We plan to give all crafting and gathering professions additional and ongoing attention, yes.

 

It's important to remember that we launched not a month ago - we're in for the long haul. Crafting is an important part of the game and we have plans for it

I sure hope so because its nothing but a joke right now.

We plan to give all crafting and gathering professions additional and ongoing attention, yes.

 

It's important to remember that we launched not a month ago - we're in for the long haul. Crafting is an important part of the game and we have plans for it

You may have only launched a month ago, but some of your customers 30 days ends in less than a week. Changes like these will only push people away, not make them stay.

What bugs me isn't so much the particulars of this or any nerf; it's the fact that this is the 3rd major nerf/reduction in the first billing cycle. It's obvious that they are focused on ho-hum MMO things like endgame balance and PvP over everything else.

I'm not sure if there's a disconnect between marketing and the devs, but I was sold on a story based game from Bioware. This was supposed to be KOTOR: Origins and the design objectives were so ambitious that it required a persistent world and numerous MMO conventions to support them. The sort of things I want to see on the Dev Tracker are:

"We just hired Patrick Stewart. We haven't figured out why yet, but awesome right?"

"Chat bubbles are in with the next patch. Start thinking of your best open world sight gags."

"We've just added the 9 seconds of dialogue required to make Kaliyo a same sex romance option for female cyper nine."

"The Jedi writers just had the best idea for the next story act. I don't want to spoil anything, but can anyone say wire-fu?"

Instead we get banal posts talking about magic spreadsheets and PvP resolution time discrepancies.

But it still stands that they can be bought from Biochems. It's similar to the pots in WoW that could only be bought from alchemists. Doesn't make them overpowered, just means you have to actually go to another player to buy your raid consumables, instead of just buying everything from a vendor.

That is fine for stuff like stims. Since they last 2 hours anyway.

But it is not fine for adrenals. With biochem you can use an adrenal every 3 minutes (They share a cooldown, right? Or can you use +power, then +crit, then +alacrity, then accuracy in the same 3 minutes? If yes you can multiply the numbers below by 3.). You won't be fighting all the time, of course, so lets say you use it every 5 minutes on average.

This means you would use 12 every hour. Adrenals use about the same materials as stims - cheapest I have seen them on my server was 6k. In other words, you would pay 72k. And its not like that prices would drop, demand for them would skyrocket and then some if people would try to buy them in such amounts.

So it is for you perfectly okay than as non-biochem you would have to farm as absolute minimum 70k for per 1 hour session to "emulate" the effect you get from biochem?

/edit: Fixed some derp math mistakes.

Hello all,

 

Quick addendum to Georg's post.

 

PvP overcharge consumable was meant to share a cooldown with adrenals and not stack with the power ups you can run over to pick up in Warzone maps. So players stacking all three were reaching combat numbers higher than intended, which is why we will be changing that in 1.1.

 

Additionally, we will continue to monitor and tune crafting professions to ensure they are in line with combat targets and toward the goal of keeping them viable in end game but not mandatory for participation. Currently there are several Armormech, Armstech, Synthweaving and Artifice recipes that can be found in end game content. We will be adding more in future updates.

 

-Gabe

Thank you for clarifying.

To be honest, I really don't like that design idea when you combine it with reusable consumables. Just given how important burst is in PvP, other professions really get shafted because not only do they need to buy consumables in order to compete (on my server, the high end stuff goes for a ridiculous fortune), but they have to buy them from the same people who DON'T have to buy them, or even make them once they have their reusables. It's like double dipping in one profession perk.

I would honestly give some consideration to the reusables being banned in Warzone play or on Ilum. They already have the best profession hands down in PvE, even after the nerfs. They don't need it in PvP as well. Heck, no other profession even touches PvP with a 10 foot pole.

If they want to use consumables in PvP, let them use the same ones we do. They still get to make them at cost while we have to buy them at a profit to the maker. That's enough of an edge.

Thank you for clarifying.

