Is Reverse Engineering broken?

[Lexmortis]

I can not believe that Reverse Engineering is not broken, or, more specifically and accurately that their RNG isn't broken. When I leave SWTOR, it's going to be because of Reverse Engineering. Spending hours gathering materials, hour gathering credits to buy other materials, hours to craft items... crafting literally dozens and dozens of items and RE'ing all of them without a single success is disheartening in the extreme. It is almost as ridiculous as the stat combinations that they provide from RE'ing - Cunning items (Shotguns) with a bonus to shield or absorb - anyone told the developers that you can't simultaneously equip a Shotgun and a shield generator? (at least not on any class or companion I have yet to discover).

[Sammm]

I can not believe that Reverse Engineering is not broken, or, more specifically and accurately that their RNG isn't broken. When I leave SWTOR, it's going to be because of Reverse Engineering. Spending hours gathering materials, hour gathering credits to buy other materials, hours to craft items... crafting literally dozens and dozens of items and RE'ing all of them without a single success is disheartening in the extreme. It is almost as ridiculous as the stat combinations that they provide from RE'ing - Cunning items (Shotguns) with a bonus to shield or absorb - anyone told the developers that you can't simultaneously equip a Shotgun and a shield generator? (at least not on any class or companion I have yet to discover).

 

In a sense, I have to thank you for being so unlucky. You kind of bring "balance" to the RE system. I'm completely on the opposite spectrum. I keep having successes after successes with the RE. I still remember that moment when I successfully reverse engineered 4 times in a row! The odds of that happening is about 0.16%!!!!!! Again, thank you.

 

I know a few players irl who are very unlucky with their mmo crafting, not just in SWTOR but also in all the other mmos they've tried. It's like if they did something to p@ss off the mmo gods.

[plokolplok]

OMG.

It does look broken.

 

You see, I RE'd the FIRST blue Resolve Augment i crafted. And I learned the purple schematic from that one item.

Is the chance of learning the Advanced Resolve Augment 22 actually 100% and not 10%?, or did I just have some pretty bass add good luck back then?

I also remember learning some schematics while RE-ing the first two or 3 items I crafted. Does that mean that the chance of learning schematics from those items are actually higher than 30%? Is the crafting system broken?

 

I'm /jawaconfused. :jawa_confused:

 

/sigh #combinatorics

[STARWOLFSWE]

I had a nice run with some augments aswell. I made one green. RE it and got the blue schem. Made one RE it and got the purple. THAT IS LUCK.

 

If you want to learn about this please use the /roll

 

ill bet you that if you type it 100 times you will have 20 times in the range of 1-20. AND if you dont then you had very bad luck but then again if you roll 1000 times you would be closer to 200 then the 20...

[finelinebob]

I can not believe that Reverse Engineering is not broken, or, more specifically and accurately that their RNG isn't broken.

 

Believe it. Because it's basic probability theory applied brutally and ruthlessly and it is working exactly as it should.

 

Believe it, as well, because it means one of two things. Either (1) BW's development team for crafting was so intellectually inept that they could not conceive of a system that would allow for any true sort of "skill" to influence or mitigate the random factors any sort of game has to rely on (unlike the combat team, where we have all sorts of mitigation to the random aspects of fighting) or (2) they intended for crafting to be this futile and designed the system with full knowledge of the consequences of it. I doubt that a third option, that they were unaware of what would happen, is possible -- they did have a rather long beta to learn about it.

 

If the stupidity of the RNG crafting system is going to drive you from the game, I think one of those two reasons would be better than blaming BW for bad luck.

[Sikbik]

i strongly strongly strongly agree its broken. It was working better before they "fixed" it. No joke, I know this seems crazy, but i went through ~175 RE attempts, and only got 1 purple schematic from it.....and it was for +shield on imp agent gear.... spent hundreds of thousands of credits on missions, and went through about 7 stacks of ciridium.... please can this be looked into. Its no way 10%, unless I just hit the lottery of badluck...ive been working on this one schematic for over 2 weeks now Edited July 29, 2012 by Sikbik

[finelinebob]

i strongly strongly strongly agree its broken. It was working better before they "fixed" it. No joke, I know this seems crazy, but i went through ~175 RE attempts, and only got 1 purple schematic from it.....and it was for +shield on imp agent gear.... spent hundreds of thousands of credits on missions, and went through about 7 stacks of ciridium.... please can this be looked into. Its no way 10%, unless I just hit the lottery of badluck...ive been working on this one schematic for over 2 weeks now

 

Nope, working as intended. I went through a similar string of about 135 REs before a purple, and I have purple scattergun schematics with shield chance as well ... and for those who want to say Smugglers originally had a tank spec way way back in beta, I'll ask you how do you use a scattergun (off-hand) with a shield (off-hand)?

