Notes on BioChem and Cybertech in Game Update 1.1

[Cbaoth]

Well boyos, just face it, this game is going down the toilet like everything else that EA, i.e., "The Kiss of Death" has touched. I suggest just get out while you can...

 

You first..bye!

[robutt]

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.

 

Gee thanks, medkits are really WAY too powerful, especially for classes that can't heal. I mean, a healing class can spam another heal about every 2 to 3 seconds, but the dumb tanks using a medkit every 90 seconds is indeed very unbalancing. Maybe, for balance reasons, tanks shouldn't be able to use any healing items at all, I am sure that would make things even better!

 

Also, let me applaud the intelligent game design in regards to the above: good idea to give classes that can heal healer pets early on or even right away, and let classes that can't heal wait for level 30 or in some cases, 40 until they get that. That should show them. Well done! How was such brilliance achieved, did you flip a coin? Roll some dice?

Edited January 19, 2012 by robutt

[diet-water]

Why nerf instead of buff everything else? Negative changes are never a good solution.

 

Instead of nerfing biochem into near uselessness in terms of the medpac (the pvp potion now heals for more than the rakata medpac, GG.) give other professions their own consumable like for example, a +3% damage reduction to internal and elemental consumable only for synthweavers.

 

Something along these lines would be better than to nerfbat and move on...

[NevesNET]

Instead of fixing other professions let's make Biochem worthless as well, good job, you did it! Now PvP pots that are dirt cheap are better than my Rakata that I spent countless hours and credits to get... seriously 3k HP on my 19k BH toon makes a big difference! Why not make Rakata a % based pot then, if your intention was for them to cure a % of a players health. Last stand is nonsense in PvP.

[Starbuckx]

Allow players to have up to 6 crafts, therefore everyone can have biochem and other crafts

 

OR

 

Allow biochem reusables to be traded to other players.

[Grothaal]

now seriously, who in a right mind would think a consumable skill woudl not be better than a armour/weapon skill in a MMO. seriously....

 

Consumables are allways better, just because end game is focused on gear, and who would go for gear a crafter would do better? Crafted matterial have to be worst and useless so people go in end level group content.

 

Or people accept it as it is, or BW make every craft have its consumables, thats the only 2 ways available. They would make everyone have an advantage, also keep us shopping for an increasing ammount of items for every craft.

 

What i would really like is being able to train every craft at the same time. Because, really, swtor isnt a economic driven game, so screw it. Want economics go play EVE (wich i do).

[Redial]

you completely missed the post in every one of those threads that said

 

"the answer is not to nerf biochem, it is to buff all other professions so they are at least somewhat useful"

[Zakumene]

Instead of fixing other professions let's make Biochem worthless as well, good job, you did it! Now PvP pots that are dirt cheap are better than my Rakata that I spent countless hours and credits to get... seriously 3k HP on my 19k BH toon makes a big difference! Why not make Rakata a % based pot then, if your intention was for them to cure a % of a players health. Last stand is nonsense in PvP.

 

What is real nonsense is when a DPS only class gets a 5k healing medal from a medpack and my FULL TALENT spec'd healer cannot crit 5k (best so far was 4770).

[Foamslinger]

I'm curious in what universe is Biochem not still madatory.

 

All this did was make it so you couldn't have both grenades adn stims.

[LadyofLeitrim]

As someone who doesn't PvP I'm not happy when things change because of PvP imbalance. Can't there be different items/skills/everything between PvP and PvE game play? Guild Wars has its own problems, but at least PvP never messed with PvE (and the other way around; there are enough PvP players who don't like PvE changing their prefered play style)

 

And the end game content / FP / operations reason: don't let others bully you into playing how they want you to play, just play how you want to play. I'm pretty sure a coordinated group of any crafting skill background could successfully finish every end game content.

 

That said, lets make the best of the situation and enjoy the game.

[AeonWeapon]

Armstech still worthless.

 

Artifice also still worthless... With 400 Artifice I can only craft "22" hilts and enhancements, but you can get "23" ones with daily commendations. This means there is no demand for my craft. Also the crafted artifacts have no activation buff, so they're worthless.

 

How about making gear crafting skills useful?

[Morrighane]

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

 

Many of the crafting professions are currently broken, let alone useless. I haven't seen an orange recipe for Armstech drop yet. Do they exist? Should they? Investigation is supposed to return schematics but the only schematics I seem to find are from regular drops, and these are few and far between. People are reporting they are unable to gain blues from RE'ing vibroswords and shotguns. I haven't tried myself.

 

Reverse Engineering needs a buff. It took me 23 green earpieces to get a single blue last night on my Cybertech toon, at a time when the resources I needed to make these were in short supply, and I find that immensely frustrating and unfun. This is supposed to be a game, right? Games are supposed to be fun, not frustrating, right? Then why do you add so many frustrating elements into this game for no real gain?

