Notes on BioChem and Cybertech in Game Update 1.1

[Glimmerstrike]

Well for a month I thought BW was going to be a step-up over other game developers and moderators. Seems to not be the case

 

 

Words of advice:"Don't piss down players backs and tell them it is raining"

[ArmoredJuneBug]

Making crafting results BoP seems backwards, crafting is to sell/trade, that's why people make things, its the game within the game.

Not really.

 

It's one reason but not the only one.

 

To make crafting desirable you not only have to have each crafting skill provide useful and desirable items that the crafter can sell but also personal perks that are unique to the skill, and better than those that the crafter could make for anyone.

 

The reason for this is simple, crafting is a monumental time and credit sink. If players could buy and use everything crafting could provide there'd be little reason to spend time leveling a crafting profession as it'd be more efficient to only farm credits and buy the related gear.

 

There are of course people that'd likely level crafting regardless, completionists like myself for example, but that's not how the general population would deal with such a situation.

 

I'm already having issues with sticking to my 400 Cybertech, I might as well try and farm schematics for artifact Droid armor and once I've built that and the artifact ship armor it's better to switch to Biochem. This because Cybertech offers me no real competitive incentive to keep around. The grenades are pretty horrible, what with the 5 minute shared cooldown, and the earpieces and item modification are sub-par to what you get from dailies.

[Nyliana]

I am disappointed that you refused to buff other skills, and instead nerfed these.

 

Despite these nerfs, I don't see how non-biochem users will be more desired for raiding.

 

IN MY OPINION BASED ON YOUR REASONING

 

You should have made the BOPs BOE non biochem required. Then everyone would be on equal ground, raid leaders could require you to have the item, which would then allow biochem people to make money.

 

AND THEN YOU BUFF THE OTHER USELESS PROFS. =( !

Edited January 18, 2012 by Nyliana

[DrShevek]

I am 400 biochem/bio/diplo and I'm fine with the biochem nerf. I still find it useful. I still find it to be a good use of my time to level. I still find it to be more desirable to other crew skills.

 

If anything, I hope they add more utility to other crafting skills to make them as good as biochem continues to be. Maybe add consumables to other skills (ablative armor, temporary weapon buffs, etc). This way people will choose other crew skills and theyll be a larger market for craftable stims/medpacs.

 

edit:

Also the reusables should never be boe. If they are, people will buy them once and never buy anything from a biochem crafter ever again. Instead, make the nonreusables EASIER to make and make the reusables 10% WORSE than the nonreusables. This makes the reusables good for convinience but CRITICAL situations will call for the use of nonreusables.

Edited January 18, 2012 by DrShevek

[The-Hammer]

All theyre doing is making all crew skill even more useless and trying to tune pve things for pvp. When there are much bigger issues in pvp then whose usin grenades or healthpacs/stims.

[Regnor]

Crafting armor is currently entirely pointless except as a means to work really hard and be able to better outfit one, maybe two, of your companions, and possibly help yourself have a slight edge while leveling.

 

But only if you burn a lot of time, mats and money; in the end, you pay way more for crafting your own armor than if you just ate the occasional repair bill and comparatively brief running-back time to die one or two more times at worst.

 

Armstech and artifice? Again, same deal; mere supplements to commendation vendors that allow for more customization of your secondary stats than comm vendors do while leveling.

 

Unfortunately, once you hit 50, do your Belsavis and Ilum dailies for a week and you can get enhancements, mods, hilts and barrels that are better than anything you can craft -unless you get special raid schematics-, or yoink mods out of PVP gear.

 

So, raid or die. Funny thing is though, if you're raiding regularly enough to have a real shot at schematics useful to you, there's a really good chance you have no cause what-so-ever to care. If you could turn around and craft those better things and sell them at huge prices to the folks that can't or won't raid, it might almost be worthwhile for that alone, but, typically, BOP's the thing. I'll just say that I have by no means seen all the schematics that might drop, but those I have seen have near-exclusively been for BOP stuff.

 

if I'm wrong on that, funny, that should have made itself even theoretically apparent by now. The fact that it hasn't says a few things itself; they're not good or happy things.

 

Cybertech? Earpieces are nice, but you're just over a week of dailies away at level 50 from having raid-grade earpieces from daily commendations. Mods, armor mods, droid gear and ship parts?

 

...Does anyone even care about the ship parts? They're nice additions, but do they add meaningful value to the skill? What're you gonna do at 50 with your ship; farm fleet commendations for the better part of a month to get a level 50 purple box off the fleet commendation vendor?

 

Hell of an investment in a lottery ticket for a chance at a gear drop that A) probably won't be useful to you and B) is irrelevant compared to PVP gear, which takes a fraction of the time to get by comparison.