 

Not only is the RE system crappy because of the pure RNG stupidity with no chance to mitigate your rolls, it's also crappy because there is no chance for you to control what the outcomes of your success would be. BW is supposed to be big on story? Well, I guess the story here is that expert crafters living out epic lives would fumble around with random tweaks to the gear they create, not caring about whether what they produce would be useful and not caring what directions the changes they make would take. We can all be heroes as combatants, but complete idiots when it comes to creating our tools AND be counted the best in the galaxy at making them.

[Dritescythe]

I'm an extreme crafter, as in I'm one of those crazy people working on unlocking all the schematics in the game. I've been talking with two other people in my guild who are also equally as crazy as I am.

 

 

We had a conversation recently about whether there is a hidden variable in the reverse engineering. Since this would determine the guild policy on reverse engineering our EC Hard Mode Armoring Drops, it was an incredibly important conversation. One of the crafters insisted that crafting items in a string, and not logging out, increased your chances of reverse engineering. Or, rather, *didn't decrease*. We, of course, informed him that 20% is 20%, and that that is a common human error in probability, blah blah blah.

 

 

I've been testing what he said though the past week, and I'm starting to believe the hidden variable theory. I think this hidden variable is effected by loading screens. That if your character moves across a map so that you're in a new zone, or if you hit a loading screen, or if you logout, it does something to your chances that drastically lowers it. It also seems to happen if you are cross reverse engineering (as in reverse engineering one item, then a different item then back to the first). Which is to say that if you crafted a bunch of items all at once, never logged out or moved meaningfully from the location, and reverse engineered them all at once, you'd maximize your chances of success.

 

Which sounds like a bug, or Bioware has hidden variables that modify RE chance and that player behavior can screw with the algorithms. And in a way, it makes sense that their engineers *wouldn't catch this*. Because if you used programming and testing macros (or hired testers) to make a ton of items and RE to verify it's at 20%, you wouldn't catch the important something: that moving about the world and doing activities lowers the chance of success.

 

Of course, the only way to verify the above is statistical testing. I'll plan to do that with my next alt once it hits 50, but it could take a while to gather the data and verify or deny the hypothesis (along with some other questions I've been having, like if crit crafted items have lower chance of REing, if the number of schematics known effects discovery rate, and if there's some difference in discovery rate between crafts [is one more broken then another])

 

 

And guys, this isn't the first time Bioware's random number generator has broken. Remember just a couple months ago you could drastically increase your chances of winning conversation die rolls by being in a certain spot in the group or by choosing a specific response. Or how medium orange bracers and belts were not showing up in loot tables. Or how you'd have a low chance of getting medium armor dalarian and exotech schematics from ops bosses? Or pre 1.2 how loot tables worked for operations and flashpoints, and even though the developers insisted it was 'random', every end game raiding team could tell you there was something wrong with it. Or how if two KP runs start and finish at about the same time they will both get the hat or neither will get the hat.

 

Is it really that much of a stretch to think something is going on here? That the RE Chance is dropping from 20% to the old defaults of 5% or 10% or 0% because of something players are doing?

 

One last thing, and this is anecdotally. I've noticed our implant crafter has a ton of success with RE'ing over Kephess's body, but our cybertech has very low success in RE'ing the armoring when it's mailed to him. At first I thought it was a bit silly that Kephess might be 'lucky', but now I'm wondering if the fact the item isn't hitting a load screen is what's doing it. I've noticed that bound items I've been wearing rarely give schematics either. Again the item has hit a load screen between its creation and eventual reverse engineer.

 

Go ahead and test some of these tricks out then fellow crafters, and let us know if it seems to effect your discovery chance. This could all just be nonsense, but if enough people test these things out, we can get to the bottom of this quickly.

[asbalana]

Nope, working as intended. I went through a similar string of about 135 REs before a purple, and I have purple scattergun schematics with shield chance as well ... and for those who want to say Smugglers originally had a tank spec way way back in beta, I'll ask you how do you use a scattergun (off-hand) with a shield (off-hand)?

