Idea to create an economy in tor.

[BegaTasty]

If bioware want ANY sort of economy in tor remotely, you guys need to remove the level 50 stims that never have to be replaced. buying 1 stim that works every 3 mins, just made bio useless skill to train up. You cant make money off it, because there is no degrading, no turnover in consumables. As a crafter myself for many years in MMO's it's impossible to make money in tor off the market, because none wants anything that isnt purple (wow generation players), none wants any stims but the best, an once they have them, they never have to buy another.

 

Gear comes into this as well, make gear degrade to the point it cant be repaired to full anymore, so eventually it wears out, down to say "75% of it's original AL an also link stats so they drop to 75% on it. This means players will then have to keep coming back to crafters to buy new gear. This will stimulate an economy, an kick it off. As for right now, there is none because there is no usage factor for anything in the game.

 

Making gear repair only to say "90%" from vendors, thwn give crafters the ability to repair gear to 100% if they skill high enough in it, with say a "proc" effect that may give the repaired gear a slight boost in a random stat?.

This means that players will need to come to crafters to get gear repaired to 100%, thus creating economy for crafters to charge for repairs.

Edited January 8, 2012 by BegaTasty

[Zennshi]

If bioware want ANY sort of economy in tor remotely, you guys need to remove the level 50 stims that never have to be replaced. buying 1 stim that works every 3 mins, just made bio useless skill to train up. You cant make money off it, because there is no degrading, no turnover in consumables. As a crafter myself for many years in MMO's it's impossible to make money in tor off the market, because none wants anything that isnt purple (wow generation players), none wants any stims but the best, an once they have them, they never have to buy another.

 

Gear comes into this as well, make gear degrade to the point it cant be repaired to full anymore, so eventually it wears out, down to say "75% of it's original AL an also link stats so they drop to 75% on it. This means players will then have to keep coming back to crafters to buy new gear. This will stimulate an economy, an kick it off. As for right now, there is none because there is no usage factor for anything in the game.

 

Making gear repair only to say "90%" from vendors, thwn give crafters the ability to repair gear to 100% if they skill high enough in it, with say a "proc" effect that may give the repaired gear a slight boost in a random stat?.

This means that players will need to come to crafters to get gear repaired to 100%, thus creating economy for crafters to charge for repairs.

 

This sounds very SWGesque

[BegaTasty]

more a mix of Asherons Call 1 and Daoc systems really...

[Squiddish]

The only issue with damaged gear losing stats is... well, that's EXTREMELY tedious and annoying. I understand your goal is to bring the economy back to life, but look at it this way:

If the stats on gear are proportional to how much damage its taken, guilds working on hard or nightmare content would have to run off to take a repair break EVERY ATTEMPT. At best, every 2 or 3 attempts. How is that fun?

 

The stimpacks idea is one little bandaid fix, making one item that some people will buy occasionally will not fill the economy with life. The root of the issue is the whole ideology behind the crafting system itself: everyone is self sufficient. You don't need materials from anything or anyone else to work your crew skill.

 

Rather than repost my entire OP here, I'm just going to link to it: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=137955

[Eylwen]

i think a good fix would let the stim have a seperat cooldown and make it like 20 min so you still need usable stims however you may still get hord with biochem anyway. i personlty onlty have one biochem and my alt is cyber i make killer money with cyber tech because there is so few that dont use anything but bio so it free me up i like the econemy where it is i dont have compitition

[Terwilliger]

If bioware want ANY sort of economy in tor remotely, you guys need to remove the level 50 stims that never have to be replaced.

 

What if they don't want any sort of economy in TOR remotely?

[Medianoche]

What if they don't want any sort of economy in TOR remotely?

 

The reason behind the no-economy situation was the nerf on Slicing and the stacks exploit.

The first removed the hability for non-crafters to make money.

The second put BILLIONS of credits in the system. From nowhere.