 

Biochem's good. The nerf looks like they're nerfing everything but that which needed nerfing, being adrenals, but implants suffer the same endgame problem as Cybertech's earpieces; they're only valuable if you can't or won't raid. The absolute best earpiece you'll ever make without a raid drop schematic will require you to invest way more time and a heck of a lot more money into making it than...if you just went and did your dailies for just over a week and got a raid-grade daily commendation earpiece.

 

Do it all and outfit your companions in crafted stuff and wear your daily and raid stuff yourself? Must be nice to live in a vaccuum wherein which we all have the time and dedicated focus to do everything at maximum capacity at all times.

 

If you don't, there's no point to most of these crafting skills. They are, in terms of credits and time, a total loss; a complete wash.

 

There are systems in place that are less time consuming and frankly, more fun to invest one's effort in. If you've got 18 hours a day to play the gorram game, you could PVP all 18 hours and walk away with two, possibly three or maybe even four champion bags.

 

Dailies? Well, they didn't do dailies all that well either; they're annoying and run you around in obnoxious circles. At least in WoW, they made their dailies something you could knock out in an hour and not have to burn your entire evening on...but, you can still get great gear and mods for doing them.

 

Better than you can craft unless you A) raid, B) get the raid craft schematics, C) get the raid drop components and D) have the right craft skill.

 

 

So really, for crafting to be worthwhile, you'll need six characters on a server, one with each craft crewskill, all of them at 400, all of them decently supplied with non-raid/HM mats, you'll need to farm your dailies at the mere cost of 5-7 hours of your life every day, you'll need to raid as often as the lockouts are off and you'll need to farm HM's as often as possible so you have the best chances of getting the schematics and components you'll need...

 

...to finally be able to do something relevant to endgame with crafting.

 

 

Boy, that sure is reasonable. Read my signature for my thought on that.

 

And while you're at it, Bioware, please take a well intended bit of advice: don't try to out-WoW WoW. You're embarassing yourselves. Seriously. You can't even set up dailies to be relatively minimal in the obnoxious department.

 

You have no grasp what so ever of scaling your content to basic truths of human psychology, in short. You don't have the years of dedicated experience that's brought WoW to being what it is today, for example; not in their arena. Not in making a raid-and-grind game that doesn't drive people insane as a function of its own systems.

 

And if you think I'm wrong...h'okay. You're the developers; you know best. Developers always know best, right? That's why games are always perfect on release and everybody always thinks everything's wonderful with no patches or nerfs or tweaks or overhauls to anything ever required, right?

 

Just, y'know...cutting that assumption's head off pre-emptively and all.

 

So please, quit trying to be WoW and, if you for some reason can't figure out how to not do a crappy job of carbon-copying WoW's models, at least learn from their experience in how to deliver that model?

 

Please? You wanna waste all your time and money developing story content for a playerbase that will evolve in suit to your raidgame fantasies, sure, go ahead, that lesson will teach itself starting...about three weeks ago for anyone paying attention, so I assume you'll catch it sometime in a couple years.

 

I don't think you're stupid, mind you. It takes intelligent people to make the stupendous and fabulous mistakes, after all, and you've got a couple already made and, for their making, you're aiming yourselves right at the bullseye of several more.

 

 

Right now, crafting's general and ultimate negative value is one such thing. If it isn't valuable to endgame and it can only be made valuable in the most fringe of fashions if a staggering list of time-devouring requirements are also met....why did you include it at all?

 

Who were you trying to fool? You think gimped and marginalized crafting systems are a new deal? Think you've invented some clever new yard of wool to pull over unsuspecting eyes?

 

Have you paid exactly no attention at all to a degree that must surely cross a few lines into outright denial on the evidence on plain display in other games wherein which crafting is identically irrelevant?

 

Does it look like the non-raiders in those games are -happy- with it? Congratulations, you've imported a years-old point of dissatisfaction from many MMO's before you by doing nothing any differently.

 

At least in some games, it really is irrelevant and they don't even try to make it look like it could be useful. But hey, let's look at your idol, World of Warcraft. Guess how much relevant raid gear is craftable? Only that which you get patterns for in raids, and nobody cares!

 

S'right, Bioware; nobody cares. Been raiding for years in WoW. You know what most of us do with those patterns? If nobody in any of our guild that has a crafting fetish wants or thinks they need it, we auction it. Isn't worth sticking in a gbank slot to save for anyone in the future to use.

 

Could it be, in theory, useful if crafted? Sure. But why give that much of a hoot when you can just...go raid and get better? If you're raiding already to get such drops in the first place, you have no need at all for whatever it is those patterns can make.

 

Absolute best case scenario is that you or someone you know can craft it and use it until they get a better raid drop. Absolute best case scenerio in WoW with those.

 

Here? You've made it three times the pain in the rump to even try to care.

