Endgame kills crafting

[Icebergy]

Except the schematics are all BoP, or from REing items that are BoP. So whether or not you can buy the mats doesn't much matter if you have to be a raider to get the schematics.

 

 

 

Selling? Crafting? Providing gear people actually want to have/use? Liking how it looks? Status symbols?

 

'Course, I'll readily admit that I dislike BoP in general, (or heck, even level/stat restrictions on equipment. If somebody can afford to outfit themselves in endgame gear at lvl 1, more power to him. IIRC it was when they started adding lvl restrictions and such to items in EQ that I started losing all interest in it. I *liked* being a lvl 20 in practically full endgame gear.)

 

(P.S. I happen to subscribe to the school of thought that crafted gear, using raid mats, shouldn't be 2nd or 3rd highest quality. It should be TOP quality. Good crafters should be sought after. IMO that's one of the things EQ did well for at least some of the professions. In almost all the time I played, the best bows and arrows came from crafters either directly, (darkwood bows, trueshot, crafted planar bows) or indirectly (raincaller)) Parts may come from quests/drops, but then needed to be crafted into a final product. Or quest might require a crafted item to return the final product.)

 

I am sure all of us would "like" it, but is it the best choice for the health of the game? Hell no, probably the stupidest idea I've ever heard.

[Kanana]

For the long-term health, the game needs purchasable, easily afforded gear that's at most a step or two down from top level gear so new players can get to he endgame without having to grind through obsolete content and gear. That goes for PvE, even more for PvP. Otherwise you will lose new players as soon as they realize how much time they have to grind before playing the endgame, and they will go play a game here they can enter the endgame faster, and without as much hassle - especially in pvp, where you are at a disadvantage until you get the top tier gear, and will face mostly people in top tier gear.

 

Crafting could solve this by providing new 50s with third- or second best gear, allowing them to join the endgame at a reasonable rate. And I don't mean loot "crafting", which is basically twinking with an additional step. Back in EQ1, we simply gave looted gear to our twinks, here in TOR we have to run the loot through a crafter first, but it's still not real crafting, but simply loot processing.

 

I want to be a crafter, not a loot processor.

[Klyvanix]

Crafting is for the lower levels, once you hit 50 it is just a grind and time sink game... ergo I believe the funnest part of the game is from lvl 10 to 49... I have several lvl 50 characters which I don't touch because I am having so much fun crafting items for my twinks. but that is just a difference in game play. lower levels you can craft you gear easily, therefore the time sink is the time it takes to craft this gear. at the high levels it is now how many PvP games you can play. Edited May 23, 2012 by Klyvanix

[Helgarm]

I want to be a crafter, not a loot processor.

 

One and the same, one and the same. You loot from raids, you loot from nodes, you loot from missions. Explain to me the difference.

 

As a crafter, you process loot into useful/desirable items. Honestly, I'm unaware of an MMO where this hasn't been the case.

 

But this isn't about crafting, really. This is about your dislike for certain (group?) content, and further dislike for it impeding your idea of progression. Sadly, these are just your ideas and your perspectives, which you are, of course, entitled to. But your error is to make such broad, sweeping generalisations, such as claiming that this is the 'death of crafting', and then attempting to pass them off as rationalisations on this basis alone.

 

H.

[Kanana]

A loot processor turns drops from bosses into item, like an NPC.

 

A crafter crafts with gathered materials, not limited by a boss mob's drop rate.

 

It's a difference in scale, as well as accessibility.

 

This is about one type of game content ruining the game for everyone else. This is about raiding being elevated to the one and only content worth doing in the game at 50.

 

There is no need for this to happen. There is no need to ruin crafting which worked fine from 10-49. Raiders can still get the best gear, all I am asking is to be able to craft second- or third best gear.

 

Is that too much to ask? Or are raiders really so selfish that nothing but completee control over the endgame will satisfy them?

Edited May 23, 2012 by Kanana

[Helgarm]

This is about one type of game content ruining the game for everyone else.

 

No. This is about one type of game content ruining the game for you.

 

Is it too much to ask to change/devalue a significant portion of content, enjoyed by a significant number of players just to assuage your personal sense of injustice?

 

Yes. I'm sorry, but yes it is.

 

H.

[DakotaDoc]

Crafting is for the lower levels, once you hit 50 it is just a grind and time sink game... ergo I believe the funnest part of the game is from lvl 10 to 49... I have several lvl 50 characters which I don't touch because I am having so much fun crafting items for my twinks. but that is just a difference in game play. lower levels you can craft you gear easily, therefore the time sink is the time it takes to craft this gear. at the high levels it is now how many PvP games you can play.