 

Not only is the RE system crappy because of the pure RNG stupidity with no chance to mitigate your rolls, it's also crappy because there is no chance for you to control what the outcomes of your success would be. BW is supposed to be big on story? Well, I guess the story here is that expert crafters living out epic lives would fumble around with random tweaks to the gear they create, not caring about whether what they produce would be useful and not caring what directions the changes they make would take. We can all be heroes as combatants, but complete idiots when it comes to creating our tools AND be counted the best in the galaxy at making them.

 

LOL, I just love the number of RE hits (when they finally come) with sheild on them which is totally useless to each and every character that I have. I seem to have the good fortune of getting sheild on almost all of my initial purple hits.

 

It is clear that the RE system is crappy because if someone crafts to any degree there are many many long stings of fails in thier future with no mitagation. This weekend I tried to RE an implant (20% prob) for a leveling character at level 26 I believe. The biological compound needed costs 1,500 to 2,000 credits each on the GTN when you can find them and each implant takes four. Anywho, after 37 tries at 6K to 8K per, I never even hit blue. Fortunately I had the mats in my cargo hold. I finally gave up when I ran out of mats and bought two purple implants at 22K each on the GTN which if I had done so in the first place would have saved me much money (lost oppertunity for the sale of the mats). On the other hand, during the same time I got two items from green to purple in under ten tries and one at twenty and one blue to purple at 10% probability hit on the first try. So go figure, crappy system because luck runs out from time to time and then the frustration and cost can be incredible.. As a side note, I did discover that the mats that I had produced while leveling bioanalysis and ignored because they were only level 3 compounds were valuable and already have made some money by running missions and selling them.

 

A system that has an rng component is acceptable to some degree, but the major flaw in this one is that there definitely needs to be a way to limit the degree long fail streaks.

Edited July 30, 2012 by asbalana

[finelinebob]

Conspiracy theories are always fun, but basing things on hearsay hardly makes for decision-making material.

 

There are a number of big problems with the idea of "hidden variable" inside of the RE process ... I'll just give you three detailed ones:

1. The Simplicity of Probability -- generating random numbers is a simple thing. It's built into just about every programming language there is. Applying a probability of success to a random roll as a conditional gate is merely a matter of checking a flag (is it 20%? 10%?), applying the condition, then taking a path from there. BW has refused to allow anything to affect that chance -- not companion affection, not skill level, not level compared to the difficulty of the item, not companion skills specials, nothing. Furthermore, they force successes into a matrix of 3 (for tier 1 prefixes) or 4 to 5 (for tier 2 prefixes) possible outcomes, randomly determined, with absolutely no consideration to the possibility of a nonsensical outcome (such as a scattergun with shield chance). The underlying mechanics scream of a streamlined, thoughtless process. Why do you think BW would complicate this brute force simplicity with a hidden variable?
    
   
2. Databases are already overburdened with variable tracking -- or so say the devs. There have been comments made by BW about the number of variables they need to track in the game and how loathe they are to introduce anything new to the game that would increase the number they would have to track. The sorts of things mentioned -- what item you are REing (keeping track to make sure you don't switch), where you happen to be doing it, have you logged out, have you changed phases or zones, have you seen a load screen, what time of day it is, whatever -- all of those required not only meticulous tracking, but tracking of "dynamic" sorts of variables that require far greater maintenance than simply tracking a particular "pointer" to an entry in a static database cataloging all possible items in the game. All of that would require an enormous allocation of computing resources compared to the default of what "no hidden variable" would require. As simple as crafting in this game is, do you really think BW would devote the programming and computing resources to develop such a complex, hidden system for what amounts to a small end effect?
    
   
3. BW does not care -- what would be the point of purposefully putting in such a variable? If they wanted to create such a hidden system, would it be some sort of joke on us? Why not just make an obvious, publicized system that allowed for an increased chance for success in REing if they wanted one to exist? Why not? Because BW does not care about crafting. It's not their priority. They created a third-rate system for what they want to be a first-rate game. They've known it since beta, and they have done nothing but toss out bread crumbs to try to appease people. So, you spend 1 million credits on that ship repair droid so you can buy a sensor for another 100k credits for what? A reduction of 2-5% chance to fail to crit on crafting and a reduced time to finish a gathering mission. Think about that: you spend 1.1 million credits (or more) and you do NOT get any improvement in your chance to get purple crafting materials. Or you spend all those credits for an increased chance for a crafting crit. What does a crit buy you? Two of a consumable item or mod (arguably useful, but at the price?) or an augment slot that will need to be upgraded for almost all of the items you craft anyway, and again it's not a huge decrease in your chance to fail to crit but, rather, a modest decrease of an already ridiculously large chance to fail. And these are the "improvements" BW has made to crafting to date? How much have you spent, and did things really improve for what you paid?
   

