Did I miss something about crafting on PTS?

[TrixxieTriss]

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.

 

And I’ve never seen so many different account credit spammers in the life of the game. Literally, I was on Tython with my new Squid head and 12 different accounts spammed the same credit message in 5 minutes.

 

I warned Bioware on the pts this was going to happen using these poor or “sloppy” credit sinks that don’t target the actual credit whales.

 

Broad spectrum credit sinks like this hurt and affect a bigger percentage of the player base (casual players) much more than the smaller percentage of people who own 80% of the credits in the game. These credit sinks don’t even put a dent into those credit whales.

 

All these tactics do is encourage third party credit sites to sell credits to players directly. Which means people have less to spend on Biowares own Cartel Market cash store. It actually hurts Bioware and they are too stupid to realise they are shooting themselves in the foot.

[TrixxieTriss]

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

 

Well said.

 

We posted since pts 1? but definitely pts 2 and 3 about how bad the crafting was. They even asked for our feed back and then didn’t respond till a week out from launch. Every other topic they came back to us on, but not crafting.

 

Either musco didn’t understand what we were saying, didn’t communicate back our feed back (correctly) or Bioware just don’t give a **** they’ve dished out the worst crafting changes this game has ever seen.

 

While everyone was posting outrage in the general forums about the gearing changes, the majority ignored the crafting,

Myself and a few others tried to draw attention to it and explain what was happening. But as usual, we got derailed by a small few or single individuals. So the problem gets buried and now we have this **** show released live.

 

People who are defending this system aren’t crafters. They are trolling crafters or being white knights.

[ZionHalcyon]

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

 

I'll do that when you stop shooting the messenger.

[Estelindis]

We posted since pts 1? but definitely pts 2 and 3 about how bad the crafting was. They even asked for our feed back and then didn’t respond till a week out from launch. Every other topic they came back to us on, but not crafting.

Unfortunately we weren't able to test a lot of the crafting stuff from the get-go because most things needed exotic materials and the supply of those was completely insufficient compared to the demand exerted by schematics. We weren't going to grind 24/7 for materials just to try crafting one or two things. So initially we mainly gave feedback based on the costs we saw in basic schematics (which, to be brutally honest, should've been enough - we were clear from the start that changing from 2 of each basic mat to 10 of each for fundamental components, especially when combined with the three quality tiers, was a serious mistake). However once BW added a terminal that gave us exotic materials, we were really able to give crafting a thorough try. The data we got from that could've been supplied sooner, and perhaps acted on sooner, if that bottleneck hadn't occurred. Nonetheless, we did our eventual testing and supplied them with a lot of feedback about how impractical and unrewarding 6.0 crafting is. You know well the kinds of things we said, so I won't repeat myself. I just hope it doesn't take too much longer for whoever in BW gets to decide about crafting to make the necessary changes. Every other style of play seems to offer more rewards than crafting. Actually, crafting mainly seems to be an active drain. That has to change, or crafters will leave. I wouldn't be surprised if plenty already have.

[TrixxieTriss]

Unfortunately we weren't able to test a lot of the crafting stuff from the get-go because most things needed exotic materials and the supply of those was completely insufficient compared to the demand exerted by schematics. We weren't going to grind 24/7 for materials just to try crafting one or two things. So initially we mainly gave feedback based on the costs we saw in basic schematics (which, to be brutally honest, should've been enough - we were clear from the start that changing from 2 of each basic mat to 10 of each for fundamental components, especially when combined with the three quality tiers, was a serious mistake). However once BW added a terminal that gave us exotic materials, we were really able to give crafting a thorough try. The data we got from that could've been supplied sooner, and perhaps acted on sooner, if that bottleneck hadn't occurred. Nonetheless, we did our eventual testing and supplied them with a lot of feedback about how impractical and unrewarding 6.0 crafting is. You know well the kinds of things we said, so I won't repeat myself. I just hope it doesn't take too much longer for whoever in BW gets to decide about crafting to make the necessary changes. Every other style of play seems to offer more rewards than crafting. Actually, crafting mainly seems to be an active drain. That has to change, or crafters will leave. I wouldn't be surprised if plenty already have.