 

To be honest, I really don't like that design idea when you combine it with reusable consumables. Just given how important burst is in PvP, other professions really get shafted because not only do they need to buy consumables in order to compete (on my server, the high end stuff goes for a ridiculous fortune), but they have to buy them from the same people who DON'T have to buy them, or even make them once they have their reusables. It's like double dipping in one profession perk.

 

I would honestly give some consideration to the reusables being banned in Warzone play or on Ilum. They already have the best profession hands down in PvE, even after the nerfs. They don't need it in PvP as well. Heck, no other profession even touches PvP with a 10 foot pole.

 

If they want to use consumables in PvP, let them use the same ones we do. They still get to make them at cost while we have to buy them at a profit to the maker. That's enough of an edge.

I agree reusable consumables have no place in pvp. It just makes the profession mandatory for everyone who wants to pvp seriously. I dont find it fun to abuse consumables but I do it because its easy to do and gives a huge advantage. Its just terrible design.

As a biochemist, I wholeheartedly agree on the adrenals cost for non-biochems.

It's ridiculous to the point of being unfeasible for non-biochemists to use adrenals. I didn't even buy the recipes from the trainer.

A single craft of adrenals should produce 5 items with 7 to 10 being the critical value. Alternatively, make adrenals have an hour duration after their first usage, with infinite re-use in that hour (subject to cooldowns).

If this doesn't happen every raider and serious pvp'er will be a biochemist if they want to be competitive.

The medpac thing was NOT the problem. You nerfed the wrong thing. Medpac OP-ness will scale out of the game as health and damage values increase. Adrenal OP-ness will not.

EDITL oh and buff other professions. As long as I can get stats or abilities via Bio/Cyber that I can't get any other way, and other professions don't have this, then they're worthless.

Another way of fixing this problem would be to make the purple crafted items bind on equip and allow players to sell them on the ah and hand them out to their guildys. also making it so that the items are unusable if you switch to a different crafting is ridiculous, by allowing people to change crafting it allows them to find an additional time sink leveling a new crafting set and having to learn all of the new schematics removing that ability because your already crafted items will no longer work is disappointing.

A friend of mine pointed this thread out to me and said but wow does this with their crafting, my only response is that with everything this game currently has going for it why copy something like wow when there is a better way of doing it. This fix will only limit the crafting system and remove another time sink and money sink that this game has, if these items only work for biochem users then biochem will still be a requirement because you cant use them at all unless your bioche. This does not fix the problem, in fact it doesnt do anything to fix the problem at all.

Equal + free = better

 

You are the exception that proves the rule. There will always be a handful of people that prefer to make their own gear instead of buying it, but that doesn't change the fact that the wide majority have realized the worthlessness of crafting when laid beside free gear.

Except it is not equal, as mentioned already. The amount of stuff you can get from commendations is worse in selection. You being able to make your optimal setup is not possible for most, if not all specs.

That is a fact.

Also, it is impossible to outfit yourself fully with commendation gear only. If I invest all the commendations from a planet I can fully upgrade at most 3 items.

That it is also a fact.

And crafting can also make purple gear at all level stages while with commendations you get only blue gear. So you can create superior gear with crafting even if you ignore the obvious selection limitations with commendation gear.

This ... (wait for it) ... is also a fact.

That crafting while leveling is worthless, now that is no fact. Claiming that is a quite simply a lie.

Mind, at max level I would agree that (non-biochem) crafting is pointless.

and something this obvious didn't come up during BETA?!?!?

pathetic........

In other words, Bioware are letting a small number of hardcore dictate the game's design.

 

kthxbai.

Yes. Patching by forum isn't really what I had in mind for this.

We'll see how it goes. This is strike two. If this becomes the 'carefully though out' method for product development, I'm finding something else.

The biggest problem with those schematics is that the schematic itself is BOP and the item it crafts is usually BOP as well.

 

Can you make the items the schematics produce not BOP? Locking in each crafting profession makes it hard for any player driven economy. At the moment there are only a few categories of items that are bought from players.

Yeah, problem is, you can't have a player-driven economy when crafting isn't required or even desired. Since one of Bioware's design requirements is to make crafting optional, you will never have a crafting economy. What you CAN do though is make crafting compelling on a personal level, which is what WoW and some of the other games have done by putting in the BoP items you're talking about.

