Why is Crafted Gear not the best?

[Faytte]

More so in Eve, those super rare item drops are also rarely seen in game. Because of how PvP and kill mails work, people do not strut around with their super well equipped ships very often, unless they are VERY safe.

 

The majority of players (99.999%) are in all player made items.

 

The economy has very mild inflation from PvE mission runners, but even then Eve has a professional economist that reviews the games economy on a regular basis to figure out what is going on.

 

Players mine ores

They refine it and sell it to other players

Whom turn those refined items into products

Players buy products

then players will either PvE or PvP, inevitably loosing their ship, but hopefully not before recovering enough money to go replace the items they lost, which continues the entire economy.

 

Then there is the reverse in that

 

To get BETTER ores to mine (for better items) players have to PvP/PvE MORE, which means more losses, which in turn means more production. Its basically an enormous war effort that perpetually fuels itself.

 

Its kinda beautiful. More people (not casual players though) should give the game a chance. You want PvP on an epic scale? You got it. You want real end game content? The entire game is content you dictate..you make your own fun with 300K other people on the same server, and it can be really intense (or docile, if you prefer)

[Arandmoor]

In eve online, the best "gear" still comes from "raids", though. You can't build plex/officer items. Then again, those are only used on supercaps and machs these days.

 

Okay...PLEX is something completely different. I think you mean "Faction", and officer items are so absurdly rare they don't come close to comparing to raid loot.

 

Raid loot is a class of item you're expected to blanket your raid in. It's more akin to Tech 2 mods/ships in Eve.

 

Faction mods are more like Artifacts.

 

Officer items are more like DAOC relics. When one pops up the entire Eve economy feels it (they sell for billions of ISK. Yes..."billion" with an 's' at the end...meaning more than one billion. ISK may flow like cheap wine...but it's still not that easy to make that officer loot is anything to sneeze at.

[slowjerk]

PvP needs to be SKILL based not gear based.

 

It is skill based in the 10-49 bracket. Even before they gave 50s their own brackets, I was killing 50 sorcs solo with a early 20s lethality operative with relative ease.

[PalonP]

Similar to what many people have said before there has to be some depedence on BOTH sides.

 

Operations/Raids at the highest level should yield EXTREMELY rare mats that can craft the best in-game gear. They also should make becoming a "master" level crafter much much harder.

 

I would personally be in favor of having crafting take months (I would say years but people couldn't handle that, and would freak out.) to become a master at that particular craft.

 

I am all for only a small amount of people on a particular server having the best gear or have the best item for a particular gear slot. If you can make the crafting extremely hard and time-consuming and also make the mat drops extremely rare. You create a system where people spend alot of time trying to aquire that, organize TEAM-WORK to attempt to get these mats.

 

Only the most dedicated crafters should be able to craft these items. I think that makes everybody happy? Does this not meet the needs of both sides?

[Geawiel]

Completly untrue, DAOC had best gear crafting, but it also had raids if anyone could be bored enough to do them. They provided gear that was visually impressive an stood out from everything els.

It works an it works perfectly.

 

Actually, this is completely untrue after TOA and above lvl 40 (35 if you wanted 3 perticular PvE peices.) TOA gear had special abilities and certain bonuses not found in the crafting community. Bonuses to melee speed, casting speed, spell range, archer range, archer speed, ect. The abilities (for anyone who didn't play DAoC) where things such as chance of spell procs to temp increase melee speed, usables to give you various effects, including visuals to change you to look like creatures (and standing croc is one that comes to mind) and even a passive that caused you to cheat death on occasion. Again, NONE of this could be gotten through the crafting community. Player crafted was exactly what someone else said, stat fillers.

 

Running into RvR with a full set of crafteds (that ignoring the fact that the "accessory" slots were PvE only from the get go) would be a stepping stone. You could compete to a point but in a 1v1 those extra abilities are what usually won it against a crafted set. THAT is why most hated TOA. It forced the PvPers to do PvE, with some of the PvE took a couple hours to complete. On top of that, there were various bugs that caused credit to not be awarded and before a change they put out, it was only a chance of even getting the gear as it only dropped 1 item for the entire group. By the time that was changed though, the population had already dropped out.

 

However, as crafting pertains to TOR. I'm not happy with how generally useless the "core" crafting is (armor and weapon crafting.) I spent some early time working weapon crafting, only to realise that past 14 its worthless for weapon and past 20 worthless for armor. Starting 14 you can get an OJ PvP weapon and 20 for OJ armor that fits most of your slots. From there mods take over and the weapon and armor crafting is null and void. You can get some OJ recipes here and there but, its all style taste since the stats can be changed. I haven't found a whole lot on the crafted side that looks good for modables.

