Crafting Profession Changes in patch 1.1.2

[Danakar]

Just a follow-up of my earlier suggestion on page 8, regarding this part:

increased relevance of augments

 

Prototype Augmentation Device

Consumable

This device can be used to craft a single Augment slot onto an item. Consumed on use.

 

I think this would fit perfectly with Cybertech. It would be great if Cybertech could also RE such a recipe (or add a second one) into a personal reusable version (just like BioChem has their reusables):

 

Reusable Augmentation Device

(requires Cybertech 400)

This marvel of cybertechnical engineering is not consumed on use.

 

With just this small change you not only increase the relevance of augments by 100%, but it also provides the means for other people to put augment slots onto their existing gear that has no augment (for instance all items dropped by random mobs)

[Manjiyomi_Jun]

I get what they are doing and I don't like it. End-Game crafting is useless. So they are nerfing the one class that actually is useful which is why Bio-Chem is getting knocked out. Instead of this approach I would take a "lets buff up the other professions so they match the worth of Bio-Chem". WoW did this by having different professions give different buffs.. For example a Jewelcrafter got an extra Jewel slot. Or a blacksmith got an extra BS slot. If WoW took the SWTOR approach it would be lets take away both of those because its not fair that everyone can't have everything. Which leads to the PVP..

 

" As part of this effort, specifically for PvP, we are also working on changes that will reduce the gear related power difference between new characters at level 50 and players in full PvP gear. We feel that at the current time, this difference is too high."

 

Again instead of the nerf how about making entry level pvp gear for craftable for a synth weaver. Bam right there gives a synth more to do and solves the problem of too much damage difference for new 50's.

 

I mean this with all nerd rage aside... What is there to do end game.. the Raids are broken, PVP on ilum is hit or miss big time, WZ's don't register, my PVP gear that I'm working hard to get is going to be nerfed, end game Crafting is useless and there is no end-game storyline content.

 

they are adding in critical orange sets to buff the crafting professions. Did you even read the entire post?

[ikinai]

Just a follow-up of my earlier suggestion on page 8, regarding this part:

 

 

Prototype Augmentation Device

Consumable

This device can be used to craft a single Augment slot onto an item. Consumed on use.

 

I think this would fit perfectly with Cybertech. It would be great if Cybertech could also RE such a recipe (or add a second one) into a personal reusable version (just like BioChem has their reusables):

 

Reusable Augmentation Device

(requires Cybertech 400)

This marvel of cybertechnical engineering is not consumed on use.

 

With just this small change you not only increase the relevance of augments by 100%, but it also provides the means for other people to put augment slots onto their existing gear that has no augment (for instance all items dropped by random mobs)

 

That's great and all, but what about the crafters who have to rely on RNG to get a crit crafted piece? You've just made their craft lessened by not allowing their crit crafted armor to be worth any more than the normally crafted gear.

[Manjiyomi_Jun]

If I had put in a lot of effort into this game and then they suddenly nerf it to make all that time wasted I'd be very angry.

They have already given free valor to everyone.

Now they are going to nerf gear so its not as effective.

 

I've not no problem with games where gear isn't a major factor...changing it a couple of months after launch is unforgivable though.

 

Every change they make will alienate a group of people.

 

You should have stuck with your original plan bioware.

 

Why is it wasted? Battlemaster is still going to be the best gear for PVP, it just won't be the best by as big a margin.

[Soulcheg]

the fact that it's a stun fest has nothing to do with pvp gear. That's a CC issue.

 

And so what if he's Valor rank 68, do you need to feel satisfied with gear that improves on stats and makes you stronger than others? I mean what happened to pvp for well pvp? You need to feel rewarded for pvping?

 

Jesus...

 

I need fell rewarded for months of playing and putting a lot of efforts in progression of my character. Can't you understand, when you do some progression, it WILL have no sense. SWTOR does not have end-game content (yeah right, eternity vault, single dungeon), and all that left here - hunt for a good gear. But if a good gear will be same as 50 lvl greens - who will play further 50/10?