 

I’m not even going to bother paying to upgrade my crafters. It’s completely pointless and a waste of 1.5 mill credits per crafter.

[Estelindis]

I’m not even going to bother paying to upgrade my crafters. It’s completely pointless and a waste of 1.5 mill credits per crafter.

Unfortunately, I agree - that's the best move (or lack of move) for now.

 

Personally, I am going ahead with one character upgrading their crew skills per craft, just to see how things go. I did promise I would continue testing the live experience. But I'm not going to invest heavily. Costs are so punitive, I'd be mad to go all-in.

[phalczen]

Look, the system was clearly broken if the only way for players to test out crafting was to have a boost terminal grant infinite exotic mats and credits, and allow reverse engineering of vendor bought medpacks for jawa scrap. We told them calmly, with direct clear feedback.

 

And see, I know from other testing scenarios the response to tester feedback was timely and appropriate. It simply wasn't like this for GSF testing, heck even for testing the Eternal Championship. This time it had none of those features. In fact, in some cases, not only did they ignore the feedback, they doubled down on their view of the changes. See removal of ALL DR from force speed regardless of spec and conquest planet targets.

 

If you need a PTS-only exploit or a developer hack to enable folks to test your system, here's a little hint: it's broken

[Slurmez]

Im assuming someone got promoted and is putting their stamp on things because they think they know best, its a pretty common and idiot practice when it happens.

[Darev]

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/

 

You/We didn't miss anything.

We pointed it out and said it was a bad idea.

We were (mostly) ignored.

On PTS it was 20 of each purple mat for each green item.

So..they did reduce it...slightly.

 

They still got it wrong.

Big time wrong.

[Azerdayne]

I keep wondering if the devs intended for crafting to take a year (years?) to level up. I mean ... *eventually* dedicated players could work through this crafting system.

 

But .... isn't the whole business model for this game built around the expectation that people are going to unsub during the long, long content droughts?

 

If I had any real optimism left for the development of this game, the crafting system might lead me to imagine a new, increased cadence of content over the next year(s), in which case, if the current gear tiers were meant to last a *long* time, I could see some kind of logic behind the current system (though still a bad decision).

 

But ... I have no optimism left. Add it to the endless pile of incomprehensible, bad design decisions, I guess.

I can never wrap my head around these design choices that are just *not* fun to play. When stuff like this makes it through internal development & PTS, it's really hard to believe that the people making decisions play this game (or any other MMO for that matter). And if they don't .... ffs, hire someone who does and give them the authority to prevent the dev team from constantly shooting themselves in the foot.

Edited October 24, 2019 by Azerdayne

[Slurmez]

I keep wondering if the devs intended for crafting to take a year (years?) to level up. I mean ... *eventually* dedicated players could work through this crafting system.

 

But .... isn't the whole business model for this game built around the expectation that people are going to unsub during the long, long content droughts?

 

If I had any real optimism left for the development of this game, the crafting system might lead me to imagine a new, increased cadence of content over the next year(s), in which case, if the current gear tiers were meant to last a *long* time, I could see some kind of logic behind the current system (though still a bad decision).

 

But ... I have no optimism left. Add it to the endless pile of incomprehensible, bad design decisions, I guess.

I can never wrap my head around these design choices that are just *not* fun to play. When stuff like this makes it through internal development & PTS, it's really hard to believe that the people making decisions play this game (or any other MMO for that matter). And if they don't .... ffs, hire someone who does and give them the authority to prevent the dev team from constantly shooting themselves in the foot.

 

Its not just that, the literal STATE of the game post patch is a joke, the amount of bugs that came with it is unacceptable, they are treating live as if it is a test server with pages of bugs and "known issues" and thats on TOP of taking an extra month before release.