[Onomas]

This sounds very SWGesque

 

swg wasnt a bad game, wasnt the best. For a sci-fi game it was good. For a star wars game, not so good. Everyone has mixed feelings on star wars, and many didnt play it. Was before the WOW age.

 

But the one thing SWG did have that beat out all games was the crafting and economy down pat. Until the end when they went loot is better than everything else like all the mmo's since WOW.

 

SWG crafting and economy in this game = ground breaking and epic.

[Caelrie]

The idea of having to go find a crafter if I want my gear repaired is so offensive I'd probably quit the game 5 minutes after it went live.

[Astaldoath]

i agree thats just stupid, they could think of many good ways to make an economy

[Uzilara]

 

But the one thing SWG did have that beat out all games was the crafting and economy down pat. Until the end when they went loot is better than everything else like all the mmo's since WOW.

 

SWG crafting and economy in this game = ground breaking and epic.

 

100% agree, SWG had the best crafting and economy system in any mmo I ever played.

 

However, SW:TOR is not SWG.

SW:TOR is, like WoW, based on instances and questing to provide you with the best possible gear, while in SWG nearly everything you used on your character was made by other players.

 

I would love the SWG economy in SWTOR but this is clearly not the case.

[Lady_Alyria]

You do realize those purples are biochem only right? People can't just buy one purple and be done with it, only one profession can use them. Cept for the ones that are non-drop and will probably be nerfed to be biochem only when someone realizes they aren't already. Edited January 8, 2012 by Lady_Alyria

[Onomas]

100% agree, SWG had the best crafting and economy system in any mmo I ever played.

 

However, SW:TOR is not SWG.

SW:TOR is, like WoW, based on instances and questing to provide you with the best possible gear, while in SWG nearly everything you used on your character was made by other players.

 

I would love the SWG economy in SWTOR but this is clearly not the case.

 

How a good crafting, market, and economy system should be. This is why almost every single mmo released since SWG has failed at this. They promote the kiddie aspect of blowing things up, getting things free, and making the games so easy. They sometimes forget older gamers play, most their money comes from older people (kids have parents pay the sub). The business and crafting aspect is always second best, and i think this is wrong. Games promoted around crafting more make things better for the market and players.

 

In SWG i made a load from selling items, but i bought just as much from gatherers, so the economy kept flowing. Never stagnate like TOR has become.

 

Yeah to bad about your last statement, would have been a sight for sore eyes.

[Fonitrus]

i think what people want in the perfect game is WoW's flexibility, mods, macros, fluid interface, good graphics, TOR's sttoryline and voiceovers and EvE Online's economy model

 

since EvE is space and hed trouble delivering Ambulation and there is almost zero storyline why not merge EvE with TOR :)

[BegaTasty]

The idea of having to go find a crafter if I want my gear repaired is so offensive I'd probably quit the game 5 minutes after it went live.

 

its very easy to balance, obviously in pvp your gear doesn't take damage unless you get hit by a npc first, then its your own fault. Some gear might not have durability degrading, for whatever reason (maybe raid gear doesn't degrade as fast...)

 

But it does promote economy, an it forces people to mix an form community. Which lets face it, the advent of warcraft killed community in MMO's. There has not been one since days of vanguard an earlier.

 

if you were going to quit an MMO because you had to pay someone to repair your gear, even though that person probably MADE it, then you were never going to play for long anyway.

[AdrianRayn]

Indeed, what's wrong with having a large chunk of your gear being player-made? You'd rather it was, what, PvP-earned? Because that gets *really* old, ask anyone who's immigrated to ToR from another large-scale MMO (say, WoW). Crafting economies tend to be a lot more fun and freeing - working with money as a goal instead of PvP Tokens gives the devs a lot more room to, say, tell cool stories with quests - and hey, occasionally those quests can end in gear even better than the crafting materials. It's about freedom - limiting your top gear to commendations and the occasional raid gets old fast, players know it, BioWare should know it, and it should be something that is learned upon when this game does start to generate an economy.

 

Huzzah and such, y'all.