 

Again, you have no demonstrable grasp of the macrosocial or individual psychological interplays involved in trying to emulate WoW, as you've copied none of their easement factors that...sure, get the wannabe 'hardcore' crying about how 'easymode' and 'welfare' a lot of stuff is, but ALSO don't drive the vast majorities insane and reward those that try to make something of it with a steady stream of pointless frustration.

 

You also very clearly have this idea stuck in your heads that gambling is just the best and most repetition-propagating thing ever. RE'ing in crafting is the equivalent of playing the lottery with your crafted gear.

 

Will I win a blue schematic on this one? Nope. This one? Nope. This one...? Nope. Get my roughly 1/6th to 1/4 return on the recaptured mats, try again.

 

Blues to purples? Blues take a substantially longer time to craft; that's fine, to a point.

 

But then we have to use -them- as lottery tickets too.

 

This would be pretty alright if the purple schematics we stand to get were even vaguely worth trying to get in general. But what the heck is the point of working and working and investing away in a craft skill to, say, make a set of purple level 49 armor for yourself...when you can invest absolutely nothing in a craft skill, save your time, save your credits and wind up equipped in modded blue-equivalents and decent greens with no comparative effort at all and then turn around at 50 and, since the assumption is that everyone has all the time in the world every day, go farm hardmodes for 50 purples and 50-modded oranges while you plink away at your dailies for the better mods, earpieces and implants?

 

 

It's a nice hypothesis that, again, emulating WoW, having raid-grade craftable gear schematics drop in raids will make crafting more valuable.

 

Too bad the vast majority of those things I've seen drop are BOP when crafted. If you can't personally use it or stick it on a companion, its vendor trash. Can't even benefit the community via trickle down of selling most of that stuff on the market.

 

You sure have a love affair with WoW's bend of gear elitism, eh? LotrO kinda does too, but you know what LotrO also does? They do a pretty good job of making the top end craftables accessible via numerous recipes available off daily vendors with a smattering of BOE recipes that drop in dungeons or raids.

 

They also enrich the value of weapon crafting skills by tying the best weapons in the game to require a crafter that's done their craft guild dailies and has the recipes for 1st Age and 2nd Age legendary weapons/offhands to make them.

 

Crafted armor in LotrO? Yeah, raid sets you have to farm your face off to get are better, but if you never see better than the top end crafted teals (purples in our equivalence here in TOR), you are -not- doing poorly. You could hop right into a raid and not be holding your team back or needing to be carried due to gear inferiority.

 

Here? A difference between 14k HP and 20k HP is enormous, and the stat differences between the best non-raid craftables and gear you can PVP or farm out of normal mode ops? We're looking at a difference of around 1100-1200 in your primary stat and 1700-1900, and the same goes for endurance.

 

That's HUGE. Utterly unapproachable by anything even vaguely available to a crafter.

 

So, I've ranked every single craft skill you opened with to 400. I haven't invested a lot of effort into anything but Armormech and a smidge into Biochem and Artifice, but it's been telling.

 

I had 5 weeks of holiday leave to burn on TOR and boy did I burn it.

 

And boy do I feel burnt for what it's shown me.

 

You think you're going to out-WoW WoW. Your crafting is as annoying where it isn't moreso, you chew up way more time and, frankly, your provisions of craftable modifications doesn't hold a candle's worth of relevance to Enchanting in WoW, or Gemcutting...or Herbalism....or Cooking...or Engineering.

 

All of those have, over the years in WoW, evolved into things that are useful to everybody. Gonna go into a raid with your gear unenchanted, no potions, no scrolls and yno gems in your gear? Are you stupid? Invest in your community! Invest in your own experience and level a craft skill to make useful stuff!

 

Armorcrafters and weaponcrafters in WoW? Y'know, I seem to recall having bought a very nice set of blue resilience armor off WoW's auction house to go futz around in PVP with. Gemmed it, did my own enchanting, snagged a decent PVP weapon after racking up enough valor to snag one and...I could have done a lot more if I cared about PVP.

 

But I was able to go out there and be quite effective for a putz putzing around with my guild, and some crafter got to sell me some entry level PVP gear that, frankly, worked as well as my interest in investing in it required. Wasn't great, but it wasn't irrelevant either.

 

Can crafters currently craft anything with Expertise on it? Huh. No entry level PVP gear? No encouragement to crafters to give the community that bridge into your own PVP system? Farm warzones like you have nothing better to do with your life or nothing on that end?

 

Moreover, I was tanking, and tanking just fine I might add, with an iLvL 359 tank-statted sword in WoW until I finally won a much nicer tank weapon in a heroic firelands raid.

 

Could the same be done here? I suppose, but...why, when for far less wasted time struggling out the best weapon a crafter can craft you could just...PVP for a while and almost certainly get a better shot at a pretty heavily superior PVP weapon?