 

I agree, i would add doing daily/weekly flashpoints aside from PVP are the only ways to bump up your gear now. I was looking forward to crafting some quality LVL 50 endgame gear for my self, something unique that is not the same as many other 50's. I just reached that level as one of the two highest levels in my guild. Now i see my crafting skills are useless for myself, other then crafting for selling on the market. So now, i have to get high end flashpoint gear and pull the parts at an extreme expense. What happened to Bioware's objective of letting people wear their unique looking gear, they want to wear.

[Thundergulch]

Crafting is for the lower levels, once you hit 50 it is just a grind and time sink game....

 

your opinion, but EVERY level 50 I know wants modded Orange gear, weapons, and moddable implants and earpieces.

[ElJako]

I agree, i would add doing daily/weekly flashpoints aside from PVP are the only ways to bump up your gear now. I was looking forward to crafting some quality LVL 50 endgame gear for my self, something unique that is not the same as many other 50's. I just reached that level as one of the two highest levels in my guild. Now i see my crafting skills are useless for myself, other then crafting for selling on the market. So now, i have to get high end flashpoint gear and pull the parts at an extreme expense. What happened to Bioware's objective of letting people wear their unique looking gear, they want to wear.

 

For starters, gear from Flashpoints, with the exception of the Rakata chest from Lost Island, isn't good enough to be used in progression raids. Just a fact of life. Also, you can basically wear any gear to raids that's orange, as long as it's the same armor class as you use, which will change in 1.3 to encompass all orange gear types. Not only that, but crew skills currently make the best gear in the game, that it takes other people days to gather the commendations for. Artifice can make Campaign relics, Cybertech can make Black Hole earpieces, and Biochem can make Black Hole implants, and all of those are without EVER having to do a raid. In addition, if you have done HM EC or NM EC, you can RE your campaign drops and learn those schematics too.

 

And to the OP, the facts that I just pointed out means that crafted gear is currently THE most powerful gear in the game.

[GnatB]

I am sure all of us would "like" it, but is it the best choice for the health of the game? Hell no, probably the stupidest idea I've ever heard.

 

*shrug* It seemed to work well enough for the original EQ. 'Course from what I remember of EQ, gear progression wasn't nearly as important as character progression. Most of your characters abilities were innate, not from equipment. (which I must admit I also happen to prefer)

[psandak]

All hail the raiding elite.

 

Indeed the topic has been around mmos for years and with good reason. Many people who choose not to raid have reached cap in varied mmos, taken a good look, and left. A bad idea does not get better with time, it just smells more.

 

Even the dim bulbs at that other game are starting to get it and are at least paying lip service to with Pandas will come content and progression for non raiders. We will see.

 

I do not care about the raid content, but am tired of being a second rate entity and limited or behind in non raiding applications because I have no path to progress and grow in many areas on account of the fact that I do not raid.

 

Raid or die means to many - play though the game, get to cap, if you are not to bored roll an alt or if you are just leave. Not a shiny penultimate business model no matter how ego gratifying to some.

 

First i want to point out who this is coming from. I was an endgame elite a LONG time ago. When i played EQ1, I was in a hardcore raiding guild that was frequently server first and occasionally world first in downing content. We raided six nights a week. After five years of that, I quit EQ1 and started WoW at which point I all but abandoned that mentality. My WoW guild raided, but we did not ever complete a raid until it was older. So in EQ1 i always had the best gear available, in WoW I had the gear that I could get through the content my guild could complete... And I was OK with that.

 

Now onto my point. You like so many others are forgetting something - the better gear is intended to allow you to progress through harder content. All top flight gear does for less than top flight content is make it easier and in the long term makes it boring that much faster, which leads to unsubbing anyway.

 

there is a perfect example of this phenomenon in this game - space combat missions. If you have grade 5 stuff in all your ship's slots all the missions, except maybe the last three, are all so easy you can do them in your sleep.

 

 

Except the schematics are all BoP, or from REing items that are BoP. So whether or not you can buy the mats doesn't much matter if you have to be a raider to get the schematics.

 

 

 

Selling? Crafting? Providing gear people actually want to have/use? Liking how it looks? Status symbols?

 

'Course, I'll readily admit that I dislike BoP in general, (or heck, even level/stat restrictions on equipment. If somebody can afford to outfit themselves in endgame gear at lvl 1, more power to him. IIRC it was when they started adding lvl restrictions and such to items in EQ that I started losing all interest in it. I *liked* being a lvl 20 in practically full endgame gear.)

 

(P.S. I happen to subscribe to the school of thought that crafted gear, using raid mats, shouldn't be 2nd or 3rd highest quality. It should be TOP quality. Good crafters should be sought after. IMO that's one of the things EQ did well for at least some of the professions. In almost all the time I played, the best bows and arrows came from crafters either directly, (darkwood bows, trueshot, crafted planar bows) or indirectly (raincaller)) Parts may come from quests/drops, but then needed to be crafted into a final product. Or quest might require a crafted item to return the final product.)

