Let BioWare know you support custom gear

[Calsidian]

Finally, concerning the purple end-game gear:

 

I frankly disagree with the dev statements above. End game armor shouldn't be salvaged for parts. Especially not the set bonus. It's unique, and distinctive. People should wear this stuff with pride. If the graphics of this armor is a problem for people, then bioware should fix the graphics, not make it more modable. End-game armor is a badge of pride, something you had to earn, and everyone should be able to see that on your character.

 

Everyone would still have the option to wear the end game armor if that was indeed important to them. But why force those who dislike the look of the armor to have to wear it in order to benefit from the stats and bonuses?

[Dreggzender]

The current situation with end game gear and item modifications isn’t final and, in fact, many community members like yourself have correctly guessed at what our plans to correct the current design are.

 

Since this is a fairly important issue to many players, let me disclose more details about what is currently in the work regarding purple items and mods:

 

- All partially moddable purple items will be made fully moddable again, allowing the removal of the armoring, hilt and barrel.

 

- The set bonus of end gear purples (PVP and PVE) will be transferable to custom items.

 

- Some item modifications will be restricted to a certain item type. For example, some item modifications will only fit on helmets, while other will only fit on chests, etc.

 

As usual, the caveats about unfinished work apply, but this should give you and the community a very good idea of our intentions. We are serious about making custom gear an entirely valid alternative to end game gear and we support the players’ ability to customize their appearance all the way to (and including) end game.

 

There are no words, only song.

 

Edited January 10, 2012 by Dreggzender

[Sylvurdragon]

First of all /agree with the OP and huge Kudo's to the Dev's response

 

I'm really excited to hear of the coming changes to the Mod system. I'm pretty sure the awesomesauce armor is the route they are going to take. That makes the most sense.

 

I love the ability to find a good looking piece of Orange armor and be able to keep the mods up all the way through to endgame. I'm sure that you'll want to swap out at some point...but that's the beauty of it. You can! Simply pull out another piece of orange gear and take the mods out of what you're wearing to place it in that. Makes a lot more sense from a realism standpoint than an a-tab. Lets leave that to LOTRO.

 

I really like how purple gear will be fully moddable as well. That opens up a world of possibilities with how to upgrade your gear. I've found this game to be 10x easier to keep up with my gear than any other MMO i've been a part of...dating back all the way to Ultima Online and EQ

 

Well done and keep up the good work, BW! :-D

[Calsidian]

Did you read what I said?

 

A-tab is not a money sink. It is not good for the economy.

 

SWTOR Mod system and WoW transmog systems are completely optional money sinks for people concerned with aesthetics.

 

Optional money sinks are always good as opposed to required money sinks such as repairs or medpacks which can be too high. But I digress. The point I'm trying to make is Mod system (and even transmog) are superior to an A-tab because they both provide optional money sinks as opposed to the A-tab which is essentially free.

 

You are stuck in a rigid way of thinking based on previous systems. There is no reason why they couldn't make an A-Tab into a money sink. It would be very simple to do and could be accomplished several different ways:

 

- Pay credits for the 1st tab, then higher increments for each additional tab.

- Charge a fee for each item you place in an apperance tab slot.

 

Really, Bioware could turn ANYTHING in the game into a money sink if they wished. This is not a valid argument against a system.

[Ommm]

Hahaha, the armors are really alittle strange. No offense to the artist, but to me it does not feel like star wars at all. And the looks just is not my style. So heres a toast to hopefully moddable gear soon . Edited January 10, 2012 by Ommm

[Nasai]

I wish the thread i posted about this two weeks ago got this sort of attention.

[Vitellius]

I support this thread.

Bump for GREAT JUSTICE!

[Espiegle]

"I also have some tertiary suggestions to help out certain crafting professions.

 

Remove "armoring" schematics from Cybertech, Cybertech does too much already.

Add strength and willpower armorings to Synthweaving, and add aim

and cunning armorings to Armormech. "

 

 

so in order to make you happy everyone who has put in the hours to level

cybertech can go pound sand? how special.

[elicious]

You are stuck in a rigid way of thinking based on previous systems. There is no reason why they couldn't make an A-Tab into a money sink. It would be very simple to do and could be accomplished several different ways:

 

- Pay credits for the 1st tab, then higher increments for each additional tab.

- Charge a fee for each item you place in an apperance tab slot.

 

Really, Bioware could turn ANYTHING in the game into a money sink if they wished. This is not a valid argument against a system.

