Did I miss something about crafting on PTS?

[SteveTheCynic]

Looking at the requirements to craft a f'ing f'ing ***GREEN*** Requires-75 268-rated weapon...

 

Blah Blah

5 fargling(0) Processed Isotope Stabilizers.

Blah Blah

 

So where do the Gods-forsaken PISes drop? Master FPs and all tiers of Operations. For a green 268-rated item.

 

So, that applies the FTS rule(1) to crafting above 600.

 

(0) The word "fargling" does not appear in the description.

 

(1) Bottom row of https://xkcd.com/137/

[BFBHitmarkers]

This post hurts my brain

[DawnAskham]

Looking at the requirements to craft a f'ing f'ing ***GREEN*** Requires-75 268-rated weapon...

 

Blah Blah

5 fargling(0) Processed Isotope Stabilizers.

Blah Blah

 

So where do the Gods-forsaken PISes drop? Master FPs and all tiers of Operations. For a green 268-rated item.

 

So, that applies the FTS rule(1) to crafting above 600.

 

(0) The word "fargling" does not appear in the description.

 

(1) Bottom row of https://xkcd.com/137/

 

RE and probably get a blue schematic that requires multiple purple conquest materials - the basic blue vendor augment schematics require loads of green mats + blue mats from multiple gathering and mission skill + blue mat from group content + purple conquest materials.

 

Good luck making more than a handful of items a week.

 

Crafting was destroyed - if you haven't paid to unlock it on other characters, I wouldn't bother.

Edited October 23, 2019 by DawnAskham

[Estelindis]

Many of us PTS testers complained consistently about the extremely inflated costs of crafting in 6.0. I made a thread yesterday lamenting that not much has changed since testing. I am a veteran crafter, but I will not be doing much crafting in 6.0. It's so punishing as to be painful. I hope that in time seeing people's complaints and noting (what I expect to be) the relatively low uptake of crafting will lead BW to revise the new system. Edited October 23, 2019 by Estelindis

[dipstik]

crafting, scaling (this affects 99% of the game ie cant do walker in chapter, ops, leveling etc), pvp balance were all creid baout on the PTS without bioware doing anything except play with scaling once and increasing jawa drops or soemthing for crafting.

[MasterRummy]

Looking at the requirements to craft a f'ing f'ing ***GREEN*** Requires-75 268-rated weapon...

 

Blah Blah

5 fargling(0) Processed Isotope Stabilizers.

Blah Blah

 

So where do the Gods-forsaken PISes drop? Master FPs and all tiers of Operations. For a green 268-rated item.

 

So, that applies the FTS rule(1) to crafting above 600.

 

(0) The word "fargling" does not appear in the description.

 

(1) Bottom row of https://xkcd.com/137/

 

that isn't just crafting.....there are now 19 levels of gear before you hith iLevel 306.....and crafting is another language unto its own

[LordDelectus]

This is my biggest issue so far. No point to crafting really. It is not "play your way" those isotopes are needed for pure trash level mods. They will cost a fortune on GTN.

 

I will just grind for tech fragments.

[phalczen]

As above. I’ve grinded gathering/mission skills for two days now, and I’m just getting to the point where I can finally craft a chain of cell grafts. Ironically, because I haven’t done any group content, I cannot craft any hilts.

 

Green, premium, rating 277 hilts. Throwaway stuff. Grinding gear.

 

Cannot craft grinding, green, throwaway mods without doing group content on day one or even two of an expansion.

 

Why does BioWare think this is acceptable?

[SteveTheCynic]

that isn't just crafting.....there are now 19 levels of gear before you hith iLevel 306.....and crafting is another language unto its own

As I said, the FTS rule applies to 601+ crafting. That's 1.5 million credits wasted. (But only 1.5 million. I haven't loaded any of my other characters yet.)

[Transcendent]

Why does BioWare think this is acceptable?

 

I have a theory as to why the crafting is completely messed up in 6.0. For example crafting a single dye of the new schematic (yes, a dye) requires jumping through an insane amount of hoops.

 

Irrespective of the gathering skills now providing more materials, when you take into account the amount of materials now required, BioWare would need to increase the node yields for tier 11 mats by a MUCH larger margin than they think is acceptable (it isn't).

