6.0 Crafting is Ludicrously a complete and total piece of Junk

[Lhancelot]

Negative changes I find with crafting include:

 

• Increased complexity and added time (more materials and assemblies to manage - not complex game play).
  
• Significantly Increased materials requirements across the board.
  
• Poor alignment of material returns with material needs (e.g. greens far rarer than blues yet needed far more).
  
• Changes to mission returns (higher skill, higher time, higher cost missions returning fewer / no needed materials).
  
• Addition of conquest material for basic crafting.
  
• Significantly lowered success chance with reverse engineering.
  
• Many items significantly inferior to random drops in easy content.
  

 

Any one of the above would have caused complaints, but taken all together, instead of leaving me a bit frustrated or disappointed, I am angry at the developers for ruining an aspect of the game I have enjoyed for years.

 

They wrecked crafting on PTS, testers complained, people created critical threads pointing out everything you got listed above as being negatives as negatives in their complaints and we got silence.

 

Now, we all are wanting answers as to where they plan to go with crafting next, and we got silence.

 

My biggest issue with the crafting changes is they never even explained what exactly it was they were trying to accomplish with these changes, and we all asked because it's not clear! The changes are so illogical that I can't really piece together a reasonable explanation behind said changes.

 

It seems they decided to destroy crafting for absolutely no reason but to make you even more dependent on partaking in their RNG gearing system. Why not just remove it totally, I mean if they don't want crafting to be useful or fun, why have it at all?

[Transcendent]

My biggest issue with the crafting changes is they never even explained what exactly it was they were trying to accomplish with these changes

 

(snip)

 

It seems they decided to destroy crafting for absolutely no reason but to make you even more dependent on partaking in their RNG gearing system.

 

I think you may have answered your own question. The only reasonable explanation to massively increasing basic materials without increasing collected material sources on a one to one basis, as well as including both conquest materials (massive limitation) and also heavily reducing the reverse engineering chances, on very basic schematics does lead one to believe that the intention is to push players into playing the content that the developers want you to play.

 

It definitely isn't "play your way" when you combine all of those parts.

 

Worse still It definitely isn't rewarding or particularly fun spending hours gathering enough materials, plus purchasing basic supplements in sufficient quantity to craft the basic components, which then craft more basic components, which then craft the required component, before you can even craft the item you're trying to reverse engineer with a tiny percentage chance at success, at which point you fail..... repeatedly.

[Estelindis]

seems they decided to destroy crafting for absolutely no reason but to make you even more dependent on partaking in their RNG gearing system. Why not just remove it totally, I mean if they don't want crafting to be useful or fun, why have it at all?

What confuses me on this point is that if they were worried about crafting competing with the new gearing system, they could've made the majority of the new craftable items cosmetic or general utility stuff. Synthweaving and armormech: empty cosmetic armor shells. Armstech: empty cosmetic weapons shells (all weapons apart from lightsabers). Cybertech: mounts. Artifice: dyes and colour crystals (they added a few but more would've been better), plus empty lightsaber shells. Biochem: I guess new reusables still, just not with such low RE% (open to biochem suggestions). But they made almost every new craftable item stat-based when they didn't have to.

 

For the record, I'm not saying crafting shouldn't be a competitive source of endgame gear. I'm not personally interested in that aspect of it, but I'd never it say it shouldn't exist. But if BW want to eliminate that angle of crafting, they had an easier way to do it than by making it preposterously time- and materials-intensive...

Edited November 8, 2019 by Estelindis

[DawnAskham]

Hanlon's razor

 

“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity or incompetence.”

 

Incompetence as in attempting to make changes of this magnitude without allocating and ensuring appropriate knowledge and resource levels to ensure a quality outcome.

Edited November 8, 2019 by DawnAskham

[DawnAskham]

delete Edited November 8, 2019 by DawnAskham

[phalczen]

Patch 6.0.2 will be our last update for 2019 and we’ll target its availability mid-December. It’ll have additional bug fixes along with the following:

• Crafting changes – it begins! Yes, we’re taking a hard look at crafting and will make some adjustments starting with this patch.
  

 

Keith

 

Here's to hoping that they will engage us before mid-December.

[Breso]

I hope the update does change the crafting material requirements to more reasonable items

[cyrusramsey]

The phrasing tells me that they mean to slowly inch in the right direction until enough people stop complaining, rather than fix the mess that we have right now, but I guess at least there's some manner of response to the issue now.

[Alanbra]

I don't see the statement that crafting will be changed to all that encouraging. They'll probably change assemblies from 10/10/8 to 8/8/6 and jawa junk cost of new mats will go from 200 and 100, and the forums will be filled with how Bioware listened and responded to our concerns.