 

Shouldn't there be a reasonable cap on how many items it takes to get a schematic, say, 10 items for green to blue and 25 for blue to purple? This way people know what they have to work towards and can prepare accordingly, reducing the immense frustrating this system can sometimes induce. Then it will actually be fun to RE something in one or two drops, rather than little more than a relief that the ordeal is finally over as it is now.

 

All these problems should have been fixed before launch. Whether or not the rest of us are in it for the long haul depends on your addressing these things in a timely manner. I am playing this game now, not 6 months from now.

[Morrighane]

I believe it is a mistake to nerf things to bring them into balance. the correct response would have been to make these items available to everyone for purchase, negating any PVP advantage to the items. You still have to work to earn the credits to buy one of these items. This way Biochem people would have a source of profit, there would be no necessity of taking Biochem as a profession for raiding/PVP (as there still is, even post-nerf) and everyone will eventually be on the same playing field. Ditto for Cybertech 'nades.

 

These enormous, poorly thought out and gratuitous nerfs do build resentment. Apologies are meaningless to people who dropped a profession to get Biochem one only to find out they now need 400 to use the items.

 

Our time is valuable to us. Stop wasting it.

[Focuspuller]

First of all, I love this game.

 

I'm just a casual gamer. I don't care about maximizing the last few critical 1 or 2 percent gains. I don't care that i consistantly come in the middls or lower part of a PvP warzone. I just like to play.

 

I consider it fantastic that the developers are paying attention to issues and trying to do something to fix bugs and such on a consistant basis and are adding more content. That shouldn't be overlooked. I've read about half this thread, and there are a lot of angry people giving the devs crap about something they think is a mistake. That kind of language isn't very encouraging.

 

But, about his issue.

 

I started my 3rd Character. I chose biochem because it seemed useful without even knowing anything about how good biochem was. My other 2 professions were artifice and synthweaving. I've invested hundreds of thousands of creadits each gathering material, taking the time and concentration to balance out crew missions, stopping my gameplay to do so, RE a blue item 20+ times without getting a purple. I still haven't been able to RE a purple highest end crystal. I've almost given up. I just do it now and then while waiting for a pvp match. What do I get? An item that is just below my current character level.

 

After all that time, credits, and concentration, I can just buy a mod on ilum that is superior, pvp armor, planetary commendation rewards, questing rewards which are all better than my crafting skill. Mind you, I'm no slouch. I've kept up my crafting. Artifice provides a slight advantage as I can create something that might be more astheticly pleasing with a color.

 

There have been many posts that the other crafting professions need to be raised. I whole hartedly agree. After investing so much time and credits, I would expect to have something unique and useful at lvl 50 with 400 in each profession without taking FOREVER to RE. As it stands, I don't. I wish i never did any of this so I could buy the 1.5 mil speeder, or see what's going on in the vip cantina on the fleet.

 

Again, thanks so much for the game and keep up the hard work. Please, raise the other crafting professions.

 

Char: Vahsren, Despair.

[TipsyDrow]

That's all fine and dandy, but what about crafting while leveling? We have yet to hear anything from anybody (mod, dev, manager, or peon) regarding the fact that commendation gear outshines crafted gear at all levels of gameplay.

 

Can somebody at least let us know whether Bioware intends on addressing this issue or not?

 

Commendation gear doesn't outshine crafted gear at all lvls. Not by a long shot. take a closer look at the commendation mod vendors and you will find that you can not purchase the best might/resolve armoring/mod for your lvl from a com vendor. You can buy the so called balanced/mundane forcewielder/guardian armoring/mods though. (used the jedi ones as an example only this applies for all classes) You have to either craft the best ones for your class or buy the off the GTN. So I either buy them or craft them. I use the commendations to upgrade companion gear or to get an asthectically better looking piece.

[Miothan]

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.

 

So, instead of making the other Crew skills competitive, you choose to nerf BioChem and Cyber, but leave the other useless crew skills untouched? wow...

[Nimzog]

Just a little comment : Do you know how complex is the coding behind a modern MMO.

 

Im studying Software Engineering and if one of your design choice did not take into account the differentiation of skills/stats between PvP/PvE then it would take A LOT of time to implement such fix as: "make biochem stims PvE only" or "dont let the buff affect the granade in PvP".

 

Yes it was a lazy approach but it was the best they could do on short notice.

 

Stop complaining, start being constructive.

 

Crafting was never an endgame usefull gear wise, deal with it.

 

Unlimited healz nerfed(as long as its as good as green or blue stuff) ok.

 

Im not at 400 in anything yet.

And I hate the way PvP works at the moment, if I wanted a PvP game I would be playing Warhammer Online.

[ArmoredJuneBug]

As someone who doesn't PvP I'm not happy when things change because of PvP imbalance.

This has nothing to do with PvP.

 

It's about crafting, specifically non-Biochem crafting, not being good enough.

 

Stacking consumables to trivialize certain situations were a game balance problem and an issue n both PvE and PvP.

Can't there be different items/skills/everything between PvP and PvE game play?