[DawnAskham]

Crafting is in the dumpster fire along with the gearing system and changes to level sync / scaling.

 

What a sad joke - the small team of world builders and story tellers makes a decent effort to create some new zones and new story lines, only to have some idiots come in and muck it up with terrible game system design.

[Nmyownworld]

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.

I paid the 1.5 million credits to the crafting Charon in order to gain access to level up that character's crafting to 700, and not wander around in the realm of 600 level crafting. I did it on my Armstech crafter because, hey, a lot of my characters use blaster barrels. Got the first available barrel schematic and ... it requires 5 Processed Isotope Stabilizers which drop from MM FPs or from Operations. I am so angry at BW right now. Whose bright idea was this? I'm not looking to craft BiS, ultra-mega awesome, will kill NPCs dead just by being near them, items. It's a fricking green, lowest possible level 75 barrel to craft. What the hell, BW.

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.

^This.

 

6.0's current mat requirements for crafting bottom of the line items is just stupid. Why would running multiple MM FPs or multiple Operations be required to craft 6.0's bottom of the line schematics. Is 700 crafting meant solely for those who frequently run MM FPs and do Operations? You messed up, BW. This needs a immediate change, not one of those "oh, we'll monitor it for 6 months to X years, and see what happens" dodges.

 

My suggestion: put Processed Isotope Stabilizers on the Jawa scrap peddlers with the next patch. And, don't price them for a ridiculously high amount of Jawa junk. Not every player has tens of thousands of Jawa junk.

Edited October 24, 2019 by Nmyownworld

[SithEmpress]

I agree completely with what everyone else is saying. These changes to crafting are terrible and I don't know how it got past the concept board let alone through the development and then the feedback phase was very clear on the test center. People write out huge posts explaining why these changes were bad. The only one that really benefits from this, even they probably don't like it, are large guilds. Crafting is one of my favorite part of the game, why did they mess with something that didn't even need to be changed.

 

Of course the same could be said for Galactica Command being changed to renown, so much development time waste on recreating core features that were fine. It really is no wonder the actual story content is so small, maybe if they spent more time on developing new stuff instead of reworking old system they'd have more time for new content.

 

I hope they fix it fast but I won't hold my breath for it.

[Rolodome]

I keep wondering if the devs intended for crafting to take a year (years?) to level up. I mean ... *eventually* dedicated players could work through this crafting system.

 

But .... isn't the whole business model for this game built around the expectation that people are going to unsub during the long, long content droughts?

 

If I had any real optimism left for the development of this game, the crafting system might lead me to imagine a new, increased cadence of content over the next year(s), in which case, if the current gear tiers were meant to last a *long* time, I could see some kind of logic behind the current system (though still a bad decision).

 

But ... I have no optimism left. Add it to the endless pile of incomprehensible, bad design decisions, I guess.

I can never wrap my head around these design choices that are just *not* fun to play. When stuff like this makes it through internal development & PTS, it's really hard to believe that the people making decisions play this game (or any other MMO for that matter). And if they don't .... ffs, hire someone who does and give them the authority to prevent the dev team from constantly shooting themselves in the foot.

I think we're past making any sense of it. These guys have no idea what they're doing in an online game context and it's shown for 8 years. The one part that consistently works moderately well is what Bioware got famous for... story. They were never famous for online play and it was obviously a mistake asking them to shoehorn something single player into that space.

[Genada]

I think we're past making any sense of it. These guys have no idea what they're doing in an online game context and it's shown for 8 years. The one part that consistently works moderately well is what Bioware got famous for... story. They were never famous for online play and it was obviously a mistake asking them to shoehorn something single player into that space.

 

You think after 8 years they would of gotten some idea of how to do it.

 

You would think after 8 years just by accident they would of made some changes people would be pleased with.

 

Outside of the story of 6.0 everything else is a disaster. Crafting, conquest, lack of content, EVERY PART of it is just bad.

[Transcendent]

Unfortunately, I agree - that's the best move (or lack of move) for now.

