Crafting Changes in Fallen Empire

[Karkais]

"There will be two new endgame purple mats:

• Conquest Mat called “Strategic Resource Matrix”.

• Operation Mat called “Dark Matter Catalyst”.

 

The Conquest Mat can only be acquired by completing your personal conquest goal.

The Operation Mat can only be acquired by killing bosses in Operations.

 

The Conquest Mat is used to craft Endgame equivalent gear. This gear is initially trainable from your trainer. You can then reverse engineer it to Storymode-equivalent gear, and again to Hardmode-equivalent gear.

• This gear is un-moddable, Bind-on-Equip, and slightly better than the gear found on the vendors.

• Mods and Relics cannot be crafted.

 

Hope that helps -- keep the feedback coming!

 

Best,

Nick

 

I haven't yet seen information about how the disabling of the conquest system (apparently for a minimum of one month according another dev post) affects this. It sure looks like we wont be able to craft this gear you mention..

[Glower]

• This gear is un-moddable, Bind-on-Equip, and slightly better than the gear found on the vendors.

 

Another gear that no one will use. Great addition to your amazing crafting changes...

Only Mods, Relics, Implants, and Earpieces can be crafted with this material.

 

No armorings once again. So useful!

Edited October 7, 2015 by Glower

[MeNaCe-NZ]

Excuse me? Which combos are those? To my knowledge there are considerably more color combos that are CM-only. Artifice is the most shafted profession by far in my opinion.

 

There are quite a few schems that you could get from various other places ( i.e. ops ) than the trainer.

 

Not sure what these are going to bel ike going forward but I hope you can still RE the crystal to get the schem if you so desire. It's how I got most my non trainer schems for crystals.

[Khevar]

Another gear that no one will use. Great addition to your amazing crafting changes...

With the appearance designer allowing you to wear the non-moddable gear, but still look like whatever you want, I would expect many people to use it.

 

Just imagine if you could have done this in the 3.0 cycle: Craft 198 non-moddable gear using schematics learned at the trainer.

No armorings once again. So useful!

I could be mistaken, but I took "mods" in his post to mean "modifications in general", which would also include armorings, enhancments, hilts and barrels.

Edited October 7, 2015 by Khevar

[MeNaCe-NZ]

Another gear that no one will use. Great addition to your amazing crafting changes...

 

I disagree, I think casual people looking to get simple gear for raiding (especially SM) without having to worry about doing the min/max dance or learning how it all works for new 60's will love this gear.

 

Of course the price to buy the gear from the GTN will be counter intuitive that these people won't necessarily be able to afford it either. Especially if mats are gained from conquest rewards which are like a weekly payout so will be in essence more rare/expensive than operation mats and will probably have other uses too.

 

Still it would probably work out cheaper than buying every armour/mod/enhancement for each piece to get to a similar strength for raiding.

 

Also as a positive for guilds it makes crafting raiding gear for guildies far easier and cheaper if you are pooling conquest event and rewards to the guild so people cna craft and return the result ( and keep the crit if it gives double ... not sure what crit would do for an item that can't be modded - what did it used to do for armour that's not modded, give you 2? ).

 

Either way though ... PVP is going to get griefed to death, I feels orry for PVP and I don't even PVP.

 

No armorings once again. So useful!

 

I HOPE they say modifications as being armour/mods/enhancements/hilts/barrels otherwise it's kinda stupid if it's only mods and none of the others.

[Lord_of_Mu]

Hey, team! Long time no see

 

A lot of great questions here. I'll pass along some clarification from the Developers, regarding the endgame crafting portion of this blog:

 

"There will be two new endgame purple mats:

• Conquest Mat called “Strategic Resource Matrix”.

• Operation Mat called “Dark Matter Catalyst”.

 

The Conquest Mat can only be acquired by completing your personal conquest goal.

The Operation Mat can only be acquired by killing bosses in Operations.