 

Any "hidden variable" theory, or any theory of any kind, has to pass a test of whether it is reasonable to think things could be so. BW simply does not care enough about crafting to make such a complex system requiring far more programming effort and far more computing resources than the simple, mindless, brutally random system they have already put into place.

 

I'm sorry, but if your guild leaders base any RE decisions on some "hidden variable" theory being true, then someone in your guild is going to get unjustifiably screwed.

Edited July 30, 2012 by finelinebob

[Veeius]

The chance of success isn't cumulative. Each time you RE an item it has the same chance of success as the previous time. RE'ing more copies of that item will simply increase the likelihood of eventually getting 1 success but it's not a guarantee. Every time you RE it will still be a 90% chance of failure.

 

 

No, you're wrong. The chance that any given attempt will succeed is 10%. The chance that you will have 51 failures is less than 1%.... a lot less than 1%.

[Dritescythe]

Why do you think BW would complicate this brute force simplicity with a hidden variable?

Because it's been broken before? Because other things that *should* be simple, and *should* be random were broken as well? I personally witnessed the old Conversation roll winning bug that Bioware fixed a few patches back.

 

You're right, there's a ton of thoughtful easy solutions to programming it. That's not how Bioware solves things. If an overly complicated solution can be implemented, it's preferred to a simple one.

Quite frankly, the whole game has lots of rushed parts to it, things that were not properly checked and overall amateur in presentation. It would not surprise me if a developer had some pet way of seeding random variables that was just broken in general. Or their random seed generation code is off. Or the code is significantly more complicated for some stupid reason then just a flat 1d5. I don't know. I don't work for Bioware.

 

As simple as crafting in this game is, do you really think BW would devote the programming and computing resources to develop such a complex, hidden system for what amounts to a small end effect?

If I had to guess, yeah it looks like a poorly implemented streak breaking code, or that when an item crosses over a load screen, the game has a chance to 'not like' that item anymore for RE chances. Which is weird, but not unheard of in some games I've played. When an object hits a load screen many games store that object differently then when it's first generated.

If I was to come up with programming technobabble, when an object is generated by the server it spawns it in the local item table for the zone and the local memory for that character. Once you cross over a load screen, it 'saves' it to long term storage, so that if there's a server crash or the servers go down, the game has a record of the items on your character.

However, when you reverse engineer and item that's on your person, it has to check the 'stored' data along with the local data, so that it can verify it's deleting an item and you don't dupe items in the game by say, Reverse Engineering then disconnecting, or reverse engineering an item right before a server goes down.

 

Something bad is happening in this process.

And rather than give you the code "hey you got a new schematic" it's instead giving you nothing. You *should* get a success, but the game just does nothing.

 

That reminds me a bit of mission discovery missions post 1.3 and pre 1.2. If you click on one that your companion is already on, it will 'eat' the item forever rather than hitting the "you are already on that mission" code.

Why is this?

I don't know. The server seems to favor doing nothing when something goes wrong or it's confused. The player just loses the item.

 

But what I've just describe above, is a BUG.

meaning

not working as intended.

 

[*]BW does not care

I think we're in agreement actually. I don't think bioware cares. But *I* do, and I Think other people do too. I think there might be a bug, or maybe they might have made the rules of the game more complicated then they let on. The only way to prove it, one way or the other, is to have lots of tests done, and to have people be in the look out for it.

[PolishRifle]

Question: If you flip a coin 10 times and they all come up heads, what is the chance of the 11th flip coming up heads?

 

Answer: 50% previous flips have no bearing on the next flip, there are always 2 possible outcomes for every flip.

 

Its been in 100's of forums on this topic, you have an 80% chance to fail on every attempt and that 80% is a constant.