 

While it is true that your proposed system would be a money sink, it wouldn't be a continual money sink. In the current mod system, you have to pay big bucks everytime to you get a piece of gear to rip them all out and put them in your custom gear. Your system only has you paying for once to put an item into a-tab slot and then you can swap out your real gear as much as you want.

 

Sure, they could also implement an A-tab that made you pay everytime time you changed armor into your equipped slot, but this would be a frustration for people who like to have several sets of equipped gear, like a tank set and a PvP set, etc. The mod system is already in-place and with this new change, works. It is a great money sink, and let's everyone wear what they want, let's people have several sets of gear, and all of it is optional. People who don't want to pay to look good do not have to do it.

[TeddyBearSniper]

Good to see that BW went with my idea of gear customization, instead of that gawd awful a-tab.

 

YES, the new mod system has some kinks, but if and when BW work out these kinks, it will all be worth it.

 

In the end, the mod system is far more rewarding, time-consuming, and engrossing. It makes for a good money-sink, time-sink, and helps combat elitism. Also, think how this benefits the crafting community? You hear all these crafters complaining about not being able to make raid level gear without doing raids, and that raiders can simply get better raid gear by doing dailies - Well, here's the solution, modifiable gear. Now crafters don't HAVE to create better armor for raiders. They simply have to create armor that raiders would like to modify. Or they can create actual mods for the armor pieces. Of course, this is dependent on whether crafters can create orange gear. Not sure if they can.

 

In addition to all the great suggestions presented in this thread, bioware just needs to add more armor sets and more variety to the game.

[BeeblesTV]

Add an appearance tab. Problem solved, everyones happy.

[mbollow]

The character/story immersion is my favorite part of SWTOR, and I feel appearance is a big part of that experience. Thank you for making this a major concern, and thanks allowing me to be a ruthless Sith!

[Nasai]

"I also have some tertiary suggestions to help out certain crafting professions.

 

Remove "armoring" schematics from Cybertech, Cybertech does too much already.

Add strength and willpower armorings to Synthweaving, and add aim

and cunning armorings to Armormech. "

 

 

so in order to make you happy everyone who has put in the hours to level

cybertech can go pound sand? how special.

 

Yes. It's a better system.

 

I imagine that while the OP was putting all this together, he realized that the changes made to artifact items would have to be done across the board. This includes the low level moddable artifact quality gear that you can loot, that has some of its stats in form of a mod and enhancement (much like endgame artifacts).

 

Effectively, what this all means is that what we know as "Moddable Artifacts" would no longer exist, and they would all be the functional equivalent of Custom quality. Realizing that this would further encourage the use of custom quality armor over unmoddable gear that can be crafted by Synthweaving and Armormech, the OP (rightfully) came to the conclusion that all crafting professions should have some sort of role in the grand scheme of custom items. The most logical step in this direction is to allow the armorcrafters to craft armoring modifications.

[Zombull]

I agree with OP. When I heard what custom armor was supposed to be, I was delighted with the idea. Now to hear that it is essentially broken. Very sad.

 

If "boot farming" is an issue (and I agree it is) then slot-specific armor mods is really the only solution. If you put equivalent artifact level armor, hilts and barrels into the loot table then people will just farm for them instead. How does that address the problem exactly?

[Zombull]

Also...if "boot farming" for armor mods is the problem, why exactly did hilts and barrels have to be locked too?

 

Armoring should, when inserted into a slot, take on a requirement of that slot. It even sort of makes sense. Cybertech creates a sheet of armoring. Player buys the armoring and cuts it to fit his boots. He can take it out and put it into other boots, but it won't work for head gear because the armoring is already "boot-shaped".

 

Unlock hilts and barrels. Make armoring "bind" to the slot when used.

 

It's the only solution.

[Planar]

In beta they had a feature to match the armor coloring scheme to the chest peice, this was great.

 

If you guys play other games, you have to grind to hit the level cap, it takes some peopl emonths as casual players. This not only gives you plenty of quests/bonus quests to level within 3 weeks as a casual player but allows you to keep an armor you find that looks nice.

 

Now as for you people complaining of the ugly *** armor, that has to be by design. Why do I beleive this, because schematics you learn can look much nicer. So crafters actually have a chance to sale a nice looking orange, which most of them come without mods. If you could find great looking armor via world drop easily crafters would have little point to learning/crafting orange armor. Getting JUST THE RIGHT LOOK keeps many people playing for some time, yet SWTOR has given you a way to mod that look and make the actual armor also usable.

 

Some of you proposing the way AoC did it makes me laugh, having to aquire not only armor for stats, but then aquiriing social armor is imo not a productive way to proceed.

