Crafting is Pointless at this time

[PlayLoud]

What irks me a bit is that as an armorcrafter i'm usually overleveled on what i can craft by the time i find the mats.

Like i needed Chanlon to craft lvl appropriate stuff and was barely getting the bronzium

 

This.

 

What you have to do is send your companions out to scavenge the higher level mats while you play in the lower level area. I can make armor at/above my level, but not from the materials I scavenge in my current area.

 

I attribute this to the fact you will be overleveled if you complete every bonus quest, and run flashpoints a few times (trying to farm a helm for a friend). For example, I am currently lvl 30, and only part way through Tatooine. The gear I am crafting for lvl 31 requires Bondite, which I can't find on Tatooine (I will be at least lvl 32 by the time I am done with the planet.) So, if I want to equip gear to my level, I will have to send my companions out to get it. Also, since I like to craft purple quality gear, I will need tons of it for REing.

[Malphas]

The crafting system is completely without doubt broken. There were some issues with the necessity of crewskills a few betas back and the last patches introduction of crewskills were truly horrible, I mean awful. on release, the SWTOR community got that awesomely horrible crafting system.

 

As it stands now, you are much better off doing quests, flashpoints and pvp to get gear than wasting time with crewskill bought gear. If you doubt this, fly to Ilum and Corelia and look at the commendation vendors and fly to Carrick Station and look at the PVP vendors (centurion, champion and battlemaster). Now look at the recipes you have, your jaw will hang low and you'll be like "No, Bioware would not do this, they aren't that incompetent".

 

There is no reason to use crewskills at 50. I have about 400 tier 6 blue mission materials that I'm using to reengineer weapons and each one that shows up is dissapointment after dissapointment.

 

For example:

Ilum 8 commendation barrel:

damage 126

endurance 34

cunning 48

 

Player made artifact barrel (150K credits to get the mats to research + 25K credits mission cost to make a barrel)

damage 124

enduarnace 33

cunning 47

 

Why would a player pay 25K credits for a purple barrel when they can get a better barrel questing on Ilum? I'm not even going to go into the weapon stats, they are a lot more dissapointing.

 

True, but when you look at the variety of what is available for the mod vendors, it pales in comparison to what you can make with crew skills. That is the real difference.

[DarthBloodloss]

See my post above.

 

It is a HUGE mistake to go to 50 fast. The market is not at level 50, you don't know how MMOs work.

 

This is the most ridiculous thing I've read in a while. Getting to 50 fast....is a mistake?

 

But back to the point of this thread...I agree. Crafting is pointless. I have 400 armormech and the only things I would use at level 50 is the uber belts.

 

The non-moddable stuff isn't even worth making for your companions. However, you could collect schematics and craft a fully mod-able suit of armor for them which might be cool. But I just got mod-able armor for them off the PvP vendor. A couple hours of warzone got Mako a full suit, already with decent mods but ready to be upgraded.

 

Once you discover the wonderful world of PvP gear, you will prolly agree that every crafted piece of armor is not an option. (PvP armor has better defense, comes with 2 slots that are already filled with awesome mods, and has expertise for PvP. Crafted armor is not equal in any way.

[CTFoxhound]

I find crafting fun. It's my favorite thing to do in all MMO's. I find the way crew skills work in this game interesting. Yeah it can be worked on and I'm sure it's going to be. So if pointless = fun then ok.

[DarthBloodloss]

I find crafting fun. It's my favorite thing to do in all MMO's. I find the way crew skills work in this game interesting. Yeah it can be worked on and I'm sure it's going to be. So if pointless = fun then ok.

 

I agree that its a cool system, but as far as game usefullness its pointless. As far as fun factor, sure its cool but its too easy to outlevel 98% of the things you can make.

[SpaghettiMonster]

The mechanics involved with the crafting system is fun, but the results are currently lackluster. I just hope they plan on adding more schematics and make some adjustments so that crafting awesome gear is possible.

[FalcoLombardi]

People will pay money for the convenience. You could say making shirt's and selling them is useless in real life when people can make their own

[Renlotho]

My main is a biochemist so atm i've not really had sight of a lot of the higher tier crafted gear but the above post is a very valid point. If player gear is inferior to the final quest stuff then I can see it weakening the crafter economy.