If you want a player driven economy, you need to set the game up more like Eve, where the ability to produce an item is restricted, thereby making crafting worthwhile. In a game where schematics are plentiful, the act of producing is worthless, since production actually converts materials from a generic state of worth to a more specific state of less worth.

Rift tried a middling system of this initially by putting in crafting tokens. It put an artificial restriction on production for the initial period of the game, but cyclically it became worthless during large periods as people became able to produce anything until new things showed up. At the end though, BoPs were the only bonus to a crafting profession.

The reason Bio is currently considered useful is primarily because the item is BoP. If it wasn't, people would complain intially because people would be selling a bunch, but in the end everyone would have a buddy with Bio who would produce all their needs for cost, and the profession would go back to being anything but.

TLDR: Either restrict schematics permanently or put in BoPs that are better than anything else for that slot, else crafting is not compelling and is a huge cash sink. There is no middle ground.

Bioware SHOULD know this, but clearly don't, because their design requirements are contradictory. Until they actually get around to resolving their requirement problems, crafting in this game will always be a black mark against it.

People were already noticing this in beta, so I'm not sure how it was left alone for so long. The problem isn't the strength of the items. It's the fact that Biochem and Cybertech are the only skills that provide any BoP bonuses. Even if nerfed, those crew skills still have items that are not available without the crew skill. The same isn't true of the other crafting skills.

There are two possible solutions: add BoP bonuses to the other skills to make them competitive, or completely get rid of the BoP bonuses to Biochem and Cybertech. A nerf will only work if it's enough to render the items useless, in which case the items may as well be removed anyway. Personally, I favor adding bonuses, not removing them. I think that would make everyone happy.

TL;DR: Fancy words for ‘we nerfed BioChem and Cybertech endgame products’ because they were so good that players started considering them mandatory. Your choice of profession is not supposed to be the deciding factor for participation and success in endgame content. We still believe that BioChem and Cybertech are very worthwhile Crew Skills, especially considering the significant fortune players with these professions are able to realize on the GTN... they are however no longer the ‘golden ticket’ into endgame content.

Your emphasis here is totally wrong imo.

Yes, Cybertech and Biochem are still worthwhile. They are the only two professions that are in fact, even after these nerfs. Armourmech doesn *nothing* for my character. I can make gear for peoples companions. Yay. Endgame impact? There are some craftables I can make which are worse than easymode raid drops, and require a purple crafting consumable. Endgame impct? Still zero.

Armstech, Armourmech and probably Synthweaving/Archeology all need another look imo. If you believe Biochem should have infinite consumables then where is the equivalent for the other professions?

I am confused, our grenades which at most probably get used 3 times a warzone are over powered?

I mean.

wut?

As far as I know there were no multiple page threads on these forums calling for Cybertech to be nerfed. I just finished leveling it to 400 and I am a bit disappointed.

• Not only did they do nothing about increasing the cool down on the bio chem stims, but they still didn't address the problem on Cybertech grenades having a 5 Min CD. How exactly did these grenades negatively affect PVE gameplay?
   
  
• If the problem with Cybertech Grenades was that the buffs and stims were making them too powerful how about making it so the nades didn't get a damage increase from those items?
   
  
• Problem solved. PVP damage is now normalized and PVE is left unchanged.
   
  
• This update does nothing to deter guilds from insisting that people go Biochem.
   
  
• Cybertech does not craft anything that can best bested by the commendation vendors. So the reusable grenades were the sole saving grace to this profession.
   
  
• How about throwing us a bone and let us craft speeders that we can sell to players?
  

Yeah, problem is, you can't have a player-driven economy when crafting isn't required or even desired. Since one of Bioware's design requirements is to make crafting optional, you will never have a crafting economy. What you CAN do though is make crafting compelling on a personal level, which is what WoW and some of the other games have done by putting in the BoP items you're talking about.

 

If you want a player driven economy, you need to set the game up more like Eve, where the ability to produce an item is restricted, thereby making crafting worthwhile. In a game where schematics are plentiful, the act of producing is worthless, since production actually converts materials from a generic state of worth to a more specific state of less worth.

