Immediate Crafting Overhaul Needed

[Vexxem]

As it stands, crafting in this game except for maybe biochem is pointless. Money is also fairly pointless. Here's why:

 

First, perspective - I'm level 50 and a 400 Artficer, Archaeologist and Treasure Hunter. What I have to say applies to Artificer but also applies equally to the other professions because they get equally hosed. Yes, I've made a lot of cash. But I recently got to Ilum and checked out the commendation vendors. What I saw made me log off in disgust.

 

But let's start at the beginning. There are a few big flaws to the system and how it interacts with other systems in game to make it a big steaming pile of you know what.

 

First, putting mods beyond the basic green mods on commendation vendors and making some of them a paltry 2 commendations is pretty sad. With the RE system and the time and frustration it takes a player to RE and craft a blue, seeing the same blue on the vendor for 2 quests (and about 10 mins) worth of commendations is sad. Now, I came to terms with this a while ago and figured out it would be better at cap. No way would it be like this at cap. I figured you'd probably be able to get a lower level version of the mods from the vendors but player-made was going to be best. NOPE. It's actually the opposite. I spent hours of time farming mats, crafting and RE things to create an artifact hilt. The minute I hit Ilum, I checked out the mods vendor and not only was there a hilt one level HIGHER than I could make on the vendor, but it was also ARTIFACT and a measly 8 commendations. So, that makes me feel like I just wasted a ton of time hunting for mats, sending companions on missions etc. for NOTHING.

 

Second, making mods removable further destroys what little use they could be leveling up. This isn't as glaring as the above but still a problem.

 

Third, gear that comes crafted with mods ALREADY CREATED AND INSTALLED is mind boggling. So, when I make a purple mod, do I automatically get a purple piece of gear to install it into?

 

Fourth, modable orange gear makes it possible to use the same piece of orange gear from level 1 - 50 without any detriment. This makes gearing out pointless. It also hurts gear crafting. This is again compounded by putting mods on commendation vendors. So that system hurts all professions, really.

 

Lastly, as the system currently stands, and from what I've seen money is useless at cap. Noone will be using the GTN - everyone will just earn gear from daily commendations and PvP. Yes, I can make a lot of creds right now from the suckers who buy my stuff at lower levels but what is there for me to spend them on?

 

I suggest the following fixes immediately:

 

All blue mods from the commendation vendors should go to green quality and cost should increase to 10 commendations for all (why should hilts and barrels be 7 and other mods be 2 anyways?). All mod quest rewards should go to green quality except for the rare end-of-planet bonus series reward which can be a single blue.

 

All vendor mods need to be BOA. As it stands, I can buy blue mods off the vendors and put them right on the GTN - the same mods that it took crafters a lot of time to level up into. That's pathetic.

 

All Ilum mod rewards should also go to green quality and should be increased in commendation cost.

 

A new tier 23 of mods need to be added to the crafting tables. It should be set so that finding a level 23 blue mod from a quest or vendor should be very rare and a purple from those sources should not exist. Either this, or make critical crafting possible for mods with added features.

 

Mods should not be removable. Period. Or if they can be, bring back the mod stations and it should be for a RIDICULOUS amount of creds.

 

Orange gear should have innate stats. There should be an incentive to look for better "shells" rather than just keep putting new, cheap mods in your gear you got from Taris.

 

Orange gear should have a mod cap. I.E. - you can't put mods beyond a certain level in that shell. Again, there should be a reason to swap out your orange gear beyond just apperance.

 

As it stands, I feel cheated by the whole crafting system. If I knew then what I do now, I just would have gone biochem and that would have been it. As it stands, I just don't think the way things are makes a viable economy and a game without a viable economy is less of a game. Might as well return slicing to the way it was so we can just all have tons of creds because it really won't matter at cap anyways. Unless things change.

Edited January 2, 2012 by Vexxem

[Icedanno]

People...People. It's not like this game was made by a huge design company with a budget of millions and millions of dollars, ok?

