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Crafting can be fixed, but it will take a lot of work.


Sithhelmet

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I've levelled tradeskills to 400 across the board and have been able to make a good profit on each- even just absentee landlording on Armstech has gotten me 2 million credits profit (and the ones I actually work on get me far more in the long run.) I decided to put the majority of work into Armormech and I think I have a pretty good grasp on crafting in general. The background out of the way, here's what I see are the worst problems as things stand:

 

Crafting lists are bloated. This is glaring in artifice, with several enhancements having the exact same stats (Discipline/Efficient, etc.) Also there are many with the same types of stats and only a small difference of how much is on each. This leads to MEGO- "My Eyes Glaze Over."

 

It's not just Artifice. Take Synthweaving- light armor bracers are a good example. Level 31, 32 and 33 bracers- I have NINE "different" patterns in these three levels, six of which are base blue, three base green. One of the 31s, Mimetic Synth Bracers, has the same stats as one of the 32s, Force Stoic Bracers. Worse yet, the other two 31s have the same stats as the other two 32s...

 

How to fix this? Well, in this case, there are no 34-40 bracers. Take the level 31s and increase the stats and make them 37s. In others cases, and in the case of duplicates- remove the items. I'd guess that it would be a nightmare when a player RE'd the one taken out or moved though. You could console them with my next issue:

 

Reverse engineering rises in cost along with a lower return for doing so. Let's look at those level 33 bracers. One of them, Reactive-Impact bracers is a green with 22 endurance, 34 willpower and 3 crit as a base. Now let's look at the 31 and 32s and pick Mimetic Synth Bracers, which starts as a blue, with 24 endurance and 40 willpower. If you RE each up a tier, let's say both to "Overkill-" the 33 will gain 11 power and the level 31 will gain 12 power (this is surprisingly intuitive, as the blue costs more to RE.)

 

Now here's where it gets problematic. You can RE both to a higher level! But now you have a blue 33 and a purple 31. To RE the blue you'll need two blue cloth and artifact stuff. That's what you needed to RE the level 31 item already (a different level of it, but the cost and availability make it easily accessible.) But to RE the 31, now you need FOUR Killik-silk per attempt. Like before, any improvement will be very close- the 33 will give you 15 surge/accuracy/shield/presence/alacrity. I haven't been drunk enough to RE the level 31 blue past the "Overkill" stage yet to find the last number, but I'm sure it's in the 15-17 range on the final stat.

 

What's the big problem? Well, in some cases the blue is better than the green. More often it's only marginally so. It's not worth spending 4 purple items each attempt to reach a final tier of upgrades if a comparable green only needs 2 blue items. Especially when the last tier of RE is the weakest! Now let's look at actually crafting the last item. The green one will need 2 purple materials at its top tier while the one that started as a blue will need EIGHT. A few points of stats is NOT worth six extra Underworld Trading artifact materials.

 

I was on my Artifice alt and noticed something on him I hadn't seen on others- he RE'd a shield (a willpower shield, no less- they do exist!) from a pattern and when it changed from a blue to a purple for the first time, not only did it get +defense, it ALSO had the force power increase. That got me thinking...

 

Reverse Engineering would be more desirable if it increased primary stats ever-so-slightly per tier of RE. What this will do is give a reason to RE in the first place (and not stop at the first blue or even green with an augment slot that can trump a purple due to the far more valuable primary stat being stacked.) It will also make the item more attractive to the consumer, who right now is more likely to use the first moddable item for each slot he can find. It will also help the crafter compete against their most powerful competition- the vendors.

 

Each crafting skill should have its own niche market. Currently there are several- earpieces, spaceship parts, droid parts, grenades, implants, consumables, companion weapons, perhaps again for artifice- color crystals. When players realize that the fleet commendation vendor sells moddable belt and bracers (and when the legacy ones are introduced) Armormech and Synthweaver will have much less demand unless they are given the ability to make moddable (and crittable) belts and bracers. The ability to make augments is a lose/lose situation. The materials will have to be purchased from a slicer or the crafter will have to do slicing on alts (and spend credits to get the materials while also NOT running the lockbox missions in the meantime.) Not to mention that augments will no longer give a good amount of a single primary stat- they'll give something like aim/endurance instead of just aim...

 

Finally, I'll add this. One of the biggest problems with crafting missions (scavenging, UT, Diplomacy, etc.) is bloat in the lists. I really don't have any idea how to improve Diplomacy since it's subdivided into light/dark which really screws up everything (perhaps a reshuffle option to save time zoning to reset? For the LOVE OF GOD don't "fix" being able to reload a new list!) Do we really need so many types of materials? 3 rank 3 bioanalysis compounds? 10 scavenged metals AND 10 scavenged compounds? All this leads to is clogging up bag/cargo space and creating artificial shortages of silly things like Laminoid. Though I have learned that "Aluminium" is a lot like aluminum, but spelled like the British mispronounce it.

 

Here's another little suggestion to fix the bloat from crafting materials. Remove cloth. Make the small, small handful of recipes that use it take underworld metals instead. Change the "Luxury cloth" missions to "underworld metals" and NOT more companion gift missions. Cloth is dirt cheap. Underworld metals, not so much. It's pointless to have the same number of missions for cloth when it's used in Synthweaving light armor while metals are used in Synth medium, synth heavy, armor medium, armor heavy, cyber mods, cyber armoring, cyber ship parts and cyber earpieces.

 

TLDR version:

 

Trim the fat in crafting lists.

Eschew surplusage.

Reorder some patterns to not bunch up similar items at close levels.

Make reverse engineering scale primary stats to make items attractive.

Purple items are often not as good as blues or greens with augments.

Acronyms are fun to make. Read the first letter of the TLDR entries!

Put in a way to change companion missions without load screens.

England has people who can't pronounce "aluminum" correctly.

Remove cloth and cloth missions and replace them with metal to reflect demand.

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