[ikinai]

I need fell rewarded for months of playing and putting a lot of efforts in progression of my character. Can't you understand, when you do some progression, it WILL have no sense. SWTOR does not have end-game content (yeah right, eternity vault, single dungeon), and all that left here - hunt for a good gear. But if a good gear will be same as 50 lvl greens - who will play further 50/10?

 

Could you guys please go discuss pvp in a pvp thread?

[Alexfan]

lol so even less to do at 50! Hours farming illum on the world most boring daily collecting crates.....for nothing! Worked hard for good gear....pointless!

Took wow a good few years to cater to the social players - you manage it in less than 2 months.

You havent even got a game that doesnt bug at least 3 times a minute, its barely playable for many with the frame rates - do you concentrate on fixing that? No lets just spoil the parts of the game worth doing.

 

By the way where did the unsubscribe button go from the account page? Funny how youve made it more difficult for people to leave this rapidly declining attempt at a game!

[xxxFistxxx]

We have no intention of forcing PvP players to do Operations and vice versa.

 

 

Sir,

 

As a ganker and griefer since the beginning of time there are 4 types of players.

 

PVP and PVE is fine but you know what the majority is

 

Socials and Crafters...call them soft targets You have completely ignored them, "if they are not fed I cannot eat."

 

Now I know this is a consensual pvp game and those socials and crafters are not required to do anything. Infact from EA's perspective they should play sims. You have massive old school guilds, coming from SWG and the heart of those guilds are the soft targets. They are the ones who welcome you online they are the ones that skip everything to show a noob a mushroom.

They are completely useless and unwanted here, they have no use. Infact they are a liability and they can make a guild look bad if they decide to venture off.

 

I know your busting *** to copy another successful mmo, but there is no reason you cannot enter the fold the softies. Make them the most important part of the game.

With the exception of 1 of a kind lore items, softies should be able to create the most amazing things in game. At least well enough for guilds to want them around, even if they do give the enemy a million screenshots of 5v1 losses.

 

If any of you want to tap into the brain of a genius, my price is beer, and maybe strippers or cash.

[Trimethicon]

Gear should never be the deciding factor in PVP, in any MMO, and it clearly is today in TOR 50v50. People should want to PVP because its fun, and they enjoy it, the reward is the PVP itself, not approaching PVP as work, or a chore, that must be done for weeks in order to start having fun.

 

Clearly there are internal statistics in place at BWA showing that PVP is not seeing a lot of new level 50 PVP'ers taking part in PVP because of the massive gear divide. And this is a great way to address it imo. Hardcore, and people with a ton of free time, will always feel that they're entitled to bigger and better because of their time invested, but rewarding time, and not skill, will see fewer and fewer people joining 50v50 PVP.

 

I don't know why MMO developers think that players need a gear grind timesink, and thus believe that this in turn will translate into time played, and money spent by the player. It only leads to burnout. People will continue subbing if they're having "fun". Levels 10-49 PVP is incredibly successful right now, because its fun, because everyone feels that they can be effective.

 

Warhammer Online had a very accessible PVP gear attainment arch imo.

[Fugitivelama]

Awesome, the most refreshing info is about the sell-ability of stims. Having to get a specific crafting profession to raid is realy bad. So kudos!

 

EDIT: on a suggestion note, adding some form of high-end item to crafting that doesnt involve raiding or w/e to aquire would add incentive.

 

As an example(and before you flame, example and suggestion are two entirely different things) an Armstech could craft a high-end barrel, equal or close to equal to end game quality. Understandably having to many of these would take away the necessity of raiding, so my suggestion is more in line with 1 "item" per profession.

 

Perhaps this could be chosen by the player, say you can choose 1 out of 4 different schematics for example. This could be held by a quest or something similar. In this scenario however it would have to be BoP, or else you could just combine from different players and get a full "set."

 

 

This would not work , it would just force end game raiders to pick up this profession instead. Any profession that allows you to acquire end game quality items without entering any end game content will force players to switch.

[Walldorf]

With this changes and the upcoming changes you deytroy the crafting system. The upcoming mod exchange into crafted equipment force everybody who will squeeze the last bit out of his char to craft his own critted gear.