 

Personally, I am going ahead with one character upgrading their crew skills per craft, just to see how things go. I did promise I would continue testing the live experience. But I'm not going to invest heavily. Costs are so punitive, I'd be mad to go all-in.

 

You can't go all in, the mats simply are not available for crafting some of the green items (and will not be for weeks)

 

[Estelindis]

The one part that consistently works moderately well is what Bioware got famous for... story.

Agreed. After the painful PTS crafting experience, the story was my one hope for this expansion - and I must say, while it could be longer, it is nonetheless great.

Edited October 24, 2019 by Estelindis

[Ayushman]

Does the devs listen? sure.

Does the devs work on it? nah...

Leave the crafting to credit whales... I am not wasting a single credit over this. Meanwhile time to hoard whatever I can get.

[Rolodome]

You think after 8 years they would of gotten some idea of how to do it.

 

You would think after 8 years just by accident they would of made some changes people would be pleased with.

 

Outside of the story of 6.0 everything else is a disaster. Crafting, conquest, lack of content, EVERY PART of it is just bad.

You would think that. I feel like I'm being unfair, in fact, making it seem like they can't have worked it out after 8 years. But it sure seems like they're as lost as they were on day one when it comes to the online stuff. Maybe a little more informed on some technical things and online elements relating to story, but general MMO design seems to be annoying people on multiple important fronts, consistently, with expansion after expansion. I know every MMORPG has its controversies when change happens, but I don't know that I've ever seen so much consistent and extensive ire as this game's design choices get.

[Nmyownworld]

I had already paid the 1.5 million to level up my Artificer to 700, so I decided to level up Artifice enough to see if it was as bad as Armstech. It was worse. Not only did the green, bottom of the line, most basic possible hilt also require 5 Processed Isotope Stabilizers, a new dye requires two different grade 11 Artifice assembly components, including one that requires Slicing mats. Unless the goal was to aggravate some crafters and discourage 700 crafting, I give the 6.0 crafting changes an F-. I truly hope that BW makes changes to 6.0's crafting system, and soon. What a mess. Edited October 25, 2019 by Nmyownworld

[DawnAskham]

Quick fixes:

 

Remove conquest material requirements for anything not 306, specifically augments.

 

Reduce materials required for every assembly type item.

 

Remove blue isotope from anything not purple / 306 or significantly reduce the materials required.

 

Increase RE chance across the board.

 

Increase the proportion of green materials to blue / purple materials from harvesting and missions.

 

Reduce jawa prices by a significant factor, with green cheaper than blue cheaper than purple.

Edited October 25, 2019 by DawnAskham

[phalczen]

Quick fixes:

 

Remove conquest material requirements for anything not 306, specifically augments.

 

Reduce materials required for every assembly type item.

 

Remove blue isotope from anything not purple / 306 or significantly reduce the materials required.

 

Increase RE chance across the board.

 

Increase the proportion of green materials to blue / purple materials from harvesting and missions.

 

Reduce jawa prices by a significant factor, with green cheaper than blue cheaper than purple.

 

Agreed. All of these need to be done. A disasee of this magnitude requires a comprehensive response.

[ytrenor]

The explanation is probably very simple I believe. They want to keep us busy for the grind. Gearing will take so long, if we could simply craft a blue level armor (as easy as the ones up to iRating 220), it would destroy the whole purpose of all the complexity of gearing progression.

 

So can we just agree that crafting is dead on purpose. You can grind for the mats all you want, you will still fill in the goal of keeping us busy..

 

The basic green 268/270 we get from completing the story is most probably enough. I've seen many people forming for MM FP on day 1, you won't tell me these players were already at iR306

[Darklighter]

Agreed. After the painful PTS crafting experience, the story was my one hope for this expansion - and I must say, while it could be longer, it is nonetheless great.

 

I'll just do what I always do. Play the new story, then unsub until more new story comes out.

 

No need to stick around since everything else will be crap as usual.