[psandak]

BW does not care -- what would be the point of purposefully putting in such a variable? If they wanted to create such a hidden system, would it be some sort of joke on us? Why not just make an obvious, publicized system that allowed for an increased chance for success in REing if they wanted one to exist? Why not? Because BW does not care about crafting. It's not their priority. They created a third-rate system for what they want to be a first-rate game. They've known it since beta, and they have done nothing but toss out bread crumbs to try to appease people. So, you spend 1 million credits on that ship repair droid so you can buy a sensor for another 100k credits for what? A reduction of 2-5% chance to fail to crit on crafting and a reduced time to finish a gathering mission. Think about that: you spend 1.1 million credits (or more) and you do NOT get any improvement in your chance to get purple crafting materials. Or you spend all those credits for an increased chance for a crafting crit. What does a crit buy you? Two of a consumable item or mod (arguably useful, but at the price?) or an augment slot that will need to be upgraded for almost all of the items you craft anyway, and again it's not a huge decrease in your chance to fail to crit but, rather, a modest decrease of an already ridiculously large chance to fail. And these are the "improvements" BW has made to crafting to date? How much have you spent, and did things really improve for what you paid?

 

Interestingly or not, most MMO publishers have the same feelings mentioned above. There are exceptions, most notably SWG (where EVERYTHING was crafted), but even the king of the hill - World of Warcraft - has a suspect profession system that is constantly railed against because Blizzard fails to test it (for content and expansions professions are invariably the last piece added which means it gets the least amount of testing on the PTR).

 

In my own experience, I have had average luck when it comes to REing for schematics: sometimes I get the one I want on the first RE; Other times, I have to get all of the schematics to get the one I want; and still other times it takes me (what feels like) forever just to get one. But I know that the system is working as intended and therefore never come to these or any other forum saying the system broken because of a long bad streak.

 

Someone already said it, but I will reiterate - a 20% chance of success is a 80% chance of failure and no single attempt affects or is affected by any other attempt. Yes, the probability of a long string of failures is low, but it is not zero (I paraphrase from Starship Troopers, You should at least get one "by accident" given enough attempts).

 

Think about it this way...

 

In baseball, a good batting average is .300+. With an average of four at bats per game, that good batter only gets about one hit per game. Sometimes they go O-fer for several games and it's news worthy, but then they go 2 for 4 and 3 for 4 in consecutive games and that 0 for 20 streak is forgotten.

[asbalana]

 

Go ahead and test some of these tricks out then fellow crafters, and let us know if it seems to effect your discovery chance. This could all just be nonsense, but if enough people test these things out, we can get to the bottom of this quickly.

 

I must disagree with this. No individual or group of individuals will ever be able to determine any truth with regard to the operation of the crafting system. BW may have a msssive amount of raw data but ,even if they cared to and that is a stretch, it would take a heck of a lot of work and insight to determine if the system is actually functioning as intended. Conditions such as offsetting errors that give gross results within expectation are tough to ferret out. Over my career, I have had to pull apart mathematical systems that in most cases give the correct answers and yet contain many offsetting or cancellig errors.

 

To me crafting is indicitive of the entire game. BW has managed to screw up just about every part of it. There are bugs or errors everywhere. Poor conceptualization and implementation abound. Testing has been worse than poor. Problems are, on the whole, not addressed but in the few instances where they are it is even money as to whether things will be better or worse after any fix. To me, the scariest thing is not super bosses or twenty silvers jumping my butt, but rather seeinng updates and patches load when I start the log on process. So is RE broken? No pun, but indeed there is a high probability that it is. We will just never be able to prove it. We will also never be able to prove if it is not. Even if we could establish that crafting is not working as intended, so what. Do you trust BW to fix the problems?

 

I would have to agree with the comment that there are no hidden crafting factors that affect REing. In a lot of ways this game has been developed reflecting the concept that less is best and I just cannot see BW having put in a subtle and rich (evven if misguided) crafting mechanic.

 

As far as BW caring, the question is not whether it cares but about what it cares. It cares about money. It cares about the price of EA's stock. The devs may care about their reputations and future employment prospects. Does anyone at BW care about the crafting system or the game's players? I don't see that. To me there seems to be a disconnect. There is financial care but none with respect to the product or customers that would generate financial success. So take crafting as you have to accept the game in general. Play and enjoy the parts that you can as long as the game exists in any viable state and accept the others as part of the package.

[finelinebob]

In baseball, a good batting average is .300+. With an average of four at bats per game, that good batter only gets about one hit per game. Sometimes they go O-fer for several games and it's news worthy, but then they go 2 for 4 and 3 for 4 in consecutive games and that 0 for 20 streak is forgotten.

 

There is a huge problem with this example. Batting in baseball is not an RNG game.