 

You don't want to force ppl to stick to jobs, to hell with it. You'll force, as you said, ppl to stick to jobs with this changes as well as without it.

 

You completely go the wrong way but who cares? Another timesink to keep ppl doing crap over and over again. This time it's biochem, next time you'll remove all rakata critted gear from the game because it's offbalanced? After some patches will you change the system back to setgear because it's offbalanced that ppl have crittet orange setgear thats far better than sets?

 

This is ridiculous a complete nobrainer. With this changes there had to be benefits in Biochem like craft, and critable, rakate imps and stuff like this because biochem is worth NOTHING after these changes and your plans for the future. You wan't to have consumables to have no inpact in gameplay? great plan, so NOONE will need those anymore.

 

sry for my bad english but i cant understand those upcoming and future changes, they don't make any sence.

[Felapton]

Hi,

 

I wanted to drop some notes on the changes made to the BioChem profession in the patch (1.1.2) that just went onto the Public Test Server, how they fit in the big picture and how we are proceeding forward with crafting professions in endgame in general.

 

First off, we removed the requirement to have the BioChem profession to use Energized and Exotech stims and adrenals. This was done to (a) remove pressure of players to pick up BioChem for optimal combat performance and (b) to open up the sale of BioChem products to a larger audience on the Galactic Trade Network.

 

Additionally, we've reduced the effectiveness of the BioChem exclusive Rakata Stimpacks to be equal to Energized stimpacks. Their intended benefit is the cost savings they provide over time, not an increase in power. We are also in progress of reviewing the creation costs of many consumables in the game against the economic realities (acquisition cost of purple mission materials on our live servers) and will likely make adjustments to these in the future.

 

It is our intention to gradually, over multiple patches, reduce the impact of situational consumables on endgame combat resolution and shift the factors which determine the outcome of combat more towards personal skill. As part of this effort, specifically for PvP, we are also working on changes that will reduce the gear related power difference between new characters at level 50 and players in full PvP gear. We feel that at the current time, this difference is too high.

 

On a more general note about crafting, our changes to make BioChem consumables freely tradeable are just a small first step as part of a larger scale effort to extend our crafting gameplay, for all professions, into the endgame.

 

Major changes are currently on schedule for the next major content patch, such as extractable basemods (armoring, barrel, etc.) from purple items, critical crafting successes on orange outfits, more bind-on-equip schematic drops for artifice and other professions, increased relevance of augments, better reverse engineering chance, and other improvements. We want to create significant incentive for players to engage in the crafting economy – as provider of goods or supplier - without requiring players to take up a specific profession as a ticket into endgame.

 

Long term, our plan is to evolve Star Wars: The Old Republic’s game economy to a more player driven model, strengthen and improve the GTN and embrace the game’s extensive appearance customization throughout the game. We have a long list of improvements planned for that but we’re also anxious to hear from you. Feel free to use this thread to give us your feedback on the topic!

 

Regards

Georg

 

Please do look at the other crafting based crew skills to create "unique to x". Such as creating unique armor mods (for cybertech only), syntweaving legendary light, dark, social to synthweaving only armors. Armstech unique barrels for armstech only.

 

I believe either philosophy(?) should be in effect...1. no craft gets unique to "biochem only" or "armstech only" or 2.every craft gets their "unique" items. This creates a balance through out.

[Alexfan]

Gear should never be the deciding factor in PVP, in any MMO, and it clearly is today in TOR 50v50. People should want to PVP because its fun, and they enjoy it, the reward is the PVP itself, not approaching PVP as work, or a chore, that must be done for weeks in order to start having fun.

 

Clearly there are internal statistics in place at BWA showing that PVP is not seeing a lot of new level 50 PVP'ers taking part in PVP because of the massive gear divide. And this is a great way to address it imo. Hardcore, and people with a ton of free time, will always feel that they're entitled to bigger and better because of their time invested, but rewarding time, and not skill, will see fewer and fewer people joining 50v50 PVP.

 

I don't know why MMO developers think that players need a gear grind timesink, and thus believe that this in turn will translate into time played, and money spent by the player. It only leads to burnout. People will continue subbing if they're having "fun". Levels 10-49 PVP is incredibly successful right now, because its fun, because everyone feels that they can be effective.