 

The fix, to me, would be more OJ patterns and the ability to purchase just mods on the PvP vendors. Making level "sets" would help with making the trade viable also. Maybe give a slight bonus to xp or credit drop on them. Something that would slightly set them out but, not make it so they surpass the PvP/PvE stuff.

 

On the high end of the game, allow the purchase of rare materials for PvP and make droppables in PvE raids that are required to make armor/weapons. These should be on par with PvP gear or PvE drops. Not sure on the OJ though, that may put us right where we're at now and make it again, a style issue. Its a tough fix to make armor and weapon crafting on par with mod crafting so that they become a viable trade. Right now, they're worthless. The only reason I capped mine out was because I just love to craft haha, couldn't help myself.

[crowncrow]

In eve online, the best "gear" still comes from "raids", though. You can't build plex/officer items. Then again, those are only used on supercaps and machs these days.

 

Well, that is the whole point of bringing the EVE crafting system as a good example to follow...

 

Raids should remain relevant for apex gear, what is lacking in TOR, and most other Theme Park games for that matter is a viable crafting option.

EVE is not the most popular MMO out there in terms of numbers, they also take huge risks with their fun base by pushing innovation all the time... Some of it pays off, some off it pisses off, regardless when it comes to crafting fueled by hard core PVP there is no better example to follow...

[MattieP]

..... Edited January 27, 2012 by MattieP

[Chromiie]

.....

 

Word.

[Moghra]

Its kinda beautiful. More people (not casual players though) should give the game a chance. You want PvP on an epic scale? You got it. You want real end game content? The entire game is content you dictate..you make your own fun with 300K other people on the same server, and it can be really intense (or docile, if you prefer)

 

Don't forget to mention how incredibly boring Eve is 99% of the time.

[Nytak]

I'm more of the opinion that crafted gear should really be more for levelling.

 

Once you hit level cap, I can see maybe a *few* BIS items for specific encounters (think resist gear).

 

Ideally though, I'd like each craft to make consumables at end game related to what they do. Like temporary stat boosts for items.

[crowncrow]

Don't forget to mention how incredibly boring Eve is 99% of the time.

 

Boring is a relative term here, its time consuming yes. EVE is a challenging learning curve requiring more dedication then most. I would say not your everyday casual MMO, and I admit I play it rarely these days because of that. But it offers a good contrast to TOR when it comes to crafting - EVE is crafter's "Heaven" in comparison to most MMO's Why not learn from that?

[crowncrow]

Its kinda beautiful. More people (not casual players though) should give the game a chance. You want PvP on an epic scale? You got it. You want real end game content? The entire game is content you dictate..you make your own fun with 300K other people on the same server, and it can be really intense (or docile, if you prefer)

 

Indeed, IMO introduce even a fraction of the EVE's kind of sandbox experience to TOR and you will have a winning combination.

Edited January 27, 2012 by crowncrow

[Truga]

Indeed, IMO introduce even a fraction of the EVE's kind of sandbox experience to TOR and you will have a winning combination.

 

Personally, I just want the "rumoured huge and epic space expansion" to bring us free space flight. Make it a sandbox, allow us to nuke planet surface with turbolasers. What's not to love?

[Dharzhak]

Crafting needs to be more relevant

 

There's an easy way to do this.

 

Each crafting skill needs to be able to create a (somewhat expensive) BoE consumable that creates a temporary buff and a slightly better BoE version of that consumable that is usable only by a toon with that crafting skill at max level.

 

In SW:TOR, this would be easy.

 

Biochem is all set.

 

Cybertech is, arguably, also set. Personally, I think grenades are a waste of time and distract players from optimally doing their job. You could have it create flavor gadgets that don't have a significant impact on the game, like a holo dancer.

 

Armsmith could create consumables that buff non-force weapons. Likewise, Artifice could create consumables that buff force weapons.

 

Synthweaving & Armortech could create armor buffs that benefit mutually exclusive stats. Admittedly, it would take a bit of code work, but having BoE appearance mods would also be a big draw for these skills, since looks do count and they have little impact on game play.

 

Additionally, you make recipes in each crafting skill that require mats from more than one Mission skill. (Having three crafting skills use Underworld Trading and only one for each of the others is just stupid.)

Edited January 27, 2012 by Dharzhak

[acidzero]

SWG had crafted items as best in slot, simply made it so instead of getting good gear from the bigger bosses around the world they dropped crafting materials.

 

Examples being getting Krayt pearls, Gorax bone shards, Ackley Bones..etc...

[Chromiie]

 

Its kinda beautiful. More people (not casual players though) should give the game a chance. You want PvP on an epic scale? You got it. You want real end game content? The entire game is content you dictate..you make your own fun with 300K other people on the same server, and it can be really intense (or docile, if you prefer)

 

If Eve wasn't so pvp focused I'd would so be playing right now. Yes I'm a carebear.

