Can we get a Phone App for Crew Skills please?

[BrothaBinary]

I think in time we will see it...

[RaithZ]

Horrible idea. One of the few controls on the economy is logged in time. With missions available like that, things will massively inflate. Can we say 18 hrs a day of slicing? Think, bad.

 

As much as I love the OP's suggestion and would use it all the time... I believe you are right in that it would affect the prices, and I would be slicing 18 hours a day....

Edited December 25, 2011 by RaithZ

[CommandoPower]

This is so far the easiest game ever to craft in, and you want it to be even easier and able to do it from your phone. That would horribly break the system.

 

 

I'm not normally this negative but fail thread is fail.

[MrVile]

I wouldn't say it's a bad idea, but it would be dumb to implement it. Is it not enough that Crew Skills take literally no effort? There are many ways they can make the game better, and this isn't one of them.

[DarthSpYke]

Would love to dork around with crew missions when I am not able to log in.

 

What this app should be able to do:

-Sync with your character by log-in through the phone app

-View the Crew skills panel, or a version of it for the character you are synced to.

-View missions for crew skills

-Send companions on missions for crew skills

-Limited Character Inventory panel (right click for opening items, and to reverse engineer)

-Ability to accept mission rewards

 

Anyone Savvy enough to create this? I'd pay for it.

 

God this would be a sweet app. I hope the devs are listening !!!

[ColonelKer-Nal]

This is so far the easiest game ever to craft in, and you want it to be even easier and able to do it from your phone. That would horribly break the system.

 

How is it going to break the system more than people who work with PCs remoting into their home desktops and crafting 8 hrs a day from work? One of my co-workers is already doing that on 2 accounts (his and his GFs).

 

If anything it increases the supply of craftable/gatherable items, thereby driving prices down.

[Revsx]

I approve, this would add a little extra to an already awesome game. I mean the crafting system is mini game, why not make it available on smartphones? It just makes sense.

 

I could use it during my daily commute, or at work where we have a "mandatory" 7min break every hour due to high stress levels. At least then when i get home i can focus on questing and having fun without having to micro manage my companions while for example healing in a flashpoint...

[Rubay]

Let's think smart. They can give ability to queue more than five skill works inside let's say 24 hours frame to any of your companions (like CCP made for skill queues). That will make use of such app useless and make possible to full load your companions while you rest.

Personally i like to hang out with corso cause he is good tank but i need to lower my PvE single activities when i need get him craft some armstech.

Longer queues won't kill market. They kill bots, chinese farmers etc. and stabilize the market.

Let's just imagine: You're 50 lvl guy who want to respec from cyber to bio. In the morning you just make up tasks for a crew and in the evening you just check the results. You won't need to sit around ant click craft. You just check the inventory in the evening, RE crap, sell or EQ best and go on.

We don't need app. Just an ability to make a full load our companions for a longer time without our control.

P.S.: AFAIK crafting of five purples on 50 lvl will make longer than 24 hours, so i think limiting queue into 24 hours frame will do good.

P.P.S: According to simple time management bad idea to make a happy farm in sw:tor. I think we all are serious people and have a fun or usefull things to do through the day (wife, kids, learning, sport, beer, sex) and don't bother to make a couple of clicks just to rank up crew skills. Our crew must have better memory

And crew use can be limited by 8 hours a day usage (for light side). Damn. They need to sleep. And 23-24 shifts for companions must really give a dark side points

[Fryster]

Well I don't have an iPhone, so let me blarg a bit about not being able to use the app when if it comes out. I have an iPod, tho', but no WiFi at work, so it's not gonna work.

The solution is longer production/mission queues or a web-interface to manage crew activities (holocalls anyone?) so all people may login ti their swtor accounts and manage crew tasks/GTN bids while being at work. It'll help tremendously - I can't log in more than 2-3 times a week, totaling 5-6 hours of gameplay, so I'd be grateful if longer queues/web task manager are implemented.

[ColonelKer-Nal]

The actual solution is to allow access to crew skills through a Web page, AND a smartphone app. Make it for Android and iOS, make it for Wind Mobile and BBerry too if you want. Or just make the Web app have a really useful and well formatted mobile page, then you don't need to write a separate mobile app.

 

This way anyone who can have remote access to the site can have access to the app, no smartphone needed.

Edited December 26, 2011 by ColonelKer-Nal

[Emtro]

From a developers standpoint, then making a webpage that will work in all mobile phones, its cheaper and easier.