 

There were obviously many, many shortcuts and design options that were put in to make it easier to program. Small companies often have to rush games out the door knowing they are not 'finished' because of budget constraints. If the game doesn't crash and burn in the first few months, they may be able to hire a few more people to design and program in things like crafting systems that are balanced across the board that they had to leave out because they ran out of time or money. It's not uncommon to see so few choices in a new game, especially one made on a budget or with an understaffed design team.

 

Keep in mind that if we are patient with the game, they may be able to afford to staff up to a point where they can...

 

What? This game wasn't made by a small independent company? What's that? Budget of hundreds of millions of dollars? Really? Well.. Oh, that's how many people were involved in making this game? All those... wow

 

Umm... never mind.

[Demonk]

Excellent suggestions

[Monoth]

This game was designed by Developers who have only really done Single Player games where the design is to cater to the one person... This design philosophy is also present in this game where it's extremely easy to be self sufficient. leveling crafting is extremely easy and anyone can do it which means there really is no point to the Auction Hall as you can just level up 3 alts and get all the crafting professions and make whatever you need.

 

Also the purple schematics are way to easy to get, I got a purple schematic for a spaceship part and thought cool I bet I can sell that for some $$$, check the auction hall and there were 30+ of the same schematic up for sale...

 

Getting PvP Gear is extremely easy also, it also has the same stats as the PvE Hard Mode gear so I'm not sure what the point is of doing these hard mode flashpoints since you can get your gear faster by just PvP'ing all day and it's just as good as the PvE gear...

 

PvE gear should have it's own specific stat to boost PvE play just like PvP gear has it's own (expertise), at least it would give us a reason to get our set of PvE Gear.....

 

I remember in other MMO's when I got a epic drop I was excited, in this game it's like "Meh" because you know everyone else is getting it to...

 

OP: I agree with the mods, i was saying the same thing over and over again during the 4 months of beta I did..

Edited January 2, 2012 by Monoth

[Malphas]

I agree pretty much with everything in your post. I do have a question for you though regarding the mod commendation vendor on Illum, he doesn't sell all the enhancement mods that you can craft does he? Like the critical enhancement? My point is, I believe you still craft some nice mods that cannot be gotten from the vendor.

[Terwilliger]

Here's the thing: with one or two exceptions, Old Republic crafting is about self-improvement; otherwise the available high-end craftables would be purchasable. Use it for what it is, demand it make available to you what it has for others; but please stop clamoring for the market to be the game.

[Manathayria]

I'm going to pick this apart a bit....

 

But let's start at the beginning. There are a few big flaws to the system and how it interacts with other systems in game to make it a big steaming pile of you know what.

 

First, putting mods beyond the basic green mods on commendation vendors and making some of them a paltry 2 commendations is pretty sad. With the RE system and the time and frustration it takes a player to RE and craft a blue, seeing the same blue on the vendor for 2 quests (and about 10 mins) worth of commendations is sad.

 

Agreed on cost increase, however. At lower levels all of the mods should probably be min of 5 - 7, would not set them much above that, and would not drop the value of what is being bought - at least not at lower levels. Those are the levels where you want to hook people in. Not drive them off.

 

Second, making mods removable further destroys what little use they could be leveling up. This isn't as glaring as the above but still a problem.

 

I'd be all for making mods fixed so that once they're on, they're on and gone - you're not getting them back. This would mean all of the mods would sell better.

 

Third, gear that comes crafted with mods ALREADY CREATED AND INSTALLED is mind boggling. So, when I make a purple mod, do I automatically get a purple piece of gear to install it into?

I rarely see purple gear with purple mods already on it. Generally if I do it's from a world boss. Get use to it, this is the wall all crafters generally hit at top end. Their crafted gear usually falls behind. Giving us epic mods that will be equal to or greater than some of the dropped stuff would be ideal. Usually those blue mods in orange gear that drop are easily replaced.

 

Fourth, modable orange gear makes it possible to use the same piece of orange gear from level 1 - 50 without any detriment. This makes gearing out pointless. It also hurts gear crafting. This is again compounded by putting mods on commendation vendors. So that system hurts all professions, really.