 

So my thoughts:

 

yes Raid/PvP earned drops needs mods removable and only transferable to the same type of item, some of you left out one important reason to make sure this happens. To give others on that raid a chance to get the item. If mods become the reason to roll, then some guy already wearing the super chest peice will roll on the same chest peice, which you dont have already so he can suit up his legs. Do you like the idea of him rolling need for that? I didnt think so.

 

Same thing goes for weapons, blaster rifle mods shouldnt be able to be moved to blaster pistels (like barrels etc) or again you will have those of the same base class fighting each other over items, I mean do you want the sith sorc rolling on your double bladed saber because he can toss the mods into his single blade? Of course you dont.

 

Now that leads me to the one thing I havent seen BioWare or anyone mention.

 

Rather than this system of spending tons of commedations (whether from hard mode or PvP) on a single item you may only want the mods for, WHY NOT allow us to spend less coms on one of the mods. This way we can slowly build our orange saber/armor into that glorious peice of armor. Ill give an example

 

A PvP lightsaber is like 72 champion coms (with stand color crystals), it would contain 4 mods (color crystal, hilt, mod and enchangement), so sure still offer it for 72 coms, however why not give the option of the hilt, mod, enchangement being 20 ea and the color crystals from 15-50 depending on the color. Blue/Green/Red being 15, Yellow being 20, Orange being 30, Purple being 40 and Purple/Black being 50.

 

Sure it would cost more for the same saber in the end if you buy the mods instead, so you get a discount for waitign OR you can level it up slowly getting the benefit one peice at a time as you go up and you can put the mods in it you like for your style. Maybe you want to put Def/Alcalarity into your marauders blade, that should be your choice. Maybe you want one mod to be heavier on endurance and the hilt heavier on STR, again your choice. The premade saber is cheaper and if your happy with the stats and patient you would save some coms, but I personally would prefer the more instant gratification of earning it in peices.

 

Now yes the color crystals need to be visited or everyone will be running around with purple crystals I guess but they could have a valor or ops group rank to determine when they are usable by the player.

 

One final thought on this, items with mods in them that are Bind on Equip shouldnt cause the mods to be bound when removed IMO, if it isnt bound the removed part shouldnt be either.

 

Also personally I think ALL orange gear if you remove all the mods should be level 10 requirement, this would let armor crafters sale more items. I can promise if I am leveling an alt and the cool looking armor I want is 50k I would buy it right away, rather than wait until level 39 to buy it, then move mods. This would let those who have already leveled have a look they want for their alts even if it cost them more up front. Then as new cooler armors are added they may buy them. However if at level 10 he cant buy the level 39 orange, he doesnt. Then at level 37 a new cooler look orange is availible so he buys it. The result is he purchased 1 armor instead of two armor or maybe 3 or more but more purchases means more credits, which equals more time in game. Players are happier because they get the look they want for their alt and BioWare is happier because we have to stay scribed longer to renew that look when we choose.

Edited January 10, 2012 by Planar

[Syylara]

While it is true that your proposed system would be a money sink, it wouldn't be a continual money sink. In the current mod system, you have to pay big bucks everytime to you get a piece of gear to rip them all out and put them in your custom gear. Your system only has you paying for once to put an item into a-tab slot and then you can swap out your real gear as much as you want.

 

Sure, they could also implement an A-tab that made you pay everytime time you changed armor into your equipped slot, but this would be a frustration for people who like to have several sets of equipped gear, like a tank set and a PvP set, etc. The mod system is already in-place and with this new change, works. It is a great money sink, and let's everyone wear what they want, let's people have several sets of gear, and all of it is optional. People who don't want to pay to look good do not have to do it.

 

You're trying to have it both ways or just being stubborn because you don't like the words "appearance" and "tab" together for some reason.

 

First you demand that it be made into a money sink, then decry how it being made into a money sink would become frustrating.

 

You have now listed two demands that absolutely cannot be reconciled and thus you can rationalize away how nobody could come up with a solution that satisfies your requirements.

[Quip]

I want an appearance tab damn it!

[-Professor-]

And this entire hassle could have been avoided if you had just given us an appearance tab at the start.

 

 

Consider how many hours of work your team is going through to build this pointless modding system purely to mimic a much simpler and easier feature.

 

This is so obvious; I'm glad someone finally called it out. BioWare had what seemed like a good idea (moddable items), but the implementation hasn't quite worked out, and the ramifications for continuing with the system are introducing a host of unintended and undesirable consequences. So, now BW must make a choice:

 

1) Continue to spend countless hours of work to make the system operational = Pride that clings to a less-than-perfect idea rather than admitting fault and moving on.