I still dont understand why everything has to be an 'app' these days.

 

Making a web-feature on http://www.swtor.com

• Will work with all platforms out there (Windows Mobile, Windows Phone, Blackberry, iPhone, Android).
  
• No need to install anything for the user.
  
• Will also work from PC, Mac, *NIX aswell.
  
• No need to develop multiple parallell solutions for each platform.
  
• No need to adhere to the approval/publishing plan of apple/android/microsoft app stores.
   
  
• Publishing updates will be alot easier for BioWare; they can update whenever they want, and every user is always using the latest version.
  
• They could then integrate other features from the website as they see fit into the solution at their own pace (AH, armory, guilds, forums, etc, etc)
  

 

 

 

So far ive only done gathering missions on my char, but how will a web-feature work with crafting missions and reverse engineering?

Would you not need more... UI to be able to compare, RE, etc etc before you decide to craft something?

 

 

Inventory space i can see become an tiny-wincy-issue if the system would remain like it is today and people were farming on their mobile devices, but bioware could allow a larger 'pending' queue for mobile-initiated crafting missions for example, or simply stop you from doing more missions when your inventory gets full (yes; you would then need to login to clear out your inventory from time to time).

 

 

In the end; yes why not make a crewskill app?

[Arkerus]

I think this is a great idea. The ability to actually command your crews away from the game is truly immersive idea. Would love to see this in the future.

[MichaelLatta]

You do not have to access them all at the same time to exploit this app and it would be the gold sellers doing the exploitation. Its bad enough we had them spamming before the official launch but this would make it so much worse.

 

Before i start I am making base assumptions because i do not have a lvl 50 toon yet.

 

Lets say i have 8 lvl 50 toons on one server and each has 5 companions and i have one I Phone with said app. To maximize credits per time sink i would first figure out how long it takes me to use the app to tell one companion to do one mission. With the app i takes me lets say 30 seconds to get on and tell one companion to do a mission. It would take me a total of 20 minutes to cycle though all 40 companions to telling them to do one mission each. I then get on my computer and look up 20 minute missions and above and figure out which one gives me the most for my time invested. After doing this i find out that the 30 minute missions give me the most credits and i do those.

 

Now lets say those 30 minute missions give on average 5,000 credits each. That would be 200,000 credits every 30 minutes. Lets say i do this for 8 hours. I would then make 3.2 mill a day. At 8 USD per 10k of credits i just made $2,560 in one day.

 

even if each mission only gave 2,500 credits each i still made 1.6 mill or $1,280 USD in one day. lets even say that each mission only made me 1,250 credits each that's still 800,000 credits at $640 USD. Even with that kind of income i am making 4,480 a week, 17,920 a month and 215,040 USD a year at the low end and $860,160 at the high end.

 

And we wonder why people sell "gold"........

 

But be my guest and support something like this.

 

There are several assumptions here that are not valid. You only get certain missions randomly, or at least staggered. So no you can not do the best missions each time.

 

Anyone can do what you describe on a pc right now. Why assume an app would make it any different. If having 8 slicers will bring the end of the world, an app has nothing to do with it. The argument that an app has anything to do with the economy is specious. BioWare can simply limit slicers per account per server. But of course credit farmers can simply do one toon per server, since they do not care which server has the credits.

 

Yes you can make credits per hour slicing. Or by questing. Or by pvp. It is not clear yet there is an imbalance. There are just different ways to do it. Questing starts out slower, but may finish higher for all we know. Level 50 questing could easily be as profitable as slicing.

 

It does not matter which computer is used to access the "service". There can be multiple clients: pc, Mac, iOS, android, or web. Hopefully BioWare will support playing on any platform paying users want. If fast access causes an imbalance, they can always balance the client's throughput. The only rule should remain one session per account.

[LaughingMountain]

I'd say keep the game within the game. Only a small percentage of people are able to craft 24/7. Add a smartphone app and it will essentially be necessary to craft gather 24/7 to keep up. Just sounds weak to me.

[Dacob_Jasra]

Glad to see such a robust discussion about a feature that I was dreaming about while on Xmas vacation. Love the web page approach. Let's harass BW until it happens...

[Benfea]

For some reason this sounds like a horrible idea to me and lead to over flooding of materials on the GTN. It also discriminates against people who do not have a phone that can use the app.