 

Warhammer Online had a very accessible PVP gear attainment arch imo.

 

Said like a true social player!

[ikinai]

With this changes and the upcoming changes you deytroy the crafting system. The upcoming mod exchange into crafted equipment force everybody who will squeeze the last bit out of his char to craft his own critted gear.

 

You don't want to force ppl to stick to jobs, to hell with it. You'll force, as you said, ppl to stick to jobs with this changes as well as without it.

 

You completely go the wrong way but who cares? Another timesink to keep ppl doing crap over and over again. This time it's biochem, next time you'll remove all rakata critted gear from the game because it's offbalanced? After some patches will you change the system back to setgear because it's offbalanced that ppl have crittet orange setgear thats far better than sets?

 

This is ridiculous a complete nobrainer. With this changes there had to be benefits in Biochem like craft, and critable, rakate imps and stuff like this because biochem is worth NOTHING after these changes and your plans for the future. You wan't to have consumables to have no inpact in gameplay? great plan, so NOONE will need those anymore.

 

sry for my bad english but i cant understand those upcoming and future changes, they don't make any sence.

 

The consumables will still be wanted, just the reusable rakata version won't be as good as they are currently. I will concede after some thoughts and reading others mentioning, that perhaps they shouldn't be reduced as far as they are being reduced.

 

Maybe place the reusable version somewhere in between, so that it isn't as great(maybe 4 points under it) as the prototype, but better than the green and still reusable.

[Cavadus]

...and embrace the game’s extensive appearance customization throughout the game.

 

This is how I know the devs don't regularly play the game. Our control over our appearance is pretty much non-existent. We can either grind a couple flashpoints like crazy to get a full and matching set of moddable armor, just go for one of the L40 PvP moddable armor sets, or get stuck wearing one of the pre-determined L50 PvP and PvE sets.

 

Half of the moddable sets in the game, and all of the crafted moddable sets, are nothing but chest, leggings, and helmets while the gloves, boots, and belts are usually blues tied to some very specific level meaning those moddable pieces are worthless to us.

 

On top of all that, as a Trooper, I have basically a single armor appearance available to me at high level outside of the L50 sets (which all look beyond horrible btw) which just comes in different colors (the set with the chest that has the backpack, bandolier, and pauldron).

 

I have almost no choice over how my character looks, Bioware. All I've ever wanted since day 1 was the ability to look like the Trooper's in the Hope cinematic. Guess what? Armor with that coloring only exists as green quality rewards from various quests on Belsavis and I'm forced to always have that stupid looking backpack.

 

I have no control over my appearance and can honestly say that at L50 I have never once enjoyed the appearance of my avatar.

 

Whiskey-tango-foxtrot, BioWare? Either give us unify back or go crazy making more moddable versions of existing items. That or just get it over with and add a damn a-tab.

[mdobrowney]

I'm a Cybertech and I'd like to sell the speeders I make. Please remove the bound on pick-up, so I can do this. Thanks.

 

Plus one to this. What is the reason speeders are BOP.. This is dumb

[Stalker]

Too late Bioware, I have already reset artifice for biochem. It's sad that it is the only viable crew skill for PVP. I mean we are talking about unlimited medpacks, adrenals, stimpacks. Even kids will realize biochem users are OP in PVP. I have never played a game with this "reusable" crap. So I didn't choose biochem in the beginning. We bought potions everytime in good old days. I hate this casual mechanic of Swtor. I know it's from Wow which I've never played.

 

read it again... -_-

 

First off, we removed the requirement to have the BioChem profession to use Energized and Exotech stims and adrenals. This was done to (a) remove pressure of players to pick up BioChem for optimal combat performance and (b) to open up the sale of BioChem products to a larger audience on the Galactic Trade Network.

 

Additionally, we've reduced the effectiveness of the BioChem exclusive Rakata Stimpacks to be equal to Energized stimpacks. Their intended benefit is the cost savings they provide over time, not an increase in power. We are also in progress of reviewing the creation costs of many consumables in the game against the economic realities (acquisition cost of purple mission materials on our live servers) and will likely make adjustments to these in the future.