[Rolodome]

It definitely isn't "play your way" when you combine all of those parts.

Ya know, I think I said at one point that "play your way" may end up becoming a mocking description of the expansion (or words to that effect). I can't say I'm happy that I seem to have been on point there. Whether you like certain elements of the expansion or not, I don't think anyone could make much of an argument that it's "play your way."

 

I figured from when I first heard it that the tagline was born out of the concept of tacticals, but after all the various controversies and (arguably) botched systems, tacticals, funnily enough, barely enter into my mind as a feature of the expansion. They have been, for me, almost entirely overshadowed by everything else, to the point that I realize now I haven't even tried them and probably won't since the rest is so unengaging.

 

I'm kinda laughing thinking about it. The one part that could have been successfully marketed as play your way overshadowed by changes that accomplish the opposite.

[Void_Singer]

Hanlon's razor

 

“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity or incompetence.”

 

Incompetence as in attempting to make changes of this magnitude without allocating and ensuring appropriate knowledge and resource levels to ensure a quality outcome.

I assumed that at first... but then I actually dug into what they've done to crafting... and it's definitely malicious.... I feel like the accidental exposure of their "joke" item that showed up in place of the bio and arms crafted tacticals reinforces that point.

 

I wanted to think it was incompetence, or lack of resources... but no, it's carefully planned ABUSE.

[DawnAskham]

I don't see the statement that crafting will be changed to all that encouraging. They'll probably change assemblies from 10/10/8 to 8/8/6 and jawa junk cost of new mats will go from 200 and 100, and the forums will be filled with how Bioware listened and responded to our concerns.

 

Or they adjust missions to provide a few more greens by having them drop in the higher tiers or something, but fundamentally keep the absurdly low RE chance, high mats costs, added complexity, and stuff like conquest mats required for basic items.

 

And yes, they could do something so meaningless as adjust the RE chance from 5% to 6%, and we'd still see the usual suspects posting all kinds of 'you guys should be thanking the developers for these changes, they listened and made great changes, I <3 these devs they are so awesome' posts.

Edited November 9, 2019 by DawnAskham

[phalczen]

I think sometimes extremists on both sides defend odd positions, but when even the white knights admit crafting is a travesty, then you know things are bad.

[MagicTerror]

The need for other gathering skills than say scav and investigation to craft for things like armstech is predictable, I prepared for that years ago by having multiple gathering "supplier" alts to send mats to my only 6 crafting toons. But the amount of mats needed for a green attachment (not even a weapon or a crappy green augment!) is ridiculous. I can't even imagine how much torture it will be to craft anything worth equippng!

I suspect the only reason they did this on purpose (seriously, how dumb can people be?) was to make it as much of a grind to craft as it is to grind endless flashpoints to find rare mats from it. It has the transparent money-making tactic of exponential effort increase over time written all over it. The only thing that's missing is EA offering credits for real money outright like with GoH.

EDIT: It just occurred to me thinking of my need to have a supply chain for every construction skill: Maybe I simply can't play that diversely anymore, if Bioware never fixes this and I don't abandon crafting entirely I may have to narrow my crafting capabilities to 2 or maybe even 1 construction skill, and have most of my alts contributing resources only for that. Of course that's just another **** up they did with 6.0: Throwing the current crafting system out the window and spitting on it for good measure

Edited November 24, 2019 by MagicTerror

[DarthSpuds]

Hanlon's razor

 

“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity or incompetence.”

 

Incompetence as in attempting to make changes of this magnitude without allocating and ensuring appropriate knowledge and resource levels to ensure a quality outcome.

 

But permitting that stupidity and incompetence to continue steering the direction the game goes in is malice.

 

 

All The Best

[turbulantwolf]

Congratulations you have officially ended any fun left in this game by forcing players to do things they don't want to be forced to do for a small chance at getting the right stuff down the road and the only people that are going to have the high end schematic and parts are the ones that can afford to be online 10+ hours a day in a guild full of those types of individual. Congratulations you have now officially caught up to another MMORPG thats been around for decade in finally pissing me off. Your game is no longer fun. The fashion armor now no longer holds any allure. You have officially made it completely useless to play. You have made a game that only "Whales" can play just like most of the Google Play store. I vote with my wallet since i can't even change which instances I'm in and there's ALWAYS 5-10 of us fighting over 6 nodes EVERYWHERE on the planet just to get a chance at making stuff only to break it down and maybe getting a blue plan that i might be able to make next once for a 2 percent increase in stats in one piece of gear for the low low price of 5 million credits per module.....This was borked by design.