Sorry to offend you, but I rp - I like my character looking good. When I find the orange modable gear that looks great and is the look I want, I'm going to take it. I really don't care the source. Putting *more* of these orange pieces into the hands of the players and giving the higher up crafted oranges look far better than the low level oranges may be ideal, but I don't want them to go away. I like my gear matching dammit.

 

 

I suggest the following fixes immediately:

 

All blue mods from the commendation vendors should go to green quality and cost should increase to 10 commendations for all (why should hilts and barrels be 7 and other mods be 2 anyways?). All mod quest rewards should go to green quality except for the rare end-of-planet bonus series reward which can be a single blue.

Would think 5-7 as I said before, low levels are to hook people into the game, not drive them away. If mods are one use into an armor this is fixed anyway.

 

All vendor mods need to be BOA. As it stands, I can buy blue mods off the vendors and put them right on the GTN - the same mods that it took crafters a lot of time to level up into. That's pathetic.

Agreed.

 

All Ilum mod rewards should also go to green quality and should be increased in commendation cost.

Them being blue is fine, above what crafters can make isn't. You should be able to make epics anyway shouldn't you?

 

A new tier 23 of mods need to be added to the crafting tables. It should be set so that finding a level 23 blue mod from a quest or vendor should be very rare and a purple from those sources should not exist. Either this, or make critical crafting possible for mods with added features.

Again... blue would be ok, epic no... and if epic comes in a piece of gear it should not be removable.

 

Mods should not be removable. Period. Or if they can be, bring back the mod stations and it should be for a RIDICULOUS amount of creds.

Yes.

 

Orange gear should have innate stats. There should be an incentive to look for better "shells" rather than just keep putting new, cheap mods in your gear you got from Taris.

 

Orange gear should have a mod cap. I.E. - you can't put mods beyond a certain level in that shell. Again, there should be a reason to swap out your orange gear beyond just apperance.

Again.. I think just make more of the orange gear craftable. No level cap for mods - just more craftables that look good. I hated running around in mis-matched retarded looking gear in most other MMOs and enjoyed being able to get stuff that matches as a set from rewards that's upgradable here.

Edited January 2, 2012 by Manathayria

[Osodvus]

While I agree with many of the points you made, it left me to wonder how they relate to overhauling crew skills. Sounds more like an overhaul of vendor gear is needed. There are too many mods available which hurts crafters.

 

If you want to talk about overhauling crew skills, talk about duplicate items such as many of the enhancements at artificing 340+. They all have different names, but many of those have the exact same stats.

 

Even items which are supposed to provide a specific bonus combo do not follow any order. For example, I've found that some "Insight" items may have crit/alacrity while other "Insight" have crit/surge.

[Snackbacon]

This is such a great post by you. I agree with almost all of your points. I hope someone on top gets to read this.

[JamieKirby]

Well, the problem here is, none crafts for all level brackets....NEVER, that is why the commendation vendors are there, some crafters just don't care, beyond their own balance sheet.

 

Also, the Orange is there so that you can keep a look you like, i played wow for a long and there were armour in the BC expanion raiding that i just loved, but then, WOTLK came out and the raiding gear looked terrible, but you HAD to use it to raid competitively.

 

The orange allow you to look the part and still participate.

[Ossirian]

Good post, I've been thinking along the same lines but had some similar ideas. Here is the quick and dirty list I was working on:

 

Make everything re'able, even if just for mats

 

Make all quest reward custom gear green quality, all non-heroic flashpoint and vendor custom gear blue quality, all heroic flashpoint custom gear purple quality, and level restrict mods that can be placed on them as well as prevent the removal of the original mods from vendor and quest reward gear.