 

The Conquest Mat is used to craft Endgame equivalent gear. This gear is initially trainable from your trainer. You can then reverse engineer it to Storymode-equivalent gear, and again to Hardmode-equivalent gear.

• This gear is un-moddable, Bind-on-Equip, and slightly better than the gear found on the vendors.

• Mods and Relics cannot be crafted.

 

The Operation Mat is used to craft raid gear and mods. This gear requires you to acquire the raid item first to reverse engineer.

• Only Mods, Relics, Implants, and Earpieces can be crafted with this material.

• Unlike previous versions, the empty raid shells are not reverse engineerable."

 

Hope that helps -- keep the feedback coming!

 

Best,

Nick

 

Unmodable gear sounds like a step back, plus it's shoe-horned onto the conquest system. Kind of a lose, lose there. Also I actually like picking up some of the raid gear armor shells, and I'm sure the people that make money selling said shells like to make money from selling, said armor shells.

[eartharioch]

I disagree, I think casual people looking to get simple gear for raiding (especially SM) without having to worry about doing the min/max dance or learning how it all works for new 60's will love this gear.

 

Of course the price to buy the gear from the GTN will be counter intuitive that these people won't necessarily be able to afford it either. Especially if mats are gained from conquest rewards which are like a weekly payout so will be in essence more rare/expensive than operation mats and will probably have other uses too.

 

Still it would probably work out cheaper than buying every armour/mod/enhancement for each piece to get to a similar strength for raiding.

 

I think Nick (and BW) have left out an important part (hopefully coming in a future blog) and that's what endgame gear is like (at least I don't recall seeing BW say anything about the new endgame gear levels other than Eric telling us that comms will be renamed).

 

Currently, we have Basic (186), Elite (192), and Ultimate (198). Basic gear can be crafted from trainer schematics using regular mats and is recommended for running the SM OPs, which drop Elite Gear, which is recommended for HM OPs, which drop Ultimate gear. You can use Comms to buy gear from the vendors, although it mainly sucks and has no set bonus.

 

Based on Nick saying that the SM/HM gear will be better than the vendor gear, I'm assuming he means the Elite/Ultimate Comm vendors. So much like crafters can currently craft Basic gear that is better than the Basic Comm vendors', it looks like BW is expanding this to allow crafters to craft Elite and Ultimate gear that is better than the Elite/Ultimate Comm vendor gear.

 

So if my interpretation is right, this just adds a little more flexibility to upgrading gear and shouldn't make it more difficult to get geared for ops than before.

 

Also, if I'm right, it exposes the question many of us have already asked -- will Artifice be able to craft relics of the new Basic level even though we aren't getting SM/HM schematics from the trainer? This would make 4.x consistent with 3.x -- Basic Relics were available only from Artificers (or old NiMs) and weren't available at the comm vendors, so if you wanted Elite/Ultimate level relics, you had to run an OP or buy from and Artificer who had Re'd a drop.

 

Also as a positive for guilds it makes crafting raiding gear for guildies far easier and cheaper if you are pooling conquest event and rewards to the guild so people cna craft and return the result ( and keep the crit if it gives double ... not sure what crit would do for an item that can't be modded - what did it used to do for armour that's not modded, give you 2? ).

Armor/MH/OH crits currently get an augment slot, although it's been bugged since 2.x and doesn't always give you the right one.

 

I HOPE they say modifications as being armour/mods/enhancements/hilts/barrels otherwise it's kinda stupid if it's only mods and none of the others.

I hope that while they are renaming the comms they just rename the mod modification so we don't have to deal with this ambiguity anymore.

Edited October 7, 2015 by eartharioch

[eartharioch]

Unmodable gear sounds like a step back, plus it's shoe-horned onto the conquest system. Kind of a lose, lose there. Also I actually like picking up some of the raid gear armor shells, and I'm sure the people that make money selling said shells like to make money from selling, said armor shells.

 

Since we have Outfit Designer, this shouldn't be as much of a problem -- I don't recall if the RE'd shells had a minimum level, so lowbies may not be able to wear them.