 

Ain't like the PVP weapon can't have the right stats on it. Heck, you're far better set if you do nothing but PVP and start raiding in Champion/Centurion/Battlemaster gear than if you waste one second of your life trying to go the crafting route.

 

 

You're funny people. You clearly tried so hard to not be WoW in the story immersion. You clearly tried to break away from the generic moulde of holy trinity class structures.

 

...But then you turned around and undermined those things by carbon copying the most annoying and raid-funneling engineered aspects of WoW. You built the need for holy trinity class structures right into it and, consequently, made several trees on numerous classes pointless to do much with, set the standard by which numerous talents on those trees are just plain stupid to take for anything, ever...

 

...and you didn't even come vaguely close to copying the WoW experience with anything resembling skill or proficiency. Just...stop trying. It's still early enough to save yourselves further embarassment, and you've got such a lovely thing going with the story immersion.

 

Really, you do. You folks generally tell a good story and have a well of potential to bring folks down a years-long epic, unfolding saga on the weight of that story.

 

But I'm just gonna go ahead and call it right now, for the absolutely no good it will do 'cause I doubt anybody that matters will even read this; you're not going to out-WoW WoW.

 

By the time you acquire the proficiency and nuanced, firsthand understanding of the macrosocial and psychosocial details involved in the whole morass, we'll be two years down the road, everyone that was primarily here for the story will be alienated and have no faith left in you at all, if they're even still playing, and your forum will be full of people trying to play your raidgame like a raidgame and griping about how you keep sticking ove-relaborated story and dialogue into everything.

 

And even then, you'll still be dragging along in WoW's shadow, because WoW does one thing and funnels all its effort into that one thing; it all leads to raiding. There's lore, there's story, but it's of optional, secondary and, for many raid-minded folks, utterly irrelevant concern as anything but a very occasional talk point while waiting for Bob to get his dang flasks crafted so we can get on with this raid.

 

You're gonna see it as it is. You will see the ire rise over dialogue existing in HM flashpoints and operations. You engineered that yourselves; you're trying to run in two directions at once.

 

Go out into a hall and try this. Try to run in two directions at once.

 

Keep doing it until you get my point. You don't get it as of right now as far as anything presented even vaguely indicates.

 

But you will. Whether it's too late for that knowledge to matter or not depends on how long it takes you to figure out that you're not going to out-WoW WoW and you've committed yourselves absolutely to a very specific degree of immersive storytelling.

 

I feel like I'm explaining rain to someone that doesn't go outside to say it, but, if nothing else, I feel better. It's said.

 

I'm gonna go see what a new class' storyline's like now and try my best to ignore your sinkhole craft skills.

 

Peace out.

 

I don't generally give much weight to wall-of-text whining (let along re-quote it in full), but this message is so truthy and well stated, it demands the most serious attention. It's reassuring to know that BW will probably read it at some point, and I just hope that they are as brilliant as their game reveals them to be, and that they see the writing on the wall and start moving in the right direction.

[Lady_Alyria]

I'm sorry but your nerf of biochem will not have the desired effect. Even if the packs heal for less than the blues, you are forgetting the reusable stims which is like having on extra pieces of gear. Biochem will continue to be a requirement for raiders. The only way to change this is to increase the ability for biochemists to produce in bulk. That way they can outfit their entire raid party. Currently the amount of money and time that would take makes it impossible. It makes more sense to go biochem and use reusables.

[Wasqa]

BioChem crafted medical kits were too good. In fact, they were too good both in the amount of healing they provided (often more than half a character’s health) and the frequency they could be used (every 90 seconds!). This was negatively impacting the game for everyone else. We’ve seen significant chatter both in and out of game about how players not picking up the BioChem professions would be ‘stupid’ and ‘gimping themselves’. This indicates that a small number of competitive players have been denying access to high end content based on whether a player has the BioChem Crew Skill.

I am not sure how this changes anything. Biochem became even more desired for the end game after this change because of 400 Biochem requirements to use the items.

 

Instead of nerfing Biochem, maybe improving other profs would have been a better choice. Could anyone name one crafting prof that is beneficial more then Biochem for the end-game and lvl 50 PVP even after the 1.1 patch?

[Twaddlefish]

Instead of nerfing Biochem, maybe improving other profs would have been a better choice. Could anyone name one crafting prof that is beneficial more then Biochem for the end-game and lvl 50 PVP even after the 1.1 patch?

 

 

If you continuously buff other professions, you get an exponential effect as one will always seem more powerful than another. It's better to nerf and then go back and buff if necessary.

 

I'm not sure about the exclusive 400 BioChem req for the top stuff, I don't think it will alleviate the issue of selective raiding parties.

 

I have yet to try either profession mentioned, so will reserve judgement til then.

[ArmoredJuneBug]

If you continuously buff other professions, you get an exponential effect as one will always seem more powerful than another.

Balancing is a continuous job in any MMO.