 

Add custom(orange) weapon schematics to artifice and armstech

 

Allow crafted custom gear(orange) to crit granting augment slots

 

Restrict all vendor/loot mods to odd numbered schematics and make them all green quality and price at 1-2 commendation

 

Make all trainable mods even numbered schematics, allow for reverse engineering of vendor/loot mods for odd schematics, add the endurance heavy lower level mods as trainable schematics too

 

The last two are dependant on eachother, keeping the cheaper price allows crafter to buy them at a reasonable cost for reverse engineering if they wish to.

 

I would also like to see them redistribute some of the craftable item types more evenly over the different crafting skills based on usefulness, ubiquity, and consistency.

 

Artifice: light sabers, hilts, crystals, foci, relics

Armstech: weapons, barrels, grenades, off hand weapons, ship missile magazines

Armormech: heavy and medium(tech) armor, armoring mods, ship armor

Synthweaving: light and medium(force) armor, enhancements

Cybertech: droid armor, mods, ear pieces, shield generators, ship shield and beam parts

Biomed: implants, stims, medpacs, power generators

[RadicalGene]

I agree with most of what you said. I was massively disappointed when I got to Ilum and found out all my hard work was for naught, and I could buy things for cheap that I could never be able to make with my capped crafting ability.

 

As for having them be removable I don't see how that changes anything. For a Purple it costs 22k to remove it from an item. Its not free. In general, it will still be cheaper to buy from a crafter than to pay the removal cost of endgame purples. However, that is killed by the endgame 23's that crafter's can not make.

 

My hope is that perhaps they come as Legacy Reward. Say you hit lv 5 in your Legacy and you unlock 23's and 24 schematics. Still require high end raiding or Pvp item drops, but the chance to craft is better than none.

[Figmentation]

Same thing, was just coming here to post a topic on my frustration and found one already existed on it. I'm a cybertech and at the moment the only useful thing that skill offers is the reusable grenade which is BoP anyway. So I leveled it to max for a grenade.... awesome.

 

To agree on a few particular points

 

Gear should not come modded

 

Removing mods should cost enough that if time is available going out and buying new ones is the preferable course of action.

 

Ilum commendation vendors should not be giving 8 com freebies that are better than the mods I sank serious amounts of credits into learning.

[CorporalJigsore]

I'm at Armstech 400 and it feels totally useless. Just had time to get the epic Advanced Reflex Barrel 22 before finding out that I can get better ones within an hour of dailies.

 

At the moment I'm trying to get a critical craft of the epic weapon recipe with optimal stats for me to see if they Masterpiece versions are any good. I don't have my hopes high that it would be better than my dailymod-boosted Orange.

 

If its stats end up to suck like I'm expecting, I guess I'll just stop doing Armstech until they really fix the crafting.

[CANOFOWNAGE]

This is why I chose biochem right from the beginning. I figured that crafting would behave like the early days of wow. Back then, any gear you made with blacksmithing etc was extremely underpowered compared to the gear obtained from questing/dungeons/raids. In addition, all professions other than alchemy had no combat bonus (those were added in wotlk). The same applies to the crew skills in this game. Everything you can make can easily be overshadowed by gear from vendors etc.

[Cichard]

All that needs to be changed is no vendor giving epic mods which I don't think it has. That way if the min maxers want to swap stuff around they have to buy the epic ones. also purple drops can only take out mod and enhancement not the armor slot so that's not an issue. But if I loot an epic I should be able up grade the orange look that I like with the 2 mods I can remov. Not everyone wants to deal with other people don't force them to play your way.

[Manathayria]

Cichard is right on his point as well...

 

The point about the mods costing 22k at the end to remove is also a very good point. If you're going to be removing epics from a drop to put into the orange I don't see how this can't benefit the people that craft the orange items.

 

Would go for just seeing more orange type armors crafted, or able to be Re for a schem (which would be auto learned - not a ton of REing on say... an orange that you just had to pay 14-15k at level 20 for, that'd be really bad).

 

Pretty much... I want to see a higher craft driven game - which this still has some potential on. They could simply add 25/26 mods that'd be unlocked with some sort of legacy or raid drop to top what's on the vendors. They don't have to remove what's in game, much less adjust it much beyond buffing and adding more to what the crafters can do.