 

Edited:

 

since people are still quoting this I will add in my post response from the other page in response a lot talked about the cost of smartphone, etc. I never particularly thought of it in that manner, I don't have one, don't care to have one, don't want one, could care less if people had something like the AH addon in WoW where it had a monthly fee (not everyone would use it if it did). I personally could not care less if it discriminated against me but it can discriminate if anyone cares about it. I do not think you should be able to manage 8 characters at once at all, something like this makes it much easier.

 

I have to concur with you, particularly that first sentence. The second sentence can easily be addressed by making this work through a web page rather than an app (this also simplifies development), but I don't think they should do that because of your first point there.

 

Allowing people to gather and craft 24-7 even when not logged in would cause the market to be flooded and really mess up prices on the market. I don't like that.

Edited December 27, 2011 by Benfea

[holybeardman]

In my honest opinion... Missions from your phone would be extremely stupid.. Last thing we need for people with multiple accounts to sit there and farm credits. Just play the bloody game and stop crying that it takes time. This isnt WoW... its not meant to be a faceroll game. Stop being a bad.

 

[ColonelKer-Nal]

From a developers standpoint, then making a webpage that will work in all mobile phones, its cheaper and easier.

I still dont understand why everything has to be an 'app' these days.

 

Because some phones have large screens, and some have small screens. How many mobile web pages should they write?

 

In the end it's probably less trouble for the devs to set up the app as a dedicated XML "client" and just do a data feed to the phone.

[Aximand]

In order to play the game you should have to actually log on and play the game. No crutches please.

[ZefiruShrike]

Because some phones have large screens, and some have small screens. How many mobile web pages should they write?

 

In the end it's probably less trouble for the devs to set up the app as a dedicated XML "client" and just do a data feed to the phone.

 

Did you really just say that? I've got a 3 inch phone and a tablet, yet they both manage all of the mobile sites just fine...mostly because they're coded for mobile phones (i.e. not absolute positioning). You make it sound like it's any different from setting my screen resolution to something else.

 

Not to mention smartphones can manage large non-mobile websites just fine. Hell, I just typed this on my smartphone (and trust me, the swtor forums aren't mobile optimized).

 

Unrelated, but Swype ftw.

[DOOA]

This is already somewhat available.

Log in before work, control your computer remotely from your phone. Slow and awkward at times, but you can have 3 crew members slicing all day long. I am not doing this .....yet

 

But I know 3 players that are doing it and they are getting rich fast. A phone app might level the playing field. Us lesser geeks could compete.

[InternalSeverEr]

I do have a smartphone and I don't want to see this happen. How would it be fair to send out your companions while technically "offline"? The whole purpose is the achievement of time spent focusing on your crafting skills. Too me, it would feel like it would be on the same level as stat padding, or stacking etc. You get the idea what I am saying. This is my first MMO so I don't know the technical term. I just think it would be a bad idea.

[Krowwe]

Considering the attitude on the Secure Key app is already "If you dont have a f*cking I Phone you cant have one" I am completely against this app idea.

 

Make an app for ALL major platforms (IPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile) or dont make it for anyone.

 

Dont give the braindead cult of Steve any more advantages please.

[xmyth]

I think it would be good to have an App. However, I really have trouble understanding people who say in advance they would want to pay for it. I think it is a part of the game and should have been included already. It is a shame the game is lacking one. Check apps of major companies who want to sell/support their product or service. These are mostly free. In case the app is a stand alone product I would understand charging a fee. But that is not the case.

 

You already payed for the game and you are paying a monthly fee. Why pay for an App? It should be considered as a 'must have' product feature and not an extra service. I hope Bioware won't make the same mistake as Blizzard did: "you can get anything you want as long as you pay more, more, more, more...". Remember, we already are paying.

 

And yes, it should be an App for all major platforms. Don't try to push the Ivirus through people's throat.

Edited December 27, 2011 by xmyth

[TheRealDestian]

Would love to dork around with crew missions when I am not able to log in.

 

What this app should be able to do:

-Sync with your character by log-in through the phone app

-View the Crew skills panel, or a version of it for the character you are synced to.

-View missions for crew skills

-Send companions on missions for crew skills

-Limited Character Inventory panel (right click for opening items, and to reverse engineer)

-Ability to accept mission rewards

 

Anyone Savvy enough to create this? I'd pay for it.

 

/signed