 

The point here is that, save Biochem, no crafting skill offers anything worthwhile at the endgame. Vendor items, mission rewards and fairly trivial PvP/PvE content provide better equipment for less effort, making crafting a monumental credit sink for no real reward.

 

At this particular point in time the non-Biochem crafting skills need buffing, to the point that they're offering useful and desirable items.

 

Alternatively, or additionally, the quality of daily rewards, vendor items and amount of credits given out at higher levels need to be cut back rather significantly.

[truxcer]

I don`t understand what changed, other crafting professions are still producing useless ****. Its Biochem or die for any pvp player.

[Magbed]

Nerf is useless as said above this wont solve nothing, everybody still wants to be a biochem, cmon free potions non expendable? thats too OP.

 

So unless you remove those unexpendable potions everybody wil go for bioche even if potions give as little as you want

 

so... sorry but FAIL bioware!

[Fabled_One]

Armstech still worthless.

 

Well I wouldn't say worthless (the barrels are nice) but it is pretty lackluster not to mention boring. Maybe allow us to create weapon buffs (temporary weapon enchants) that allows us to add effects to weapons but with limited amount of use. Like say [medical shot] that does small amount of healing with 100 charges.

[L-RANDLE]

You folks are doing a great job; paying attention to the chatter and ensuring that individual game play and choice allows us an advantage or disadvantage based on player skill without providing Uber-osity that entices everyone to be the same.

 

Having played WoW for more than 2 years, I've been in dismay as a game that had challenge and diversity has melted into monotonous button pushing. Professions no longer have an impact on game play in WoW. Anyone can pick any profession and get the same results. That robs the player of the fun that comes from challenge.

 

I want to be challenged to figure out the best combinations for my style of play.

 

Thanks for doing a great job at this!

 

Tom

 

Tongue and cheek? I hope so....

Edited January 18, 2012 by L-RANDLE

[Nangasaur]

Tongue and cheek? I hope so....

I believe the phrase you are attempting to use is, "tongue in cheek."

[Suba]

The nerf to the Rakata medpac makes no sense. It is now equal in 99.9% ways to the Purple version of the Ultimate Medpac that does not require any special loot to craft.

 

The Health boost idea was the most pointless thing you could think up. So now a level 44 crafted medpac that requires no special loot is the same as a level 50 medpac that requires special boss drops to make.

[bjbm]

Crafting armor is currently entirely pointless except as a means to work really hard and be able to better outfit one, maybe two, of your companions, and possibly help yourself have a slight edge while leveling.

 

But only if you burn a lot of time, mats and money; in the end, you pay way more for crafting your own armor than if you just ate the occasional repair bill and comparatively brief running-back time to die one or two more times at worst.

 

Armstech and artifice? Again, same deal; mere supplements to commendation vendors that allow for more customization of your secondary stats than comm vendors do while leveling.

 

Unfortunately, once you hit 50, do your Belsavis and Ilum dailies for a week and you can get enhancements, mods, hilts and barrels that are better than anything you can craft -unless you get special raid schematics-, or yoink mods out of PVP gear.

 

So, raid or die. Funny thing is though, if you're raiding regularly enough to have a real shot at schematics useful to you, there's a really good chance you have no cause what-so-ever to care. If you could turn around and craft those better things and sell them at huge prices to the folks that can't or won't raid, it might almost be worthwhile for that alone, but, typically, BOP's the thing. I'll just say that I have by no means seen all the schematics that might drop, but those I have seen have near-exclusively been for BOP stuff.

 

if I'm wrong on that, funny, that should have made itself even theoretically apparent by now. The fact that it hasn't says a few things itself; they're not good or happy things.

 

Cybertech? Earpieces are nice, but you're just over a week of dailies away at level 50 from having raid-grade earpieces from daily commendations. Mods, armor mods, droid gear and ship parts?

 

...Does anyone even care about the ship parts? They're nice additions, but do they add meaningful value to the skill? What're you gonna do at 50 with your ship; farm fleet commendations for the better part of a month to get a level 50 purple box off the fleet commendation vendor?

 

Hell of an investment in a lottery ticket for a chance at a gear drop that A) probably won't be useful to you and B) is irrelevant compared to PVP gear, which takes a fraction of the time to get by comparison.

 

Biochem's good. The nerf looks like they're nerfing everything but that which needed nerfing, being adrenals, but implants suffer the same endgame problem as Cybertech's earpieces; they're only valuable if you can't or won't raid. The absolute best earpiece you'll ever make without a raid drop schematic will require you to invest way more time and a heck of a lot more money into making it than...if you just went and did your dailies for just over a week and got a raid-grade daily commendation earpiece.

 

Do it all and outfit your companions in crafted stuff and wear your daily and raid stuff yourself? Must be nice to live in a vaccuum wherein which we all have the time and dedicated focus to do everything at maximum capacity at all times.