[Caelrie]

100% agree, SWG had the best crafting and economy system in any mmo I ever played.

For the crafters maybe.

[Caelrie]

 

if you were going to quit an MMO because you had to pay someone to repair your gear, even though that person probably MADE it, then you were never going to play for long anyway.

So I'm not going to play very long because I don't want to put up with a completely ridiculous restriction that doesn't exist?

 

Did that argument make sense to you when you typed it?

[Phadian_gess]

i agree thats just stupid, they could think of many good ways to make an economy

 

Well name one if you would please.

[Caelrie]

Well name one if you would please.

 

Make things that people actually want to buy. BAM, problem solved.

[Fonitrus]

Make things that people actually want to buy. BAM, problem solved.

 

You are still making things people WANT to buy. its just they get same or better through dailies and comendations that bypasses your craftables which are BTW listed on the GTN which is burried deep in 2 tiered searcches and 30 minutes of walking, flying loading screen waiting and then browsing through the search results for bargains.

 

The green medpacks Biochemists make are purely for RE purposes as medical droids sell the Vendor equivalent...i mean SAME stats different name and you cant RE these, for cheap.

so if you were making these greens for profit the Medical Droids has it cornered due to their availability in every node and questing areas. SO medical droids know the value of good service and LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION...

[kwong]

To your idea of repairing requiring a crafter I do not foresee that ever happening. Regardless of raiding guilds or pvp'ers having to stop what they are doing every attempt/warzone, or even every few, to go find a crafter (even if they have one with them) so they can repair their gear, the regular player would not be happy having to do that.

 

If a player just started the game and they do not have a guild or any friends yet they would either be forced to stop questing and enjoying their time so that they can find a crafter or they would be forced to take up the crafting skill that would allow them to repair.

 

Now what if it is late or just an off-peek hour and they cannot find a crafter, whether that is because there is not one on or there is not one willing to stop enjoying their time to go help this person repair? Worst would be if there was a crafter available, but because income has grown (or inflation or whatever you want to call it regarding the economy) the crafter is charging more than the new player can afford. So now that new player can not enjoy the game at all since they cannot quest as they have to find something they can kill below their level so they can get enough money to afford the crafter, and/or the new player will have to wait until another crafter comes on or decides they are available to help and are charging a price the player can afford. This could be 5 min's, a half hour, or it could mean the new player has to log early and try again tomorrow. Meanwhile they are unable to progress and enjoy the game. At the best this system would just be an annoyance.

 

I highly doubt seeing Bioware implement a system remotely close to this or any that would impact their player base so much as to potentially block them from actually playing the game. At least not intentionally. Keep in mind that not all players want to craft nor are they all willing to. This is not a crafting game. It is a game that happens to have crafting in it.

 

One of the core issues with the game is that it is trying to please everyone. It attempts to be a game for raiders, pvp'ers, crafters, adventurers, questers, etc. I'm not going to get into whether this is good, bad, or what have you. The simple fact is that this is the way the game is, at the moment. We have to work with that in mind.

 

As for one of the core problems with crafting itself are that it is useless beyond leveling purposes. From 1 - 49 most of the crew skills have use. Yes you have the option to negate crafting by using commendations and even drops and quest rewards as you level, but you can also craft and stay in top gear for your level. This comes back to the game trying to please multiple play styles. Again I am not going to get into whether this is good or bad. It's a personal opinion or preference and arguable either way.

 

The problem really starts kicking in after you reach 50. At this point you can start getting items that crafting cannot even equate to. This can be from commendations and dailies, raiding, or pvp. For example you can obtain mod 23's whereas say cybertech can only make mod 22's. Whether crafting should be able to make equivalent gear to raiding/pvp gear is arguable, and does not make crafting broken. The best gear in the game could be from raiding and crafting can still be useful as long as it is made to have something worthwhile. Mind you the idea here is not to "force" people to use crafters, but rather to have people "want" to use crafters.