 

Personally I think it's to push people towards CM dyes instead. In terms of actually crafting anything of note in 6.0? I looked at the new relics, green relics requiring MM Flashpoint, SM / HM / MM Operations, Ranked PvP materials? For a green relic? Starter gear? Throw-away gear once gear level is high enough? I honestly can't say I'm going to bother crafting anything of the 6.0 schematics. Not starter gear, not dyes, not anything. It simply isn't worth the time or effort or cost to do so. I'm only going to get the achievements, then un-subscribe.

[Rolodome]

Wait, do you have to pay to unlock working past 600? Is that why my Archaeology wasn't moving yesterday when I gathered some resources on the way to story objectives?

[AscendingSky]

Wait, do you have to pay to unlock working past 600? Is that why my Archaeology wasn't moving yesterday when I gathered some resources on the way to story objectives?

 

Yes, you have to pay 500k credits at the crew skill trainer to buy the "Onslaught" upgrade so you can level your crew skills up to 700.

 

I think all of this is EA's sloppy attempt to introduce a credit sink into the game, by forcing people to either play end game content (and have to compete with other players to get the rare mats) or spending millions of credits on the GTN for said rare mats. EA doesn't understand that forcing people to have end game mats for GREEN STARTER GEAR that you then have to RE repeatedly to try to learn the schematics for BLUE STARTER GEAR and so on will not make people dump their credits. It will simply make people not craft at all, further killing off all usefulness of crafting in this game (which the previous Ossus content already had with the absolutely ridiculous amount of mats you needed to craft a single item). So no credit sink will happen. Players will simply unsub instead, since there's no alternative to the nonsense RNG gear treadmill they're forcing everyone to deal with now.

Edited October 23, 2019 by AscendingSky

[Transcendent]

Wait, do you have to pay to unlock working past 600? Is that why my Archaeology wasn't moving yesterday when I gathered some resources on the way to story objectives?

 

Yes. Both for gathering skills as well as crafting skills. 1.5 mill per toon before you even get to needing some basic materials like veda cloth (3 different types of it.... ) as well.

[Rolodome]

Yes, you have to pay 500k credits at the crew skill trainer to buy the "Onslaught" upgrade so you can level your crew skills up to 700.

 

I think all of this is EA's sloppy attempt to introduce a credit sink into the game, by forcing people to either play end game content (and have to compete with other players to get the rare mats) or spending millions of credits on the GTN for said rare mats. EA doesn't understand that forcing people to have end game mats for GREEN STARTER GEAR that you then have to RE repeatedly to try to learn the schematics for BLUE STARTER GEAR and so on will not make people dump their credits. It will simply make people not craft at all, further killing off all usefulness of crafting in this game (which the previous Ossus content already had with the absolutely ridiculous amount of mats you needed to craft a single item). So no credit sink will happen. Players will simply unsub instead, since there's no alternative to the nonsense RNG gear treadmill they're forcing everyone to deal with now.

Yes. Both for gathering skills as well as crafting skills. 1.5 mill per toon before you even get to needing some basic materials like veda cloth (3 different types of it.... ) as well.

Wow. I must have missed this in all the controversy about gear on PTS.

 

I think if I facepalmed right now I'd give myself a concussion.

 

I'm starting to believe in the people who say they are purposefully tanking the game. Maybe this game has become like a "let's experiment with what we can normalize" petri dish for EA to test things out on people who are very loyal due to the niche Star Wars / KOTOR appeal, knowing they're more likely to stick through the insanity and they can more effectively gather data on them that way.

 

I just... I can't even begin to fathom why. If it's meant to be a credit sink, all it will do is push casual players out of crafting, making it easier for the super wealthy ones who have been around for ages to dominate the crafting space (like the ones for whom 1.5mil per character is a drop in the bucket).

[ZionHalcyon]

The crafting is the major, major issue from PTS.

 

For his part, I believe Eric stated on both crafting and Amplifiers, that they are open to make adjustments, but wanted to see the system live first to get full on actionable data.

[phalczen]

The crafting is the major, major issue from PTS.

 

For his part, I believe Eric stated on both crafting and Amplifiers, that they are open to make adjustments, but wanted to see the system live first to get full on actionable data.

 

Musco always SAYS they are open to making adjustments and that they want to wait until its live.