 

If you don't, there's no point to most of these crafting skills. They are, in terms of credits and time, a total loss; a complete wash.

 

There are systems in place that are less time consuming and frankly, more fun to invest one's effort in. If you've got 18 hours a day to play the gorram game, you could PVP all 18 hours and walk away with two, possibly three or maybe even four champion bags.

 

Dailies? Well, they didn't do dailies all that well either; they're annoying and run you around in obnoxious circles. At least in WoW, they made their dailies something you could knock out in an hour and not have to burn your entire evening on...but, you can still get great gear and mods for doing them.

 

Better than you can craft unless you A) raid, B) get the raid craft schematics, C) get the raid drop components and D) have the right craft skill.

 

 

So really, for crafting to be worthwhile, you'll need six characters on a server, one with each craft crewskill, all of them at 400, all of them decently supplied with non-raid/HM mats, you'll need to farm your dailies at the mere cost of 5-7 hours of your life every day, you'll need to raid as often as the lockouts are off and you'll need to farm HM's as often as possible so you have the best chances of getting the schematics and components you'll need...

 

...to finally be able to do something relevant to endgame with crafting.

 

 

Boy, that sure is reasonable. Read my signature for my thought on that.

 

And while you're at it, Bioware, please take a well intended bit of advice: don't try to out-WoW WoW. You're embarassing yourselves. Seriously. You can't even set up dailies to be relatively minimal in the obnoxious department.

 

You have no grasp what so ever of scaling your content to basic truths of human psychology, in short. You don't have the years of dedicated experience that's brought WoW to being what it is today, for example; not in their arena. Not in making a raid-and-grind game that doesn't drive people insane as a function of its own systems.

 

And if you think I'm wrong...h'okay. You're the developers; you know best. Developers always know best, right? That's why games are always perfect on release and everybody always thinks everything's wonderful with no patches or nerfs or tweaks or overhauls to anything ever required, right?

 

Just, y'know...cutting that assumption's head off pre-emptively and all.

 

So please, quit trying to be WoW and, if you for some reason can't figure out how to not do a crappy job of carbon-copying WoW's models, at least learn from their experience in how to deliver that model?

 

Please? You wanna waste all your time and money developing story content for a playerbase that will evolve in suit to your raidgame fantasies, sure, go ahead, that lesson will teach itself starting...about three weeks ago for anyone paying attention, so I assume you'll catch it sometime in a couple years.

 

I don't think you're stupid, mind you. It takes intelligent people to make the stupendous and fabulous mistakes, after all, and you've got a couple already made and, for their making, you're aiming yourselves right at the bullseye of several more.

 

 

Right now, crafting's general and ultimate negative value is one such thing. If it isn't valuable to endgame and it can only be made valuable in the most fringe of fashions if a staggering list of time-devouring requirements are also met....why did you include it at all?

 

Who were you trying to fool? You think gimped and marginalized crafting systems are a new deal? Think you've invented some clever new yard of wool to pull over unsuspecting eyes?

 

Have you paid exactly no attention at all to a degree that must surely cross a few lines into outright denial on the evidence on plain display in other games wherein which crafting is identically irrelevant?

 

Does it look like the non-raiders in those games are -happy- with it? Congratulations, you've imported a years-old point of dissatisfaction from many MMO's before you by doing nothing any differently.

 

At least in some games, it really is irrelevant and they don't even try to make it look like it could be useful. But hey, let's look at your idol, World of Warcraft. Guess how much relevant raid gear is craftable? Only that which you get patterns for in raids, and nobody cares!

 

S'right, Bioware; nobody cares. Been raiding for years in WoW. You know what most of us do with those patterns? If nobody in any of our guild that has a crafting fetish wants or thinks they need it, we auction it. Isn't worth sticking in a gbank slot to save for anyone in the future to use.

 

Could it be, in theory, useful if crafted? Sure. But why give that much of a hoot when you can just...go raid and get better? If you're raiding already to get such drops in the first place, you have no need at all for whatever it is those patterns can make.

 

Absolute best case scenario is that you or someone you know can craft it and use it until they get a better raid drop. Absolute best case scenerio in WoW with those.

 

Here? You've made it three times the pain in the rump to even try to care.

 

Again, you have no demonstrable grasp of the macrosocial or individual psychological interplays involved in trying to emulate WoW, as you've copied none of their easement factors that...sure, get the wannabe 'hardcore' crying about how 'easymode' and 'welfare' a lot of stuff is, but ALSO don't drive the vast majorities insane and reward those that try to make something of it with a steady stream of pointless frustration.

 

You also very clearly have this idea stuck in your heads that gambling is just the best and most repetition-propagating thing ever. RE'ing in crafting is the equivalent of playing the lottery with your crafted gear.