 

None of the problems even have anything to do with the economy or "epic" kiddies. The real problem is right now you can take all crafting out of the game and it would not affect anything. You could still enjoy the primary game play. You can still raid, pvp, quest, etc without any real change. Crafting, at least as far as I have seen, brings nothing to the table to make it memorable. Obviously this is bad for crafting.

 

There are tons of things they could do to fix this. One of the easiest at least for now would be simply to give all crew skills something useful for end-game. Even WOW at least had something that would last through a tier of raiding. Their jewelcrafting system, which is similar to the way the mods system is in TOR (mind you similar NOT exactly the same); at least made sure you would have to keep buying gems from crafters.

 

Getting Bioware to completely re-haul crew skills or to add something to the system that is potentially harmful to the player base or their subscriptions is unlikely at best. Getting them to fix the system by adding to what is already there is much more likely.

 

Someone asked to name one other way to fix this. Let's start with giving each crew skill something useful for end-game. This would be in two parts.

 

 

 

1: Something unique that is only for the individual crew skill. Artifact quality, bop, and better than what you can currently achieve in any other avenue. This gives a bonus to the person for spending the time to level up their crew skill. Instead of being better than a raid or pvp item it could also be just equivalent, however, it would have some type of added effect to it that cannot be obtained any other way. For example, Biochem could have an implant or an enchant (so now you can use it on any item and thus make it able to scale with new content better) that increases the effectiveness of any stims and med kits you use.

 

 

 

2: As you mentioned in the beginning of your post in regards to consumables there should be something consumable that people will want to keep purchasing. This should not necessarily be something that is needed to be purchased frequently, however. It could be the ability to add an augment slot to an item regardless if it was crafted or not. Great part to this is now augments start becoming useful. It could be limited to certain pieces or allowed for all gear slots. Biochem could make stims that are better than anything you can buy even if only by 10 - 20 points or the stims could persist through death. The stims could also just last longer.

 

 

Personally I think what should be done first and foremost is to make the "mods" system more akin to the way jewelcrafting worked in WoW (for lack of a better example). First is to make crafters able to make mods that are better than what can be bought. Even if that means adding a new level above that of Artifact. If you can buy level 23 mods as the max then crafters should be able to make level 23 mods one step above in quality. Mods are not something that is needed all the time and you can wait after acquiring a new piece of gear to outfit it with max mods. You can still be capable in the bought versions as well. However, eventually you will "want" (read "want" not need) to buy the max versions so you can be outfitted as best as possible.

 

An alternative would be to have crafters make equivalent mods to what can be bought, except that they would have more control in how the stats are dispersed. In this way allowing crafters to make mods with stats that cannot be bought. For example, let’s say you can buy an Artifact level 24 enhancement mod with (numbers are for example purposes only) 100 Endurance 80 Aim 80 Defense 80 Power. A crafter would be able to make an Artifact level 24 enhancement mod with 100 End 80 Aim 80 Def and 80 Absorb as well as a version that instead of Defense has 80 Shield.

 

Next would be to make this max versions bound to the slot. Basically you cannot remove them once placed. It is fine to let people take mods out while they level, but once at end-game these superior Artifact quality ones should not be able to be removed. By adding that they could even allow an occasional one drop from an Op, FP, or Warzone. By allowing other means that still require time, effort, and randomness to obtain similar items Bioware can still cater to the people who don't want to take part in crafting, however, they should not be as easy to obtain as commendation bought items to ensure that crafters are still the easier road to travel for obtaining them. This means they will also be needed enough that the pricing for them should stay above what it costs to make, but not outlandishly so. Every time someone gets a new piece of gear they will be able to throw their removable Artifact or Blue mods into them and stay capable until they can buy these superior Artifact ones to upgrade.

 

These ideas are just a start. They are a lot easier for people to swallow and they are also easier for Bioware to incorporate as they are simple modifications to the current system.

 

Just my 2 credits, though. Take it as you will or ignore it all. I'll be hoping Bioware does something to make crew skills better, but until then I'll still be enjoying the game.