[Lord_of_Mu]

Since we have Outfit Designer, this shouldn't be as much of a problem -- I don't recall if the RE'd shells had a minimum level, so lowbies may not be able to wear them.

 

One must have the shells in order to use them in the designer.

[DarthZaul]

Much better. Now this will actually make sense to people that didn't read the DM info.

 

They should really call the crystals gear vendors 'Solo story gear' or 'Flashpoint gear' to make it obvious to noobs that it is not good enough to raid in and that they need raid token or crafted gear.

Edited October 7, 2015 by DarthZaul

[eartharioch]

One must have the shells in order to use them in the designer.

 

You can't RE the shells, but you can buy the schematics for them at your trainer. This is actually a good thing -- since armor/MH/OH is BoP, you had to use the crafting character in the raid, whereas you could rip modifications and mail them to crafting alts with Legacy Armor.

[Glower]

Since we have Outfit Designer, this shouldn't be as much of a problem -- I don't recall if the RE'd shells had a minimum level, so lowbies may not be able to wear them.

 

We can transfer mods to alts via legacy gear (do not forget about new main stat!). And this un-moddable gear is... a dead weigh after a while.

[eartharioch]

We can transfer mods to alts via legacy gear (do not forget about new main stat!). And this un-moddable gear is... a dead weigh after a while.

 

I am sure the developers are quite aware of that and don't want to make it easy for people to get better than comm mods without running an operation. The current situation is that crafters can RE a shell, which comes with no mods and requires the crafter to actually run the op (unlike mods, which can be mailed to a crafting alt). BW is changing that so that shell crafters can buy the schematic instead of having to run the raid (putting them on an even footing with mod crafters), AND they are giving it better than comm vendor stats. Given that we have outfit Designer, people who want the look aren't penalized by it being static stats, so IMO, it's a pretty good improvement.

[Glower]

I am sure the developers are quite aware of that and don't want to make it easy for people to get better than comm mods without running an operation.

 

Here:

This gear is un-moddable, Bind-on-Equip, and slightly better than the gear found on the vendors.

Sure, the "slightly better" justifies these un-moddable restrictions...

[ReverendAnderson]

Nick, PLEASE make stacks go to 999!!

 

Word.

[Lunafox]

Gear has NOTHING to do with ANYONE getting into a Raid. Either a person sucks or they don't suck. NEVER judge a person based on gear. That is a HUGE mistake.

 

I see so many people do the whole "I have this gear which proves I did that content" - biggest line of BS ever. I see SO many terrible players literally get CARRIED through content, win a roll on a piece of gear and then wear that gear bragging they "earned" it somehow.

 

I do agree with how you feel, though. i agree with your perceptions based on what you wrote, but I definitely do not want folks out there having the wrong idea about gear. In my eyes, only a player's reputation among his/her peers on how he/she plays says anything about if they are qualified to be running alongside me in a raid.

 

Like you, I'd rather have a great player in **** gear than a terrible player in top gear. But even before this system, it was always easy for a terrible player to get a complete set of high end OPs gear just getting carried.

 

In the end, being able to craft high end gear will make PvE easier for a lot of folks, without making any difference in OPs as far as player quality.

 

Maybe in a perfect world, your notions about people getting into raids with crap gear would be accurate, but it's not a perfect world, as evidenced by all the people who get kicked from parties because of the lame gear they're wearing. No one asks them, 'say you have lame gear, but you're skilled right?' They don't, they just use the kick button and move on to someone who has their ideal gear sense. The person with the ideal gear might be an idiot, but they will be chosen over a person of skill in crappy gear every time.

 

It's nice that there are still idealistic people, such as yourself left in the world. It gives me hope.

[eartharioch]

Here:

 

Sure, the "slightly better" justifies these un-moddable restrictions...