[ElZaguero]

...there's ALWAYS 5-10 of us fighting over 6 nodes EVERYWHERE on the planet just to get a chance at making stuff only to break it down and maybe getting a blue plan that i might be able to make next once for a 2 percent increase in stats in one piece of gear for the low low price of 5 million credits per module.....This was borked by design.

 

That seems like a fair and accurate summary of the situation, yes.

[Sportiva]

I have to say it is mind-boggling how adept EA/BW-A are at alienating its most loyal fan base ... it’s as if they have an internal challenge to figure out how to piss off their players more. Next up, they’ll do something to completely alienate those who just play the GTN.

[Shinian]

I assumed that at first... but then I actually dug into what they've done to crafting... and it's definitely malicious.... I feel like the accidental exposure of their "joke" item that showed up in place of the bio and arms crafted tacticals reinforces that point.

 

I wanted to think it was incompetence, or lack of resources... but no, it's carefully planned ABUSE.

 

Some of the crafting and gear changes seem imported from Anthem, so apparently they were happy enough with it in that game (despite complaints there) that they decided to give it to us too. Examples are embers for crafting, and the random inscriptions/amplifiers.

 

Working as designed.

[McDunnough]

<snip>

I feel like the accidental exposure of their "joke" item that showed up in place of the bio and arms crafted tacticals reinforces that point.

<snip>

.

 

Joke item?

[Ghost_Spectre]

Working as designed.

 

The truth of the matter is they purposefully designed it this way. Why? So we'd have to grind, grind, grind ad nauseum, to craft the gear so we could either wear it or sell it. As it is now, based on the last view I had of the Galactic Trade Market, this game is now catering to the filthy rich players (more specifically, Whales).

 

I've pretty much given up doing anything past Onslaught. I've started deleting characters so I don't have spend 4 million credits to put the original set bonus armor on and augment it for my level 70 characters (28 of them). I just start over...and take my time. After that, I stop. No need to do anything else. Crafting is for those who can afford to do so. Since I'm just a casual player, I cannot do anything in crafting above what I had received in way of mats from before Onslaught. And I'd have to spend 1.5 million credits per toon just to unlock and do tier 11 crafting. 28 crafters/gathers...42 million credits. I'm lucky to have 12 now.

 

BW in their finite wisdom to turn this game into a Koreanesque style grind game has killed it for me. I don't have 8 to 10 ours a day to dedicate specifically to this game, not now and not ever. If something does not drastically change to turn this around, I'll have to walk away and this time for good. I've already reduced my stream time for this game down to 2 days...and even then...I can't play more than 3 or 4 hours of it before I get disgusted.

 

The biggest and most egregious thing they did was completely invalidate all my toons whom I geared up via GC and do not have any of the original gear for them since it was sent via legacy gear. These are the toons I am deleting. I can't even gear them up properly with any set bonus gear because they are all untouchable until lvl 75.

 

Thank you BW for fracking us players who do not spend every waking moment to grind, grind, grind, and grind.

[Void_Singer]

Joke item?

there was a schematic available to craft 1 solid resource matrix... that cost 14 Solid resource matrixes....it wasn't supposed to make it to live but it did and they had to remove it from many peoples accounts, because they bought it thinking it was something else (it was mislabeled as biochem tactical)

[CKNORTH]

All I know is I am making a fortune from crew missions! So keep at it Dev's!

[Akevv]

Allow me to add my voice to the cacophony of others. It is not remotely fun to finally craft seven level 73 critical augments, only to discover that's not enough of them to get the next schematic. Its not remotely fun to craft 10 more in the hopes to gain a schematic. Its even less fun to risk the final 4 critical successes, and finally get "lucky" enough to get that desired schematic. Keep in mind those 24 augments were worth ~700k credits each on the SS GTN. I cannot imagine how anyone would think this is fun.

 

Me cussing about failed reverse engineering RNG crap, for eight minutes. *Warning: Adult language in video, lots of it.*

 

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/529763209

Edited January 3, 2020 by Akevv

[CKNORTH]

Allow me to add my voice to the cacophony of others. It is not remotely fun to finally craft seven level 73 critical augments, only to discover that's not enough of them to get the next schematic. Its not remotely fun to craft 13 more in the hopes to gain a schematic. Its even less fun to risk the final 4 critical successes, and finally get "lucky" enough to get that desired schematic. Keep in mind those 24 augments were worth ~700k credits each on the SS GTN. I cannot imagine how anyone would think this is fun.

 

Me cussing about failed reverse engineering RNG crap, for eight minutes. *Warning: Adult language in video, lots of it.*

 

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/529763209

 

I am starting to Sympathise with you on the RE Chances, while I am not at the high end yet, I will be soon enough and once switching back to preferred status and not able to queue any items. it will be fun for sure I imagine...