It seems to me with the crew missions in Diplo, Underworld, Treasure Hunting and so on being bugged (fabric and gift missions no metals, med supplies etc) combined with the GTN issues and other thing that the upcoming free-to-play (aka pay to win) has put crafting on the endangered list.

Whats up?

Will prototype and better gear cut into the future cash store sales that much? Really?

I even didn't know about the bugs you're saying, but the chances of finding a schematic through reverse engineering, have also dropped a lot, since the update 1.4. I even stopped crafting for the moment and only send my comps out for compagnion gifts, cause it seems, that's the only thing they are good for still. The amount of creds, time and patience, you have to go through, for learning new schematics, that aren't even usefull anymore after level 50, makes crafting a bit useless imo, except for when you're leveling your character.

It's sucking the fun out of crafting

I even didn't know about the bugs you're saying, but the chances of finding a schematic through reverse engineering, have also dropped a lot, since the update 1.4. I even stopped crafting for the moment and only send my comps out for compagnion gifts, cause it seems, that's the only thing they are good for still. The amount of creds, time and patience, you have to go through, for learning new schematics, that aren't even usefull anymore after level 50, makes crafting a bit useless imo, except for when you're leveling your character.

It's sucking the fun out of crafting

For instance check out Underworld Trading mission list, I've had times when there are no underworld metals missions at all, just fabrics and crew gifts. There is a work around where you assign all your crew to the junk missions within a level list, force a load screen, then look for a useful mission, cancel current crew missions missions to take the new one. Not only is this a pain but doesn't always work.

Price of crafting materials only obtainable through crew missions has skyrocketed on the GTN. Hmmm, wonder if those are also going to be available in the new pay to win cash store

As to the reverse engineering now that you mention it it does seem like its taking quite a few more RE's to get a schematic ... guess that would also work towards killing off crafting prototype and greater items.

As reported in this bug update, this is a known bug.

The bug listed t here is the level 6 crew missions returning less materials than intended, not the lack of mission types withing categories.

The bug listed t here is the level 6 crew missions returning less materials than intended, not the lack of mission types withing categories.

The lack of mission types/within categories has been around since day 1. The workaround used in the past has been to cause an instance load. ie: leave ship, look at available, enter ship, look at list. That type of change can cause a reload of missions and get a change. It doesn't always work, but if you have enough time you can usually get what you want even if it isnt the severity (moderate/rich etc) you want.

The bug listed t here is the level 6 crew missions returning less materials than intended, not the lack of mission types withing categories.

That's all that's changed recently, the lack of reasonable distribution of mission types, for some definition of reasonable, has been going on since beta. I haven't noticed any real changes in the distribution of the mission types in the 1.4 patch.

The reason that the artifact-grade mat prices has gone up on the GTN is because of that bug. The most consistent source of those mats is suddenly returning half as much of those mats as it used to. Supply has gone down without the demand going down, so the price goes up.

I'm bringing this back from the dead for 2 reasons.

1) The CTD bug has made using the relog workaround suicidal in terms of game time longevity

2) I just had a runthough with a toon that has Investigation and Underworld Trading, level 400 in both, all missions all levels both skills were gifts and lockbox (Investigation) or Gift and fabric (UT) ... not a single compound or metal mission of any kind in any level.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?