 

But, that's how the medium planet conquest target moved from 1 million to 2 million. Because the Devs are open to making adjustments, just not in the direction that the playerbase requested.

[AscendingSky]

Wow. I must have missed this in all the controversy about gear on PTS.

 

I think if I facepalmed right now I'd give myself a concussion.

 

I'm starting to believe in the people who say they are purposefully tanking the game. Maybe this game has become like a "let's experiment with what we can normalize" petri dish for EA to test things out on people who are very loyal due to the niche Star Wars / KOTOR appeal, knowing they're more likely to stick through the insanity and they can more effectively gather data on them that way.

 

I just... I can't even begin to fathom why. If it's meant to be a credit sink, all it will do is push casual players out of crafting, making it easier for the super wealthy ones who have been around for ages to dominate the crafting space (like the ones for whom 1.5mil per character is a drop in the bucket).

 

I have a pretty good pile of credits myself, and even I'm finding these levels of mats required absolutely ridiculous. For example: the new green Resistive Armoring 77 schematic for Armormech, the first schematic you can pick up, costs TWENTY Processed Isotope Stabilizers (the rare blue mats from end game content) and EIGHT Solid Resource Matrices (rare purple mat from conquest) to make. Just a green armoring, no set bonus, not even a full armor piece, that you have to make over and over to reverse engineer. I haven't even seen what the blue or purple version will cost to create, and I'm not going to likely, because this is BS and I don't want to participate in it.

[Rolodome]

I have a pretty good pile of credits myself, and even I'm finding these levels of mats required absolutely ridiculous. For example: the new green Resistive Armoring 77 schematic for Armormech, the first schematic you can pick up, costs TWENTY Processed Isotope Stabilizers (the rare blue mats from end game content) and EIGHT Solid Resource Matrices (rare purple mat from conquest) to make. Just a green armoring, no set bonus, not even a full armor piece, that you have to make over and over to reverse engineer. I haven't even seen what the blue or purple version will cost to create, and I'm not going to likely, because this is BS and I don't want to participate in it.

Wow...

[Estelindis]

II haven't even seen what the blue or purple version will cost to create

 

Did you see my spreadsheet for trying to RE one green synthweaving chestpiece to its highest level? That should give you some idea of the mounting costs of REing.

 

this is BS and I don't want to participate in it.

Pretty much.

 

I'm grateful that the PTS gave me a chance to expunge my curiosity at trying this, because if I had to fail as often as I did then while using my own resources I might quit playing. As it stands, I'm just not doing much of the new crafting. I've paid my dues on this horrid treadmill already.

Edited October 23, 2019 by Estelindis

[Amberres]

Wow...

 

+1 on this one. We need some major crafting adjustments here!

[DarthSpuds]

The crafting is the major, major issue from PTS.

 

For his part, I believe Eric stated on both crafting and Amplifiers, that they are open to make adjustments, but wanted to see the system live first to get full on actionable data.

 

Most intelligent people don't need to impose rubbish on people to get "actionable data" to know a pile of crap is a pile of crap.

 

PTS feedback told them crating was a pile of crap, this was feedback from people who actually craft (or attempt to) in this game.

 

That Eric admitted they were "open to making adjustments" means Bioware also already know Crafting was a pile of crap.

 

But they slopped it on a plate and fed it to us anyway.

 

Stop defending the indefensible.

 

All The Best

[Amberres]

I have a pretty good pile of credits myself, and even I'm finding these levels of mats required absolutely ridiculous. For example: the new green Resistive Armoring 77 schematic for Armormech, the first schematic you can pick up, costs TWENTY Processed Isotope Stabilizers (the rare blue mats from end game content) and EIGHT Solid Resource Matrices (rare purple mat from conquest) to make. Just a green armoring, no set bonus, not even a full armor piece, that you have to make over and over to reverse engineer. I haven't even seen what the blue or purple version will cost to create, and I'm not going to likely, because this is BS and I don't want to participate in it.

 

+1 on this one. We need some major crafting adjustments here!

[Lutese]

+1 on crafting (and many other things in 6.0) needing a massive change.

 

I read the crafting posts on the PTS forum explaining how terrible 6.0 crafting was. There were had tons of viable ideas/ways to improve/fix it. (that were all but ignored)

 

I was shocked by what was pushed out to Live.