 

EQ must have changed a lot since I quit (just after Prophecy of Ro release) because all the crafted stuff was CRAP by comparison to raiding gear. The only stuff that had any real value was the baking and brewing (I made a TON of money off those two professions in EQ1). The only reason to max the other professions was a quest that got you a GREAT ring.

 

Good crafters are sought after, but we as the playing population have to allow the economy to grow which requires time. You cannot expect a current WoW level economy from a game that is six months old.

 

The other issue is that the GTN is not very good. In a lot of cases you have to know what you want before you search.

[Klyvanix]

your opinion, but EVERY level 50 I know wants modded Orange gear, weapons, and moddable implants and earpieces.

 

I guess that is why they are addressing it in 1.3

[ML_DoubleTap]

A loot processor turns drops from bosses into item, like an NPC.

 

A crafter crafts with gathered materials, not limited by a boss mob's drop rate.

 

It's a difference in scale, as well as accessibility.

 

This is about one type of game content ruining the game for everyone else. This is about raiding being elevated to the one and only content worth doing in the game at 50.

 

There is no need for this to happen. There is no need to ruin crafting which worked fine from 10-49. Raiders can still get the best gear, all I am asking is to be able to craft second- or third best gear.

Is that too much to ask? Or are raiders really so selfish that nothing but completee control over the endgame will satisfy them?

 

The problem w/ making near best gear craftable is you make entry level raiding useless. Why grind NM EV or HH if you don't need any of the gear? It's called 'progression' for a reason. I do agree however that the high end purple mods/enhancements shouldn't be available from the heroics. They should be the entry level gear for crafters or bought for several daily comms.

[pokota]

Not only that, but crew skills currently make the best gear in the game, that it takes other people days to gather the commendations for. Artifice can make Campaign relics, Cybertech can make Black Hole earpieces, and Biochem can make Black Hole implants, and all of those are without EVER having to do a raid. In addition, if you have done HM EC or NM EC, you can RE your campaign drops and learn those schematics too.

 

And to the OP, the facts that I just pointed out means that crafted gear is currently THE most powerful gear in the game.

 

Don't you think it's a bit disingenuous to imply that people are going to get schematics for Black Hole gear without raiding? Perhaps months after raiders have them, unless they are extremely lucky.

 

BioWare doesn't want crafters to succeed in SWTOR, they want raiders who have crafting skills to succeed. A very real difference. It's just another way to force people into a particular play-style. Crafters can't make the best gear in the game. Raiders who craft make the best gear in the game.

 

Which would be fine, if it didn't over-write what non-raiding crafters could do. When I first started SWTOR I could RE to level 49 purples, at tremendous cost and time spent farming elite robots for zal alloy, until I could produce quality pre-raid gear that people would buy so they COULD raid. Now that niche is gone. All those purple patterns are pretty much worthless.

 

That is my problem. What I HAD was taken away.

 

After I quit raiding in this game, I was quite content to make pre-raid tier items. Now I cannot, because raid-quality items are on the market. As I said before, my latest alt, who has never set foot inside a level 50 instance, has ilevel 25 mods. Pre-raid tier is gone.

 

That is why crafters who don't raid-farm will be looking elsewhere for an MMO to play. And I don't want to hear from anyone about how such people shouldn't be playing MMOs. That's BS. People have their own reasons, their own play-styles, their own desires. Personally, I like being in guilds, I like talking to people while I play, I like helping guildmates, and I love participating in a player-driven economy. Those reasons are every bit as valid as any other. There is NO REASON why those things HAVE to be marginalized in an MMO. They can co-exist quite well, and have done so in other MMOs. In SWTOR's case, it's simply that they don't want that segment of the market.

 

Which is fine. As I've said, it's their game. If they don't want that segment of customers, then so be it. I just don't understand why.

[Kanana]

The problem w/ making near best gear craftable is you make entry level raiding useless. Why grind NM EV or HH if you don't need any of the gear? It's called 'progression' for a reason. I do agree however that the high end purple mods/enhancements shouldn't be available from the heroics. They should be the entry level gear for crafters or bought for several daily comms.

 

Why do we need to grind at all? Grinding sucks. No one in a game should have to grind just so they can have fun.

[Kanana]

BioWare doesn't want crafters to succeed in SWTOR, they want raiders who have crafting skills to succeed. A very real difference. It's just another way to force people into a particular play-style. Crafters can't make the best gear in the game. Raiders who craft make the best gear in the game.

 

That's it in a nutshell. All that stuff about crafting being worth it and casual players being sought after is a lie. All Bioware cares about are raiders.