 

 

 

As to any timing issue you might have. Be patient. The dev's are listening to feedback, and making what seems to be solid, calculated changes. bravo bioware, keep this up, excited to see what the future holds!

[Maglen]

Artifice, Artifice, Artifice!!!

 

When I hit 400 artifice I had roughly 30 enhancements I could chose to craft. Every single one of them was rendered useless by daily quests giving epic enhancements and mods.

 

Remove epics from dailies, allow artifice patterns to be bought with daily quests tokens. This allows the market to dictate the price of the goods. You have the item table that can be improved upon. Use it!

Edited February 2, 2012 by Maglen

[Thessaly]

The heart of the problem is nerfing the only good (provides a benefit at 50) craft (biochem) on the prospect that sometime in the future other crafts will be better. We're not told how they will be better; we're not told when; what's the point of craft skills for the next half a year?

 

I'm sorry, pretty close to quitting personally. Probably when 1.1.2 goes live.

Edited February 2, 2012 by Thessaly

[GnatB]

Critically crafted orange gear is a good way of making armour crafting professions worthless, couple that with the increase in reverse engineering chance, and it would make armour crafting professions the source of potentially better custom gear.

 

Bioware are doing something it's just not going to happen by next Tuesday.

 

Fixed. Critically crafted orange gear makes everything that takes more skill than around 30 useless unless you happen to like the look.

[mdobrowney]

The heart of the problem is nerfing the only good (provides a benefit at 50) craft (biochem) on the prospect that sometime in the future other crafts will be better. We're not told how they will be better; we're not told when; what's the point of craft skills for the next half a year?

 

I'm sorry, pretty close to quitting personally. Probably when 1.1.2 goes live.

 

Am in the same boat as you bud. Sick of devs not seeing what we want. and having them nerfing the only thing that is good. Think i am going to start looking at something else to play..

[Terrestrial]

I wish your crafting actually had some teeth.

 

Makes you appreciate the experimentation system in Star Wars Galaxies.

 

Crafted stuff was fantastic. Players were actively engaged in game in crafting. Right now the system is so incredibly pedantic. Anything the players make is largely dwarfed by end game stuff. Why not allow the players to modify that stuff or extract new schematics etc and make crafting something worthwhile?

 

Nerfing Bio while you figure things out for the other professions is silly since 90% of the player base is probably Bio now.

 

Better to shut down the whole crew skill business and come up with a much better system.

 

One day I hope there is a system in place where there is exceedingly well crafted gear available in a robust economy where every profession brings something unique to the table and it is painful to choose any one crafting profession over another.

 

Unfortunately I think that is going to be a very long time if not never (the latter being more likely despite what BW is suggesting).

[DesonEQ]

 

critical crafting successes on orange outfits,

This is great to read. I'd also like to suggest a recipe or consumable that adds augment slots to existing gear. Reason being, your story mode gives out gear that's supposed to be important to the character--Kallig's helm and saber come to mind-- and it'd be nice to be able to keep using them throughout the game instead of being forced to switch just for the augment slot. Maybe a level 50 crafted consumable that takes 10-20 rares? That way the crit chance still matters but it's not impossible to afford by comparison.

[Notsensible]

read it again... -_-

 

 

 

 

 

As to any timing issue you might have. Be patient. The dev's are listening to feedback, and making what seems to be solid, calculated changes. bravo bioware, keep this up, excited to see what the future holds!

 

I wouldn't really say calculated. Though I guess in comparison to most developers up to this point, I suppose that word is fitting. Kudos to them.

Edited February 2, 2012 by Notsensible

[Alexfan]

The heart of the problem is nerfing the only good (provides a benefit at 50) craft (biochem) on the prospect that sometime in the future other crafts will be better. We're not told how they will be better; we're not told when; what's the point of craft skills for the next half a year?

 

I'm sorry, pretty close to quitting personally. Probably when 1.1.2 goes live.

 

Me too! but try finding the quit button! They removed it!!

Already catering to socials - trying to make everyone equal in the game no matter how much or how little work they do - they have done that before in history, it was called Fascism!