some planets load fast,others take around 60 - 90 seconds to load. Just in the last few days I've noticed a weird dropout occurring on words and numbers in chat ....it's like letters are corrupted and merge with the ones below. I honestly don't expect to have fps and other issues with a rig like mine but I do so I therefore suggest something must be badly wrong with Bioware's engine or their servers or both.

You wanna talk bad chances....I made the lvl 50 galactic blaster and it took about 40 to get the blue and then 93 to get the purple.I was hoping that the stats on the recipe might be wrong but unfortunately they were right and my orange upgraded cannon with daily reward barrel/mod/enhancement was way way better,even after mastercrafting the cannon! Not sure if this bug has been reported yet but on my biotech I got the rekata recipes and I have 2 biometric crystals but they show up as having zero in the crafting window ,however,it correctly shows that I can craft my rekata reflex stim with the ingredients I have.

I'd just like to say that Armstech is in itself a HUGE bug.My only advice to anyone starting out is DON'T choose armstech. I finally managed to crit a level 50 assault cannon recipe up to purple and crafted a mastercraft and let me tell you,it is such a disappointment and kick in the teeth that something which should be of use is in fact MUCH WORSE than my orange assault cannon I've been using and upgrading since lvl 35!! It looks to me like Bioware rushed armstech into the game at the very last second and didn't consider the fact that: We can't make anything better or even equal to what people can create themselves with orange weapons and upgraded parts. We can craft one,ONE,item used in upgrading and most people don't bother buying barrels they just get quest rewards and/or commmisions vendor barrels. I have spent a lot of time,effort,frustration and credits getting a good list of purple weapons and I began to suspect a long time ago that I was wasting my time but persevered hoping to be rewarded for my patience at some point,I was living in cloud cuckoo land. So,yesterday I bit the bullet and dropped my screw skills (intentional misspelling) and took ......fanfare,Biotech! (Yes I know,I just read the patch and think BW have done this bass ackward....make OTHER crew skills viable,don't just nerf the one truly useful skill they had!) Sorry for the wall of text but I'm still very angry over the whole arstech fiasco.

I've been crafting on my artificer and noticed something odd with offhand focus recipes (only low level as I've just started).I have 3 or 4 level 31 focus schematics and they all have exactly the same stats.Am I bugged or is it the same for everyone else?

I've been noticing the lack of schematics for barrels in armstech as well,namely a total lack of skill barrels before around level 33.

Did world boss on Belsavis yesterday with my guild and several other non-guildies.A guildie was leader and we thought it best to have him as master looter and just have everyone do a /roll command so that it would be fairer for all. Only after killing the boss did we find that there's no /roll command at all. Surely it's pointless having master looter option without any way to roll for the items? It's such a fundamental part of raiding that no one even gave it a second thought until we couldn't actually do it! If there is a command like /roll could someone point us in the direction of it so we don't have another embarrassing "DOH" moment like this again please?

On my Rep maxed out armstech (weapon crafter) I've yet to find an orange recipe except the level 49 ones the crewskill trainer sells.Seen none from drops,none from crew missions and none on the AH.Is this right or how it's meant to be? It doesn't seem likely to me as I know armourmech guys who have orange recipes as low as 19 for some heavy armour pieces