 

That being said.... If the opposite were true and crafted gear was THE best then the crafters would have complete control to ask as much as they saw fit. While that may seem like a good idea it makes the player economy THE ONLY WAY, which means more casual players will be at a severe disadvantage since they wont be able to generate the kind of money they need to buy the "best" gear when they get to end game stuff. The happy medium would be to match the crafted and quest/commendation gear which would give people the age old choice of time vs money. If I have the money then do I need to spend several hours (for instance) grinding gear when I can simply buy it. The other downside to crafted gear being better is, "Will people actually play our content which we have spent a lot of money developing" if the reward they get for it isn't as good as something they can knock up or buy off the GTM.

 

I can see adjustments being made to the crafting system "fairly" soon, but "fairly" will be a couple of months down the road.

 

A few things. One, make the hard content be the sole way to get rare schematics and materials. For PvP items see this thread: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=117078

 

Second point, player economies are dynamic and IF it is a free market it will adjust. For example say artificers are rare. You would then expect color crystals to be rare and expensive. If they are expensive one of two things will happen. If too spendy no one will buy and prices will be lowered until a price is reached that people are willing to pay. Alternately, more people will become artificers and a price war will begin as new crystals are brought to market again over time it will reach fair market value.

 

Yes, cartels could spring up, but without a monopoly on materials or schematics an entrepreneurial player (or players) will come along and again start a price war. The key is to make craftable items on par or better than vendor items. There might be some arguments against player made being the strongest, but there is no really valid argument against crafted items being AS strong as vendor items.

Edited January 2, 2012 by Renlotho

[Hawtubb]

im 400 armormech, 400 scavenging, 400 slicing and all were a waste of time. The cost to create sub-par armor is ridiculous, scavenging has taken up my strage space, and what is the purpose of slicing again?

[KrelosDarksky]

Disagree COMPLETELY.

 

Not only is the armor I craft useful ... it sells.

 

If you aren't selling armor then YOU are doing something wrong.

 

 

 

 

.

[cluelesss]

Crafted gear should be better than gear from commendations (not as good as raid or gear from super hard flashpoints of course) but at least a little better than the cheap n easy to get commendation gear.

That would make crafting more viable without being OP.

Edited January 2, 2012 by cluelesss

[Aedn]

First off getting to 50 isnt a problem, players who get to 50 first and have kept up crafting skills feed off lower level players. Currently i am turning 200k+ profit a day by selling items so its possible to do so. Much of what i sell though is restricted from the normal vendors & commendation that reduce armstech, armormech,synthweaving to being pointless.

 

Now i do agree that the crafting system is broken and pointless to an extent, but its possible to still find areas in the market to exploit. Problem is the areas are the same for everyone and eventually the market will be flooded to the point of prices crashing.

 

What is funny is that given the income generation of high level characters and the fact that slicing was a cash cow, is that all the existing servers are going to show significant mudflation from the start, as many people are flush with cash.

 

Ultimately SWTOR's crafting system will be just like any other themepark mmo's which is to say outside of consumables and certain loopholes in the itemization pointless to persue.

[Farabee]

Heh....talk about useless. How about Cybertech.

 

The best mods you can craft? Given out as daily quest rewards, with more options than you can make, and on top of that they're BOE so you get undercut on the mods you spent hours and thousands of credits worth of UWT mats R/eing by some idiot who killed a few mobs on Belsavis. Plus, the vendor-bought armoring is better than what you can craft.

 

The unique mount you can make at 50? Reskin of the level 40 speeder. The self-only grenades that look great for PVP? 5 minute cooldown. Enjoy using them once per warzone.

 

Yes, we can make the best ship parts, but you can beat the hardest space mission without them easily.

 

The only reason I still have it is hoping that I find the summoning-stone-type schematic which was datamined in beta. Of course, once it's available I'm sure Bioware will give that away to players to, just like everything else useful we can make.

[CriticalMasses]

Crafting doesn't have to be the best, it can also be unique and still sell.

 

Let's take Artifice and color crystals. Yellow sells well, why? Because it's hard to come by while questing. The normals are Blue and Green for quest rewards. So purple yellows sell.

 

The problem with this is that it's a single color and that is basically what you are reduced to selling at max Artifice. Yellow crystals.

 

You can make and sell lower level mods for cash, sure, but the returns won't be there if you want to get everything to purple quality. the cash it will take far outwieghs what people are willing to pay for mods that will be replaced in a few levels.

 

EACH crafting profession needs 1 consumable to craft that people will use. and each crafting profession needs several unique items that can only be gotten via crafting and no place else.

 

Bioware made this game about choices, (supposedly) but the choices are really lacking outside of the class quest arcs.

[Aedn]

First off getting to 50 isnt a problem, players who get to 50 first and have kept up crafting skills feed off lower level players. Currently i am turning 200k+ profit a day by selling items so its possible to do so. Much of what i sell though is restricted from the normal vendors & commendation that reduce armstech, armormech,synthweaving to being pointless.