 

Will I win a blue schematic on this one? Nope. This one? Nope. This one...? Nope. Get my roughly 1/6th to 1/4 return on the recaptured mats, try again.

 

Blues to purples? Blues take a substantially longer time to craft; that's fine, to a point.

 

But then we have to use -them- as lottery tickets too.

 

This would be pretty alright if the purple schematics we stand to get were even vaguely worth trying to get in general. But what the heck is the point of working and working and investing away in a craft skill to, say, make a set of purple level 49 armor for yourself...when you can invest absolutely nothing in a craft skill, save your time, save your credits and wind up equipped in modded blue-equivalents and decent greens with no comparative effort at all and then turn around at 50 and, since the assumption is that everyone has all the time in the world every day, go farm hardmodes for 50 purples and 50-modded oranges while you plink away at your dailies for the better mods, earpieces and implants?

 

 

It's a nice hypothesis that, again, emulating WoW, having raid-grade craftable gear schematics drop in raids will make crafting more valuable.

 

Too bad the vast majority of those things I've seen drop are BOP when crafted. If you can't personally use it or stick it on a companion, its vendor trash. Can't even benefit the community via trickle down of selling most of that stuff on the market.

 

You sure have a love affair with WoW's bend of gear elitism, eh? LotrO kinda does too, but you know what LotrO also does? They do a pretty good job of making the top end craftables accessible via numerous recipes available off daily vendors with a smattering of BOE recipes that drop in dungeons or raids.

 

They also enrich the value of weapon crafting skills by tying the best weapons in the game to require a crafter that's done their craft guild dailies and has the recipes for 1st Age and 2nd Age legendary weapons/offhands to make them.

 

Crafted armor in LotrO? Yeah, raid sets you have to farm your face off to get are better, but if you never see better than the top end crafted teals (purples in our equivalence here in TOR), you are -not- doing poorly. You could hop right into a raid and not be holding your team back or needing to be carried due to gear inferiority.

 

Here? A difference between 14k HP and 20k HP is enormous, and the stat differences between the best non-raid craftables and gear you can PVP or farm out of normal mode ops? We're looking at a difference of around 1100-1200 in your primary stat and 1700-1900, and the same goes for endurance.

 

That's HUGE. Utterly unapproachable by anything even vaguely available to a crafter.

 

So, I've ranked every single craft skill you opened with to 400. I haven't invested a lot of effort into anything but Armormech and a smidge into Biochem and Artifice, but it's been telling.

 

I had 5 weeks of holiday leave to burn on TOR and boy did I burn it.

 

And boy do I feel burnt for what it's shown me.

 

You think you're going to out-WoW WoW. Your crafting is as annoying where it isn't moreso, you chew up way more time and, frankly, your provisions of craftable modifications doesn't hold a candle's worth of relevance to Enchanting in WoW, or Gemcutting...or Herbalism....or Cooking...or Engineering.

 

All of those have, over the years in WoW, evolved into things that are useful to everybody. Gonna go into a raid with your gear unenchanted, no potions, no scrolls and yno gems in your gear? Are you stupid? Invest in your community! Invest in your own experience and level a craft skill to make useful stuff!

 

Armorcrafters and weaponcrafters in WoW? Y'know, I seem to recall having bought a very nice set of blue resilience armor off WoW's auction house to go futz around in PVP with. Gemmed it, did my own enchanting, snagged a decent PVP weapon after racking up enough valor to snag one and...I could have done a lot more if I cared about PVP.

 

But I was able to go out there and be quite effective for a putz putzing around with my guild, and some crafter got to sell me some entry level PVP gear that, frankly, worked as well as my interest in investing in it required. Wasn't great, but it wasn't irrelevant either.

 

Can crafters currently craft anything with Expertise on it? Huh. No entry level PVP gear? No encouragement to crafters to give the community that bridge into your own PVP system? Farm warzones like you have nothing better to do with your life or nothing on that end?

 

Moreover, I was tanking, and tanking just fine I might add, with an iLvL 359 tank-statted sword in WoW until I finally won a much nicer tank weapon in a heroic firelands raid.

 

Could the same be done here? I suppose, but...why, when for far less wasted time struggling out the best weapon a crafter can craft you could just...PVP for a while and almost certainly get a better shot at a pretty heavily superior PVP weapon?

 

Ain't like the PVP weapon can't have the right stats on it. Heck, you're far better set if you do nothing but PVP and start raiding in Champion/Centurion/Battlemaster gear than if you waste one second of your life trying to go the crafting route.

 

 

You're funny people. You clearly tried so hard to not be WoW in the story immersion. You clearly tried to break away from the generic moulde of holy trinity class structures.

 

...But then you turned around and undermined those things by carbon copying the most annoying and raid-funneling engineered aspects of WoW. You built the need for holy trinity class structures right into it and, consequently, made several trees on numerous classes pointless to do much with, set the standard by which numerous talents on those trees are just plain stupid to take for anything, ever...