 

This wouldn't even require changing what each skill set has available to make.

[RadicalGene]

All that needs to be changed is no vendor giving epic mods which I don't think it has. That way if the min maxers want to swap stuff around they have to buy the epic ones. also purple drops can only take out mod and enhancement not the armor slot so that's not an issue. But if I loot an epic I should be able up grade the orange look that I like with the 2 mods I can remov. Not everyone wants to deal with other people don't force them to play your way.

I've never heard of epic mods. But if your talking about Artifact gear, thats not the issue here. We're talking about Armoring, Mods, Barrels and the like. The things you can put in Orange, and some Purple items. Currently, you can buy better ones for about an hours worth of work or less where as if you craft, it takes ages, tons of credits, and you can't get the same quality as the 1 hour of dailies.

 

I'm fine with being able to take mods out and putting them into others.

[Anasazzi]

First of all, everybody is complaining that the mod level you get from illum is higher than you can make.

 

I don't understand why people don't use their brains enough to figure out that people can actually make artifact versions of the mod that is actually better than the illum version?

 

Your first argument nullified right there. What's disgusting is people who can't control their emotions coming to forums and creating hate topics like this without thinking their problem through.

[alrighto]

The schematics you get from the crew skill trainer is meant to be crap I think,

 

The schematics for the good stuff are from HM Flashpoints and Operations

[alrighto]

The schematics you get from the crew skill trainer is meant to be crap I think,

 

The schematics for the good stuff are from HM Flashpoints and Operations

 

This for example beats the crap out of anything you can get from grinding dailies

http://www.torhead.com/schematic/4lchvqk

[PureHavoc]

People...People. It's not like this game was made by a huge design company with a budget of millions and millions of dollars, ok?

 

There were obviously many, many shortcuts and design options that were put in to make it easier to program. Small companies often have to rush games out the door knowing they are not 'finished' because of budget constraints. If the game doesn't crash and burn in the first few months, they may be able to hire a few more people to design and program in things like crafting systems that are balanced across the board that they had to leave out because they ran out of time or money. It's not uncommon to see so few choices in a new game, especially one made on a budget or with an understaffed design team.

 

Keep in mind that if we are patient with the game, they may be able to afford to staff up to a point where they can...

 

What? This game wasn't made by a small independent company? What's that? Budget of hundreds of millions of dollars? Really? Well.. Oh, that's how many people were involved in making this game? All those... wow

 

Umm... never mind.

 

HAHAHAHA I almost went in on you with that first line hahaha, but I was like it has to be massive sarcasm or complete and utterly oblivious so i kept reading and now i give you praise!!!! EX-MOTHA-FU**IN*ZACKLY!!!!!!

 

this is the single most expensive media ever created, and they are hoping for it to be a gain, its going to take possibly two years from them to recoup the losses and stop the financial bleeding and make this game a profit. do we as players have that kinda time? to stick with this game?

 

AION for example hit 4million+ players I believe in it's first month, extremely long Q times and probably one of the most successful launches of an MMO similar to rift, small problems persisted.

 

with that I'm going to ask if nothing changes in this game by your subscription date will you renew? how about if they fixed some minor things of no concern but the huge problems continued would you go again? after the third month? how long will it take for your patients to run thin?

 

In 90 days I watched aion go from a high amount of equal players on both sides (because they implemented that), to closing servers, and dead city streets.

[Thiocyanide]

This is why I chose biochem right from the beginning. I figured that crafting would behave like the early days of wow. Back then, any gear you made with blacksmithing etc was extremely underpowered compared to the gear obtained from questing/dungeons/raids. In addition, all professions other than alchemy had no combat bonus (those were added in wotlk). The same applies to the crew skills in this game. Everything you can make can easily be overshadowed by gear from vendors etc.

 

Back in the early days of Vanilla WoW, the only gear available was from dungeons and crafting. Crafted gear was, in every expansion, extremely powerful at each tier, and the better gear was not easily obtainable within an hour or two.