 

Now i do agree that the crafting system is broken and pointless to an extent, but its possible to still find areas in the market to exploit. Problem is the areas are the same for everyone and eventually the market will be flooded to the point of prices crashing.

 

What is funny is that given the income generation of high level characters and the fact that slicing was a cash cow, is that all the existing servers are going to show significant mudflation from the start, as many people are flush with cash.

 

Ultimately SWTOR's crafting system will be just like any other themepark mmo's which is to say outside of consumables and certain loopholes in the itemization pointless to persue.

[MacbethAUT]

I really miss SWG Crafting. (Pre-nerf) You had to invest time and energy to get good at it. IMHO it was the most complex and rewarding crafting system in a MMO so far.

[Liathan]

A few things. One, make the hard content be the sole way to get rare schematics and materials. For PvP items see this thread: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=117078

 

Second point, player economies are dynamic and IF it is a free market it will adjust. For example say artificers are rare. You would then expect color crystals to be rare and expensive. If they are expensive one of two things will happen. If too spendy no one will buy and prices will be lowered until a price is reached that people are willing to pay. Alternately, more people will become artificers and a price war will begin as new crystals are brought to market again over time it will reach fair market value.

 

Yes, cartels could spring up, but without a monopoly on materials or schematics an entrepreneurial player (or players) will come along and again start a price war. The key is to make craftable items on par or better than vendor items. There might be some arguments against player made being the strongest, but there is no really valid argument against crafted items being AS strong as vendor items.

 

The problem with your free market idea, as has been proved in other games, is that it's too easy to manipulate the economy. If I'm an artificer and I have enough money, every time someone undercuts me, I can buy that auction and re-list it at my price, and thus keep prices from going down.

[RJChief]

The problem with your free market idea, as has been proved in other games, is that it's too easy to manipulate the economy. If I'm an artificer and I have enough money, every time someone undercuts me, I can buy that auction and re-list it at my price, and thus keep prices from going down.

 

enjoy your market watch. lol - the competition will ALWAYS lead to lower prices. You just suggested that:: if you list Item X at 10k creds, and competition comes and lists it at 7K creds -> you would buy the 7K creds and list it at 10 therefore only making a 3k profit on it. You would have been better off cutting your price to the 7k competition.

 

You shafted yourself, the end user, and benefited your competition - A+ for Effort though.

 

 

 

I hear a lot of talk about how crafting is not useful? I am a synthweaving JC Sage and am constantly replacing my gear with stuff I have crafted. On top of that, I have crafted quite a few modable items (included a modable epic -- yes "mastercraft").

 

Crafting seems to be quite useful while leveling, and I cannot wait to see it end game

Edited January 2, 2012 by RJChief

[bigheadbrandon]

The crafting system is completely without doubt broken. There were some issues with the necessity of crewskills a few betas back and the last patches introduction of crewskills were truly horrible, I mean awful. on release, the SWTOR community got that awesomely horrible crafting system.

 

As it stands now, you are much better off doing quests, flashpoints and pvp to get gear than wasting time with crewskill bought gear. If you doubt this, fly to Ilum and Corelia and look at the commendation vendors and fly to Carrick Station and look at the PVP vendors (centurion, champion and battlemaster). Now look at the recipes you have, your jaw will hang low and you'll be like "No, Bioware would not do this, they aren't that incompetent".

 

There is no reason to use crewskills at 50. I have about 400 tier 6 blue mission materials that I'm using to reengineer weapons and each one that shows up is dissapointment after dissapointment.

 

For example:

Ilum 8 commendation barrel:

damage 126

endurance 34

cunning 48

 

Player made artifact barrel (150K credits to get the mats to research + 25K credits mission cost to make a barrel)

damage 124

enduarnace 33

cunning 47

 

Why would a player pay 25K credits for a purple barrel when they can get a better barrel questing on Ilum? I'm not even going to go into the weapon stats, they are a lot more dissapointing.

 

consider the following fact that not everyone wants to do dailies on ilum for weapon mods

[RJChief]

The crafting system is completely without doubt broken. There were some issues with the necessity of crewskills a few betas back and the last patches introduction of crewskills were truly horrible, I mean awful. on release, the SWTOR community got that awesomely horrible crafting system.

 

As it stands now, you are much better off doing quests, flashpoints and pvp to get gear than wasting time with crewskill bought gear. If you doubt this, fly to Ilum and Corelia and look at the commendation vendors and fly to Carrick Station and look at the PVP vendors (centurion, champion and battlemaster). Now look at the recipes you have, your jaw will hang low and you'll be like "No, Bioware would not do this, they aren't that incompetent".