[Truga]

If Eve wasn't so pvp focused I'd would so be playing right now. Yes I'm a carebear.

 

The problem with sandbox is, you can't really make it too pve focused since pve is by definition either a theme park (see flashpoints/raids) or ridiculously boring (see eve pve content). You can't satisfy everyone.

 

Back on topic, I still think getting materials for items in raids, rather than full drops would be a step in the right direction. Multiplayer games should encourage interaction, no matter how small or useless it seems, and you get to choose which item you'll make from your raid loot/credits/whatever.

 

It'd also somewhat solve the credit issue. Currently unless you respec every damn day, credits are literally worthless. If you could at least trade for extra mats/items with other people they'd have a purpose. As it is now, anything worth a damn is BoP.

 

And yeah, even if this does happen, crew skills still need to be balanced, otherwise people will just roll biochem on the characters they play and use a mule alt for crafting. Currently biochem is way too good while actually in combat. Free stims and unlimited medpacs are pretty broken.

Edited January 27, 2012 by Truga

[Arandrell]

One solution to the "no-one will pvp/raid if crafting is relevant" 'issue' is to gate the crafted higher tier items with profficiencies/pvp level.

 

We already have several requirements on the bottom of items:

• Level
  
• Class
  
• Social Level
  
• Dark/Light
  

 

add a 'pvp level' to the pvp gear or make a learn-able 'proficiency' like we have for light/medium/heavy armour.

 

Make the 'ultimate' raid gear functionally identical to crafted gear, but give it a set bonus that only activates in a full group.

 

Make a system where you have to EARN the ability to wear the 'effort free' gear and i suspect most of the problems either side have will be rendered moot.

 

As a crafter i don't care if i cant WEAR all the items i craft immediately as long as i can CRAFT it.

[Qoojo]

Because getting the best gear from adventuring is the way it should be unless you are playing Crafter Chuck the Game.

[Chromiie]

Because getting the best gear from adventuring is the way it should be unless you are playing Crafter Chuck the Game.

 

This is the dumbest response I've read yet.

[Zorvan]

This is the dumbest response I've read yet.

 

Nah, I've seen dumber. Definitely a contender though.

[Lexster]

Personally feel items should be player made and raid augmented. So, player makes the base item which includes the current mods/aug slots, plus an additional slot or two for very rare raid sockets

[Zangaboing]

Nah, I've seen dumber. Definitely a contender though.

 

Actualy he's quite right. It all comes down to what the developers want to do with their game. Since they use gear as an incentive for players to explore content, allowing them to buy equal or more powerful gear from other people is pointless.

[gurugeorge]

Actualy he's quite right. It all comes down to what the developers want to do with their game. Since they use gear as an incentive for players to explore content, allowing them to buy equal or more powerful gear from other people is pointless.

 

Exactly. It's a totally different type of game from SWG or EVE Online, where EVERYTHING is crafted by players.

 

These types of MMOs (the line stemming from EQ, WoW, and all "WoW clones", including this game apart from the innovative VO/story stuff) which follow something called the "DIKU MUD" formula, are designed as hamster wheels that reward difficult group endgame content; crafting has to take a back seat to that.

[crowncrow]

Actualy he's quite right. It all comes down to what the developers want to do with their game. Since they use gear as an incentive for players to explore content, allowing them to buy equal or more powerful gear from other people is pointless.

 

Well in that case why develop crafting at all, and why so much development time has been devoted to the companions, ( of which we will be getting more in the future) its not like you use them all? I think that Bioware is thinking about crafting seriously, the problem is that that the crafting system that they currently created is not properly finished, which btw does indicate possible changes. Those of us that like crafting as some fun on the side are discussing those possible changes - because however you look at it crafting is a part of this game already.

 

Exactly. It's a totally different type of game from SWG or EVE Online, where EVERYTHING is crafted by players.

 

These types of MMOs (the line stemming from EQ, WoW, and all "WoW clones", including this game apart from the innovative VO/story stuff) which follow something called the "DIKU MUD" formula, are designed as hamster wheels that reward difficult group endgame content; crafting has to take a back seat to that.

 

This is and that type of MMO? I mean, its not like every MMO must follow some kind of unmodifiable and rigid template. Creating new, and unexpected elements is what innovation is all about.

 

Essentially what we are asking for is for a better crafting system, however to do that one cannot do it in half measures - better not heaving it at all. We don't want to craft everything like in EVE or SWG but unfortunately one cannot create a fully satisfying crafting system without creating a properly balanced economy around it. Every game has some kind of economy to start with so I do not see how creating a bit more complex and rewarding system of crafting must automatically and irreversibly damage the Theme Park experience of group raiding.

 

If its done properly it will add a new dimension to our experience and not subtract anything from the hamster wheel, hack and slash fun we are so attached to.

Edited January 28, 2012 by crowncrow