 

You are mistaking a success rate with a success chance. If someone is batting .300, it's not because someone has fixed some arbitrary random factor to that person's hitting ability. Hitting slumps and streaks do not happen because of luck. A batting average is the measure of past performance, although it is often taken as an indicator of likely future performance. It is a measure of the batter's skill compared to the skill of the pitchers he has faced and the accompanying skill of the fielders who handle the balls he hits. The batter's technique is not random. The pitcher's throwing technique is not random. The fielders' abilities to field batted balls is not random. Choice of pitch and placement? Is there a pitcher-catcher team in the majors, let alone anywhere, that tosses a coin to determine whether it's to be a fastball or curve? No.

 

Well, maybe the Cubs, but I digress.

 

Because batting average is expressed as a percentage does not mean it is a random event.

 

Now, RE chance for success is NOT a measure of past performance. It also is NOT a measure of future performance. It is simply an indication of the probability to fail at performing a desired task. Not all of them, not ten of them -- just the very next one that you try. There is nothing of skill about it. In fact, the game mechanics that measure your "skill" as a crafter have absolutely nothing to do with RE success chance.

 

Is having a batting average as low as a 30% rate of past success a good thing for baseball? If you like game scores that do not look like basketball game scores and game lengths that run a few hours, not a few days, I'd imagine so. But just because the rate of something in a game ruled by skill is 30% and a good thing at that, this does not mean that a 20% chance determined solely by probability is also a good thing. That's a poor analogy.

[finelinebob]

Because it's been broken before? Because other things that *should* be simple, and *should* be random were broken as well? I personally witnessed the old Conversation roll winning bug that Bioware fixed a few patches back.

 

You have a number of examples I could pick out, but I'll stick to this one.

 

When it comes to events determined by probability, what you saw once does not matter. You cannot generalize from a single case with any hope of being accurate. In fact, you cannot generalize from 10 cases. Or 100. Or 1,000. When you see something happen 10,000 times, THEN you can begin to suggest -- but a suggestion is still what it is.

 

So, how many times did you see this Conversation bug happen?

 

My point is not that the bug wasn't there. My point is that people tend to want cause-and-effect to apply in ways more complicated than how underlying forces actually work. When something happens, we look for things that happen close to the time and place of the event and anything that catches our eye gets tagged as a cause. It does not matter how circumstantial or spurious the connection, we think "if A, then B" and are convinced because we know about cause-and-effect. This leads to a logical fallacy called "affirming the consequent". It means that if you see B happen, you automagically think that A is the only possible cause. For example, just because you RE six 10% chance items in a row -- more than you can craft in one pass with your five companions -- and you get a success on one of them, it does not mean that you have found some hidden mechanism for crafting success. It does not mean that if you craft six or more items, two passes by your companions, waiting for all to be completed before you do your REs, that you will succeed in what you do.

 

Aside from that logical fallacy, there is always the Law of Large Numbers. It gets back to how many cases you have before you can generalize any conclusions. There simply is nothing in what you have said to indicate that you have anywhere near enough evidence to support any of your conclusions. The fact that BW has admitted that there were flaws in the RE system in the past does not indicate that there is some hidden variable that tweaks our "chance for success" -- it actually proves the opposite. BW cannot influence the circumstances you listed to affect our RE outcomes: they cannot make us not log in or out, they cannot force us to RE in certain places. That they CAN affect the RE rate at all means that there must be a simple, straight-forward mechanism with very few, predictable input variables that shape your chance for failing at REing.

 

Einstein said, "God is subtle, but He is not malicious. I cannot believe that God plays dice with the world." He was talking about quantum mechanics, something that is driven by probability. You are arguing for subtlety. I'm saying that BW is being malicious. As someone else said, BW cares about making money -- a much better way of putting matters than what I said about them not caring. Being subtle in the way you suggest would cost them a lot of money. They didn't do it. They're not willing to be subtle in a straight-forward, honest and open way by giving us a crafting system where skill can mitigate random factors, just as your combat skill mitigates the random chance you have of hitting your target. Do you really think that BW would waste money on being deviously, covertly subtle when an open but subtle approach would give them a crafting system they could brag about, that would be a feature, not a bug?

[STARWOLFSWE]

Ok nuff said.

 

Yesterday I bought a Sith Inq Black Hole legs and striped the mods. Send them to 2 different chars in legacy gear to RE it.

 

Both resulted in giving me the schematic for the mod and enhancement.

 

And here comes the punchline. IS THE REVERSE ENGENEERING BROKEN? IT SUPPOSE TO BE 20% NOT 100%

[Bigronx]

Yup its definetly broken!