 

...and you didn't even come vaguely close to copying the WoW experience with anything resembling skill or proficiency. Just...stop trying. It's still early enough to save yourselves further embarassment, and you've got such a lovely thing going with the story immersion.

 

Really, you do. You folks generally tell a good story and have a well of potential to bring folks down a years-long epic, unfolding saga on the weight of that story.

 

But I'm just gonna go ahead and call it right now, for the absolutely no good it will do 'cause I doubt anybody that matters will even read this; you're not going to out-WoW WoW.

 

By the time you acquire the proficiency and nuanced, firsthand understanding of the macrosocial and psychosocial details involved in the whole morass, we'll be two years down the road, everyone that was primarily here for the story will be alienated and have no faith left in you at all, if they're even still playing, and your forum will be full of people trying to play your raidgame like a raidgame and griping about how you keep sticking ove-relaborated story and dialogue into everything.

 

And even then, you'll still be dragging along in WoW's shadow, because WoW does one thing and funnels all its effort into that one thing; it all leads to raiding. There's lore, there's story, but it's of optional, secondary and, for many raid-minded folks, utterly irrelevant concern as anything but a very occasional talk point while waiting for Bob to get his dang flasks crafted so we can get on with this raid.

 

You're gonna see it as it is. You will see the ire rise over dialogue existing in HM flashpoints and operations. You engineered that yourselves; you're trying to run in two directions at once.

 

Go out into a hall and try this. Try to run in two directions at once.

 

Keep doing it until you get my point. You don't get it as of right now as far as anything presented even vaguely indicates.

 

But you will. Whether it's too late for that knowledge to matter or not depends on how long it takes you to figure out that you're not going to out-WoW WoW and you've committed yourselves absolutely to a very specific degree of immersive storytelling.

 

I feel like I'm explaining rain to someone that doesn't go outside to say it, but, if nothing else, I feel better. It's said.

 

I'm gonna go see what a new class' storyline's like now and try my best to ignore your sinkhole craft skills.

 

Peace out.

 

This is a serious wall of text, but I agree with every point.

 

The more I play SWTOR, the more it just disappoints in every way. And this is from a guy that played beta and bought a CE.

[Daayz]

It sucks that they went the nerf anything that is remotely useful route as opposed to the make each and every crafting profession unique and useful in some way.

[Volki]

It sucks that they went the nerf anything that is remotely useful route as opposed to the make each and every crafting profession unique and useful in some way.

 

And they go down the road of sure ruin with this.

[Salizars]

I'm sure this has been mentioned already somewhere in the previous pages; I can't be the only one that sees what's actually wrong with this picture. The problem isn't that the medpacks or grenades were too good, it was that they are only usable by someone with the crafting to make it.

 

If you could sell them, then it wouldn't matter what profession you had, you could use them, if you could afford them. You wouldn't need biochem, or cybertech. Just like you don't need synthweaving to wear jedi robes.

 

As long as some of the (universally) best equipment is limited to people with a given crew skill, you are going to have the problem that some people don't have it. Make the reusables on-par with level stuff, at best. Better yet, make them 60% as good as a purple medpack of the same level. Then you can choose to spend money for a big heal (consuming a medpack) or just getting a little heal for "free".

 

Upping the crew skill requirement level is not going to fix anything.

[ArmoredJuneBug]

Can people please stop quoting Uruare's post in full, thanks.

 

It's a great post and I agree with most of it but that doesn't mean tacking one-liners onto lengthy quotes has stopped being bad form.

 

You have a delete button, use it.

[Akermann]

5 min grenades CD is imbalanced? okay information, thanks for this "balanced" "nofix"

[krakken]

We plan to give all crafting and gathering professions additional and ongoing attention, yes.

 

It's important to remember that we launched not a month ago - we're in for the long haul. Crafting is an important part of the game and we have plans for it

 

And it took you 6 years to figure this out when it was brought up on the forums countless times? Way to keep up with the player base.

[MumbaUmba]

What was wrong with grenades, they has 5 min CD!!!

[Crohadan]

We plan to give all crafting and gathering professions additional and ongoing attention, yes.

 

It's important to remember that we launched not a month ago - we're in for the long haul. Crafting is an important part of the game and we have plans for it

 

 

the patience of teh crafting community is GONE. fact is these issues were brought up about crafting AND itemization long long ago in a galaxy far far away, called beta. but you didnt listen then. you guys said you knew what was wrong and we were around for stress testing only. well perrhaps if you would have listended to us then you would not have the outcry you have got now. and i fail to see the logic in nerfing tow seperate crew skills to make them equally as useless as the rest of them...kudos:rolleyes:

Edited January 19, 2012 by Crohadan