There can but that's very poor design, any game that tries to artificially separate PvE and PvP more always ends up having it blow up in their face.

 

This because you'd have to effectively spend twice the effort with balancing for half the population.

Commendation gear doesn't outshine crafted gear at all lvls.

Actually it does, once you factor in time and effort as well as availability.

 

With Cybertech on my Shadow tank I expected to be able to craft tank mods but I can't do that, those are only available from vendors.

 

Also, mods are the cheapest commendation gear while requiring a very significant investment in materials just in the odd chance of getting the gear I want.

 

Worst case I spent around 200K in materials, let alone the time spent gathering it all, to re-engineer my way to a single artifact mod. Had I settled for one with a couple of points less in Willpower and Endurance I could have gotten it for 2 planetary commendations.

 

Even had I spent a tenth of the materials, credits and effort that still wouldn't have been a good investment.

[madmilitia]

 

 

TL;DR: Fancy words for ‘we nerfed BioChem and Cybertech endgame products’ because they were so good that players started considering them mandatory.

 

so you now made my epic health pack worse then the blue one.

 

boosts your HP pool by 15% for 15secs??? what is the point i use a med pack because i'm low HP, which means the extra 15% does me nothing because by the time i get healed to full in a raid the 15% is gone.

 

or i'm solo which means i have no others healths to take benifit from the extra 15% missing HP.

 

min max is going to be min max you will never be allowed to have crappy min max and get in a good guild / raid.

 

our raids are required to have all datacrons. does that mean you going to nerf the datacrons?

[Thentamakur]

All this thread is people who like to complain how it is unfair that there choice is not the best choice so nerf the other choices.

 

There will always be a best crew skill, best spec, best class, best something that is a must have so that you can do X.

 

get over it and deal. 99% of you are not in a top end raiding guild, therefore do not need the bleeding edge everything to push progression.

 

So get off them nerfing something that really does not even matter, and enjoy the game. You do not like what they are doing, think the game is not done to your satisfaction leave, go try to find a game with everything perfect, It can not be done.

 

To all those who read the other people post and whine at all the stupid complaints see you in game.

[wolong]

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.

 

The ENTIRE crafting system needs a reworking.

 

It isnt that people were required to take Biochem for the buffs, its that the REST of the crafting skills SUCKED so much that anyone WOULD BE stupid not to take the buffs of Biochem.

 

BUFF the other skills, gimping the only good one just shows you dont know your own game. I have to go back almost an entire DECADE to find another MMORPG with a crafting system this weak.

[Lady_Alyria]

The ENTIRE crafting system needs a reworking.

 

It isnt that people were required to take Biochem for the buffs, its that the REST of the crafting skills SUCKED so much that anyone WOULD BE stupid not to take the buffs of Biochem.

 

BUFF the other skills, gimping the only good one just shows you dont know your own game. I have to go back almost an entire DECADE to find another MMORPG with a crafting system this weak.

 

Which one?

[Kesphin]

we don’t want one or two crafting professions to become the de facto ‘must have’ choice for everyone

 

Instead of nerfing everything and making it useless, why don't you make every crafting profession interesting? Better that way, isn't it?

 

Another question about the rakata medpack... Why does blue=purple? If you want to kill something, aim for the head... or enjoy the show...

Edited January 20, 2012 by Kesphin

[Tenacity]

So are you guys going to actually make armstech, armormech, and synthweaving useful at level 50?

 

Because right now, nothing they can make even comes close to comparing with endgame gear.

 

I dropped 400 armormech / 400 scavenging / 400 underworld trading to pick up biochem / bioanalysis / diplomacy because the armormech setup was doing absolutely nothing for me. Biochem at least gives me something I can use at level 50 that I cant get from quests, flashpoints, or raids.

[Azuldun]

As it stands, only 1 (2) crew skills today produce items that are better than mainstream avaliable items. Thus as everyone says, in the end they are currently the only viable ways to go if you dont want to give yourself a distinct disadvantage (in endgame content atleast).

 

The dilemma as I understand it, is that if you make crafted items equal in power to raid loot, noone may bother with raids. But if you make crafted items less powerful then raid content, noone will bother with crafting. If bioware dont want to make crew skills a necessity, then they have to make sure that no crew skill can produce items that are better than the publically avaliable items.

 

One suggestion, if you want to keep both crafting and raids viable and usefull, is to make a compromise and introduce crafted items that can only be enhanced by raid-only/commendation mods. And the other way around with raid-only items. Make sure the end results are equal in usefullnes (perhaps slightly stronger than their counterparts that can be obtained through pure raiding or crafting).

 

And make sure there are more distinction in appearances between crafted and looted/bought items to allow players a wide choice based on their estetical preference.

 

Of course most of these items has to be tradable aswell to encourage game economy, but each crew skill should have a special "treat" that is exclusive to those who spend the time and creds to master the skill.

 

Hopefully the nerf was just the first step and that more usefull items are added to the other skills in the future.