 

You are missing the point. Before 4.x, you had to run a char with the appropriate crafting skill (instead of Biochem) enough times to get the pieces you wanted plus how ever many repeats for failed RE attempts. When you finally learned the schematics you wanted, all you got was an empty shell. The only reason anybody would buy it was for the looks.

 

Now, you don't have to run a character with appropriate skill, your crafter can just buy the SM schematic from the trainer -- given that you don't need to be an endgame char to learn the schematics from a trainer, this is a big improvement for crafters who wanted to craft this gear.

 

In addition, instead of an empty shell, you now get stats that are better than the comm vendor gear. Since we have Outfit Designer, static stats shouldn't cause a problem for customers that just wanted the look (which were your only customers before 4.x). But, now there are potentially more customers, since somebody who doesn't like the look but wants the stats can use Outfit Designer to ignore the look.

 

I don't know how many variations of each piece there will be, but if all five good combos are covered, it shouldn't really matter that much that they aren't separate modifications (unlike trying to optimize vendor or token gear). And putting in modifications would totally screw around with the rest of the crafting system.

 

Edit: I assume the five "good" combos in 4.x will be Low End Pow/Crit, Low End Pow/Alacrity, Low End Pow/Accuracy, High End Def/Shield, High End Def/Abs). If every piece of SM/HM crafted gear gets these options, I'd expect it to make gear optimization easier than with comm gear that only has certain combos like it does currently).

Edited October 8, 2015 by eartharioch

[Bugattiboy]

RIP Biochem 2011 - 2015.

[Alssaran]

RIP Biochem 2011 - 2015.

 

Not really. We still need stims. Biochem characters will still produce an oversupply when crafting for themselves and sell the rest. As I outlined here:

 

Reusable stims is another thing entirely. You get multiple stims per one crafting attempt, each of them lasting for eight playing hours. If I assume one crafting attemp is 10k and I can get out 4 stims...then I can run CZ-198 once and be covered for a total of 40 stims. 40x8 = 320 hours. That's an entire month of play time covered in stims for running CZ-198 once(!). That takes fifteen minutes.

 

Way to push the issue far beyond the actual truth.

[RedWolfs]

So the plan is to take all the progress (in unlocking) away from just about everyone and reset the recipe list back to ground zero? Do you really expect this to not cost you customers? I just want to make sure I am reading this dev plan correctly... there is no reward for the credits spent on recipes, nor for the hours of work unlocking recipes in the old system.

 

I mean if enhancements are moving from artificers to cybertechs then all the unlocked recipes that I spent hours and hours of game time unlocking up and down the tree are gone right? If armorings are moving from cybertechs to synthweavers and armormechs, then there will be no transfer of effort from the armoring unlocks. Basically up and down all my crafters I am getting told thanks for playing, but all your work is undone, now please keep playing?

 

Thanks for striping me (and my fellow crafters) of hours of game play... wish I knew about this plan before I resubscribed. Really feeling screwed here Bioware. Frankly this plan just plain sucks, not sure if this is a game I want to be playing if the dev team feels this plan is fair.

[Blakinik]

For once I think I am speechless. I mean - WOW.

 

Can Bioware screw up crafting anymore? Please don't - rhetorical question.

 

As a crafter (who doesn't do it for money but does it for fun) I find the entire system abhorrent. Doesn't surprise me to be honest since you didn't comment on it at all. But dang - It sucks. Hard. Worse than Mary Moon in that Deadeye Dick song....

 

First - who did you possibly ask for the changes? Were they punking you? Did they do it with a serious face? Who that crafts asked for this???

 

I am sorry but holy crap this is BAD. Crafting wasn't confusing to start unless you were a mentally challenged mentally challenged 2 year old. But in your quest to 'simplify' which seems to be the primary motivator for this monstrosity you couldn't make it more so. I mean you have to take some components to make parts and make sure you have the right parts to generate some item where before you could just have the components and just make the same thing? I just want to make sure I said that right - had to reread it twice to be sure...

 

Again I ask - who the heck asked for this?