 

There is no reason to use crewskills at 50. I have about 400 tier 6 blue mission materials that I'm using to reengineer weapons and each one that shows up is dissapointment after dissapointment.

 

For example:

Ilum 8 commendation barrel:

damage 126

endurance 34

cunning 48

 

Player made artifact barrel (150K credits to get the mats to research + 25K credits mission cost to make a barrel)

damage 124

enduarnace 33

cunning 47

 

Why would a player pay 25K credits for a purple barrel when they can get a better barrel questing on Ilum? I'm not even going to go into the weapon stats, they are a lot more dissapointing.

 

 

Methinks you neglected the Superior versions of craftable items.. Did you compare a Green craftable to an ilium epic? or an epic craftable to the ilium epic?

[Renlotho]

The problem with your free market idea, as has been proved in other games, is that it's too easy to manipulate the economy. If I'm an artificer and I have enough money, every time someone undercuts me, I can buy that auction and re-list it at my price, and thus keep prices from going down.

 

Just put a limit on daily purchases. Nobody who is doing legitimate, non-resale, purchasing needs more than X purchases per day. You can buy mats in stacks of 99 just limit it to say 40 purchases a day. That number is arbitrary but I'm sure a fair one could be found. In game monopolists are kinda sad and should be prevented. I've never understood the mindset of folks making in game cartels. I guess folks want the worst aspects of real life in their games lol.

[Renlotho]

enjoy your market watch. lol - the competition will ALWAYS lead to lower prices. You just suggested that:: if you list Item X at 10k creds, and competition comes and lists it at 7K creds -> you would buy the 7K creds and list it at 10 therefore only making a 3k profit on it. You would have been better off cutting your price to the 7k competition.

 

You shafted yourself, the end user, and benefited your competition - A+ for Effort though.

 

 

 

I hear a lot of talk about how crafting is not useful? I am a synthweaving JC Sage and am constantly replacing my gear with stuff I have crafted. On top of that, I have crafted quite a few modable items (included a modable epic -- yes "mastercraft").

 

Crafting seems to be quite useful while leveling, and I cannot wait to see it [/Quote] Great point. Also people can make money by selling to monopolist. If monopolist's prices are prohibitive no one will buy and he will be forced to lower his prices or lose money buying out competition.

Edited January 2, 2012 by Renlotho

[bigheadbrandon]

Methinks you neglected the Superior versions of craftable items.. Did you compare a Green craftable to an ilium epic? or an epic craftable to the ilium epic?

 

he said artifact.. artifact is the purple mod

[quaesitor]

Yeah, the availability of gear and mods from vendors is what's wrong with crafting, honestly.

 

At my level right now, for 27k I can buy orange quality gloves with blue mods and strip the mods out for 3k. Then I can vendor the empty gloves back to the vendor for 5k.

 

Total time spent: 2 minutes.

Total credits spent: 6k per mod.

 

Try to beat that with crafting, and you just...can't.

 

Remove all Orange-quality vendors. Remove all mod vendors. Reduce the amount of items available from commendations. Remove starship upgrade vendors. Put all starship upgrades in the cybercrafting tree. Make RE produce schematics faster.

[Liathan]

enjoy your market watch. lol - the competition will ALWAYS lead to lower prices. You just suggested that:: if you list Item X at 10k creds, and competition comes and lists it at 7K creds -> you would buy the 7K creds and list it at 10 therefore only making a 3k profit on it. You would have been better off cutting your price to the 7k competition.

 

You shafted yourself, the end user, and benefited your competition - A+ for Effort though.

 

 

 

I hear a lot of talk about how crafting is not useful? I am a synthweaving JC Sage and am constantly replacing my gear with stuff I have crafted. On top of that, I have crafted quite a few modable items (included a modable epic -- yes "mastercraft").

 

Crafting seems to be quite useful while leveling, and I cannot wait to see it end game

 

Competition only leads to a lower price if someone is not able to control the market. It's been done in WoW and other games, eventually someone ends up controlling the market and it's what they enjoy doing. I've gone to the AH many a time and seen 50 listing of the same item at the same price from the same person and those are the only listings.

 

Lets say I list 5 items for 10k each and someone lists 3 items for 7k each. I buy their 3 items for 21k, then I turn around and make a 9k profit on their 3 items plus protect the 50k in profits I get from my 5 other items. This isn't something I find fun or enjoyable, but their are plenty of people who do.