 

2) Scrap the system and go with the infinitely easier appearance tab = Humility and common sense that not only spares the developers untold hours of busy work (which they can devote to other problem areas), but also shows that they put the needs of the customers ahead of their pride/ image.

 

Will BioWare choose wisely?

[TeddyBearSniper]

You're trying to have it both ways or just being stubborn because you don't like the words "appearance" and "tab" together for some reason.

 

First you demand that it be made into a money sink, then decry how it being made into a money sink would become frustrating.

 

You have now listed two demands that absolutely cannot be reconciled and thus you can rationalize away how nobody could come up with a solution that satisfies your requirements.

 

Face it syylara, you aren't getting your appearance tabs. Gear customization won in the end

 

This is so obvious; I'm glad someone finally called it out. BioWare had what seemed like a good idea (moddable items), but the implementation hasn't quite worked out, and the ramifications for continuing with the system are introducing a host of unintended and undesirable consequences. So, now BW must make a choice:

 

1) Continue to spend countless hours of work to make the system operational = Pride that clings to a less-than-perfect idea rather than admitting fault and moving on.

 

2) Scrap the system and go with the infinitely easier appearance tab = Humility and common sense that not only spares the developers untold hours of busy work (which they can devote to other problem areas), but also shows that they put the needs of the customers ahead of their pride/ image.

 

Will BioWare choose wisely?

 

I believe that's called begging the question.

 

Just because the mod system has some kinks that need working out does not mean it's inferior to your lazy easy-mode a-tab.

Edited January 10, 2012 by TeddyBearSniper

[JakeDawg]

Great news!!!

 

Appearance tabs are stupidly oversimplified, unimaginitive, and lame. I think BW did an awesome job with orange gear and am very happy they chose to make the system work for end-game pieces.

[Syylara]

Face it syylara, you aren't getting your appearance tabs. Gear customization won in the end

 

 

 

I believe that's called begging the question.

 

Just because the mod system has some kinks that need working out does not mean it's inferior to your lazy easy-mode a-tab.

 

1) I'm not concerned with "winning."

 

2) Is the game shutting down? Then we aren't at the end, yet.

 

3) I was merely picking apart a bad refutation of a good idea, whether that ultimately means anything or not :9.

[Nasai]

This is so obvious; I'm glad someone finally called it out. BioWare had what seemed like a good idea (moddable items), but the implementation hasn't quite worked out, and the ramifications for continuing with the system are introducing a host of unintended and undesirable consequences. So, now BW must make a choice:

 

1) Continue to spend countless hours of work to make the system operational = Pride that clings to a less-than-perfect idea rather than admitting fault and moving on.

 

2) Scrap the system and go with the infinitely easier appearance tab = Humility and common sense that not only spares the developers untold hours of busy work (which they can devote to other problem areas), but also shows that they put the needs of the customers ahead of their pride/ image.

 

Will BioWare choose wisely?

 

You're making the issues of the modding system out to be something the devs never saw coming and that somehow it has snowballed into an avalanche of massive game-breaking issues that will require the top minds all over the world to come together and brainstorm over before all hope is lost.

 

Seriously, the fixes suggested in this thread, and the fixes BioWare have said they were going to implement will put this matter to rest. And no, it isn't going to take countless hours of work to make it happen.

 

And some of us feel that a system involving players wearing multiple different equipment sets at once, while effective on a functional level, is imperfect on a conceptual level. A more perfect system, in concept, is: your character wears one set of gear, and your character looks like it is wearing that set of gear. The modding system respects this, and allows appearance customization simultaneously.

 

Also, what was up with that pride/humility **** you were talking about?

[CFourPO]

Orange armor should be viable at 50. I think there are several ways this can be implemented in game.

 

In fact, I would take a strong stand that there shouldn't be one way to make orange armors viable.

 

Mods extractable from epic armors = people that like to raid can progress

 

Craftable = people that like to trade, craft can progress

 

Rewards from daily missions etc. = people that like to run missions can progress

[-Professor-]

An A-Tab is for those lazy people who do not want to put in the time or effort to achieve the look they want. They rather be given something than to earn it with their own merits. An A-tab would total ruin the mod system that they have in place that people have spent hours crafting the look that they wanted.

 

Once you begin attacking people personally, your arguments become useless. You can be for or against a feature (appearance tab; moddable items, whatever), but to refer to those who think other than you as lazy and just wanting to have something handed to them makes your argument worthless.

 

Your last sentence should have been allowed to stand on its own as a fairly reasonable argument (even though I disagree with it), rather than impugning the character of others with your ad hominem attacks.