 

Getting rid of the green - okay I can see that. Makes sense. And you have been doing it anyways with the prior patches. Adaptive armor -oookaaayyyy..... I guess there is demand for a Sith Sorcerer to wear a set of bounty hunter greaves and chest plate - I am not one to criticize. Different stroke fer different folks I guess. Rebalance of the trees - okay. But I proposed multiple times in multiple ways to fix this without a complete reboot by effectively having cross skill requirements for some items. But hey I wouldn't know - only been crafting since launch...

 

The conquest aspect I think is bull. But guess that is one way to force people to fill dead queues for PvP. Pretty sure the PvPers are absolutely going to LOVE a ton of people entering their matches to just go stand in a corner or suicide themselves to end a match so they can just get credit and move on with their lives to rack up points for conquest. I guess the joy of peeving off PvPers might be fun for about the first week before that gets old. And I guess doing it would add life into another dead part of the game called 'Galactic Conquest'. I do galactic conquest myself. Only one in my guild that does. But guess I got another reason now. But I guess if I have max characters, I could also farm GC and make a killing off selling the mats to other crafters.... That will be the next new path to a million credits I guess.

 

*sigh*

 

Blak

Edited October 8, 2015 by Blakinik

[Alssaran]

Different stroke fer different folks I guess. Rebalance of the trees - okay. But I proposed multiple times in multiple ways to fix this without a complete reboot by effectively having cross skill requirements for some items. But hey I wouldn't know - only been crafting since launch...

 

While putting in the components seems to contradict the point of making the crafting system easier, let me point this out:

How does Bioware dare to enforce crafting skills working together in an MMO! That is preposterous! An insult to the idea of an MMO!

 

Do I need to point you to the sarcasm?

Edited October 8, 2015 by Alssaran

[Faelandaea]

I mean you have to take some components to make parts and make sure you have the right parts to generate some item?

 

Uh - that IS crafting. And it is still so stupidly simple it's not even funny. It always bugged me how in this game you just grabbed a mat or two and were able to make insanely epic items. Basically, as with the rest of the game anyway, credits were spoon fed to you just for clicking "Send companion" and waiting 30 minutes. Absolutely NO other work AT ALL was put into making an item.

 

Now - you have to hit "Send Companion" . . . oh . . . twice. Not once. Guess it will take twice as long to craft a ... OH WAIT! They are greatly reducing crafting times, so I guess that's wrong also. So what this panic among people is all about is that now you have to click a button TWICE instead of ONCE to make an item.

 

Sorry to say it, but even after these changes, SWTOR still has the most stupidly simple crafting system of almost any MMO out there. People freaking out about crafting here wouldn't be able to survive a day - wait - not even an HOUR in the other games I play where crafting is actually crafting and not "send out a companion to do the work for me as long as I have stuff".

 

 

Again I ask - who the heck asked for this?

Well, I didn't say anything specific, but I know in general I had been providing feedback that crafting needs to become more of a challenge for quite some time now. Instead they gave the opposite. Crafting is now a free handout of credits to anyone who clicks "send companion", well it was before, but now it is more of a credit income because of the ability to make BiS gear.

 

Adaptive armor -oookaaayyyy..... I guess there is demand for a Sith Sorcerer to wear a set of bounty hunter greaves and chest plate - I am not one to criticize. Different stroke fer different folks I guess.

I agree, but as long as those different strokes make money for the craftsman, it looks like everyone will be happy as a result.

 

 

The conquest aspect I think is bull. But guess that is one way to force people to fill dead queues for PvP. Pretty sure the PvPers are absolutely going to LOVE a ton of people entering their matches to just go stand in a corner or suicide themselves to end a match so they can just get credit and move on with their lives to rack up points for conquest.