Edited October 23, 2019 by Lutese

[JediBoadicea]

I am so disheartened to see that what got pushed to live for crafting had none of the critical changes we so strongly lobbied for in PTS.

 

I remain unfortunately convinced (I really don't want to be) that whoever was reading the forums - whether that was our community managers or an army of unpaid interns - for the purposes of gathering feedback for the team either didn't understand what we were saying because they have no hands-on experience with the system, or they were so overworked that they condensed the feedback down so far as to make it useless; the devil was in the details and if they stripped those out or got them wrong in the telephone game then it's possible nothing useful made it back to the team.

 

Case in point: We howled that everything at every level cost too much to make, and they came back and said they would reduce credit price on supplements when the broader and more important point was the amount of mats required.

 

We warned that they would reap the whirlwind when this hit live, and I am fully expecting to see these topics start to snowball.

 

I could repeat everything we told them in the PTS forum, but frankly we spent so much time there giving them so much detail that it feels pointless and demoralizing to say it all yet again. If the devs want to know how to fix it, they need to just go back and actually read the PTS threads. (Yes, it will take you about an hour, but are you kidding me, you can't find an hour? You'll spend longer than that in the conference room speculating about what we're saying, so just read it directly.) Even if they were to skip the older first one and read just the updated second one where testers had refined their arguments, that would be something.

 

The most I'll go to the trouble of quoting is the last version of the fixes list I suggested in those threads:

 

• Reduce the materials requirement for all components (green, blue, and purple quality) to 2/2/2 .
  
• Green schematics must only require green materials to make. Remove conquest and exotic mats from this equation entirely.
  
• Blue schematics must only require blue and green materials, in reasonable amounts.
  
• Purple schematics can require purple, blue and green, in reasonable amounts.
  
• Legendary schematics are the only ones that should require legendary mats.
  
• Increase your RE chance. (Even with infinite mats your players' testing is showing that current percentages are punitive.)
  
• Remove Grade 11 components from war supplies schematics. (As tested and now as in live, one half of the war supplies schematics can cost as much as six times more to make than the other half, entirely because of the needless and sloppy increase in mats cost for Grade 11. One single Invasion Force on PTS cost 800k credits to make.)
  
• Reduce the cost of buying mats from the vendor using Jawa scrap. (As I showed in one of my previous posts, if deconstructing 150 pieces of gear doesn't give us sufficient scrap to craft a single basic green component, then your math is catastrophically wrong.)
  

 

There is no doubt in my mind that what the data from live will show is that almost no one will be crafting at any level worth mentioning.

 

I understand that they want to combat inflation by creating credit sinks, and that is seeming like more and more the culprit. But I said it before and I'll say it again: You don't do that by gating an entire game mechanic behind credits. You don't charge people a credits fee for queuing up for Warzones, and you shouldn't charge people a fortune just to be able to engage with Crafting, especially when it's a change from an established history. Let gameplay be accessible and put some imagination capital into creating desirable vanity items that people will credit sink for. Credit sink via a year-round variety of Nightlife-style events, not by gutting your game mechanics.

[Rolodome]

I understand that they want to combat inflation by creating credit sinks, and that is seeming like more and more the culprit. But I said it before and I'll say it again: You don't do that by gating an entire game mechanic behind credits. You don't charge people a credits fee for queuing up for Warzones, and you shouldn't charge people a fortune just to be able to engage with Crafting, especially when it's a change from an established history. Let gameplay be accessible and put some imagination capital into creating desirable vanity items that people will credit sink for. Credit sink via a year-round variety of Nightlife-style events, not by gutting your game mechanics.

Honestly, probably the best credit sink they could do is try to figure out what the people sitting on billions of credits are into (perhaps by asking them) and then throw some status items into the game that would make them willing to burn some of those creds to get them. Or create a system where people can create public wishlists of things they want and people with loads to burn who want to be generous can buy it for them to at least distribute the credits around a bit.

 

Most credit sinks are too simplistic and broadstrokes to come anywhere near addressing the problem of credit hoarding, which is where most of the actual imbalanced market and barrier to entry problems come from. Broadstrokes credit sinks primarily just chip at the edges of the problem, they don't actually fix anything in the long-term.