I could care less about PvPers or what they think. They never have given a flying hoot what a PvEer thinks. They never have - they never will. But I believe an option NEEDED to be had to keep people from freely being allowed to craft BiS gear that was no an Operation. Now there are THREE options:

 

1. Put in the time and teamwork effort to do an OP to get your gear.
   
2. Take the time to do PvP to get the needed mats to craft your gear.
   
3. Run to the GTN and just buy the gear.
   

 

So there we have it. Not 1, not 2, but 3 options now for 3 groups of players. Ops, PvP, GTN.

 

The cool part about THIS is that most of the people that will bother crafting BiS gear are PvPers anyway, most likely, so they will go ahead and do so. Others will say f__k it and move on to other things. Since not everyone is willing to PvP for crafting BiS gear, the value of those items will remain moderate (I say moderate because nothing in this game has even been beyond reach on the GTN for anyone on any budget).

 

Also, I think it is important to emphasize: PvP is NOT needed AT ALL for ANYONE unless you plan on crafting raid-equivelent BiS gear. There are a HUGE amount of other items you can still craft which are also major money makers that you can make without doing any PvP at all. ONLY the BiS gear requires PvP.

 

I could also farm GC and make a killing off selling the mats to other crafters.... That will be the next new path to a million credits I guess.

Definitely. I for one never have and never will PvP, so I am going to be one of your customers! And I'll pay whatever it takes! I'll either buy the gear off the GTN, or buy the mats if I want to craft it myself. Either way, what we need will be needed on the GTN, thus there will be demand, so PvPers can make a killing, and those of us that need the gear but do not want to do OPs or PvP can benefit as well.

 

With the EXCESSIVE rate that credits literally FALL into our pockets in this game (I can't even do dailies for more than 30 minutes without making between 500k and 1 mil, so the same goes for everyone else) there will always be a HUGE money market on the GTN for those that want to use it.

 

I think a lot of people are going to be in a win win situation with these updates

Edited October 8, 2015 by Faelandaea

[Blakinik]

Sorry to say it, but even after these changes, SWTOR still has the most stupidly simple crafting system of almost any MMO out there. People freaking out about crafting here wouldn't be able to survive a day - wait - not even an HOUR in the other games I play where crafting is actually crafting and not "send out a companion to do the work for me as long as I have stuff".

 

 

I have been doing crafting since UO. Its sorta my OCD thing. On UO I got to master craftsman level with every craftsman skill (nothing says FUN like sitting at the forge and anvil and hammering away till your wrist is getting carpal tunnel!) and got all my supplies via crafting, mining, etc that I could since the mat vendors would auto buy all the vendor available items.

 

Yes - SWTOR is very simple. Honestly I wouldn't mind complexity in the process, but the main article says it was the streamline it - then they make it complex and confusing with a ton of additional crap I need to manage. It is pretty obvious whoever the developer that did the crafting system either:

 

* Needs to go to rehab for hitting the pipe one to many times

* Hates crafters with a passion

* Was ordered by some executive to make the changes for their mentally challenged mentally challenged 2 year old

* Hates his job and wants to punk the players

 

Those are the one reasons I can think they did this.

 

Blak

[Glower]

Also, I think it is important to emphasize: PvP is NOT needed AT ALL for ANYONE unless you plan on crafting raid-equivelent BiS gear. There are a HUGE amount of other items you can still craft which are also major money makers that you can make without doing any PvP at all. ONLY the BiS gear requires PvP.

 

I'm not sure, but I think that you are wrong here, cuz here is the Bioware quote:

The Conquest Mat can only be acquired by completing your personal conquest goal.

The Operation Mat can only be acquired by killing bosses in Operations.

 

The Operation Mat is used to craft raid gear and mods. This gear requires you to acquire the raid item first to reverse engineer.

 

 

Honestly I wouldn't mind complexity in the process, but the main article says it was the streamline it - then they make it complex and confusing with a ton of additional crap I need to manage.

 

Exactly! It's directly opposite to "streamlining".

So Conquest Mat is just a regular rare mats for everything above average. Not for Raid level gear, well not exclusively.

Edited October 8, 2015 by Glower