 

Rift tried a middling system of this initially by putting in crafting tokens. It put an artificial restriction on production for the initial period of the game, but cyclically it became worthless during large periods as people became able to produce anything until new things showed up. At the end though, BoPs were the only bonus to a crafting profession.

 

The reason Bio is currently considered useful is primarily because the item is BoP. If it wasn't, people would complain intially because people would be selling a bunch, but in the end everyone would have a buddy with Bio who would produce all their needs for cost, and the profession would go back to being anything but.

 

TLDR: Either restrict schematics permanently or put in BoPs that are better than anything else for that slot, else crafting is not compelling and is a huge cash sink. There is no middle ground.

 

Bioware SHOULD know this, but clearly don't, because their design requirements are contradictory. Until they actually get around to resolving their requirement problems, crafting in this game will always be a black mark against it.

This!

Bioware's crafting system and how they go about fixing it is really frightening. What kind of game design is this? Trial & Error?

Adjustments like these should have been done during beta. Doing it now in the live game just annoys many players and makes everything a gamble. Should I invest time in this crew skill, in this class or will it be changed soon.

Sure MMO players are used to tweaks but so many hefty nerfs right at start (slicing, biochem, cybertech) makes me think crafting was added too late in development, or as an afterthought. Crafting isn't something hardcore any more - it has become quite interesting for most players to meddle with and therefore should have had a much higher priority - really a shame.

I feel very insecure of what lies ahead already, which puts me in a passive, reluctant state. I start having second thoughts about starting my game client: what's the next nerf? Will it hit my crew skill, one of my class's abilities? Will all the long hours I invested in a feature have been spent in vain?

No good thoughts to have in a game......

Turns out Georg really wasn't as good a game designer as he thought himself to be before we actually got our hands on his work.

The lack of attention to detail has been pretty bad in some areas e.g. smuggler flash grenade cooldown.

I have an idea, how about you guys bang your heads together and figure out how to make the other 4 crew skills better then absolute garbage before you nerf the viable ones.

how does that sound?

Or maybe just make the rakata potions rewards from the illum vendor like everything else.

Nerf, nerf, nerf....

A crafter with 400 in skill has an advantage. It's normal. As some people had said here, the problem isn't Biochem or Cyber. The problem is the others useless skills.

It's normal that a biochem crafter had better thinks than other people. But a armorcrater could have advantage too. It's not difficult, some buff to use on is own armor (as the runes in Rift) (like +30 Aim on is helmet with a tempory buff who works as a occular mod for backround, or +1 or 2% of absorb withan armor reinforcement).

You could do that for all type of craft, bonus of dmg on weapons for weaponcrafters, ....

So all craft will have specifies, and utilities.

But nerf? it's just a tempory solution to evade a problem.

I am confused, our grenades which at most probably get used 3 times a warzone are over powered?

 

I mean.

 

wut?

I'm always suspicious when I see abilities with long CDs. They are usually overpowered and never really become part of a skill rotation. I rarely use those kinds of skills at all because I always think I might need it "later". Something I rarely use is dead weight: uses up a hot key slot and I tend to forget about them.

Why not reduce their effect and lower the CD instead?

I mean what's the use of a grenade I can use every 5 minutes?!?!? Apparently (I'm not at 50 yet) people were getting a guaranteed kill every 5 minutes? This is outrageous!

Come on it's not that hard. Put grenades on a 90 sec timer and reduce their dmg output so it's in line with med packs, which are also on a 90 sec timer (biochem medpacks, which everyone will be using soon because they still have to roll biochem to be competitive...).

I wanted to explain why it was necessary.

No matter what I think of the result that the devs come up with for any issue, this is the most important part of the process for me. THANK YOU!

Sadly I think people didn't see this coming.

All those cries to make the other crew skills better because Biochem out shown them all, combined with "Welp my guild requires Biochem 400 good job BW" and you didn't think we where going to get this outcome?

In the short term it is always easier to push one or two skills down then push 5 up. What happens in the long term is another story. Of course the problem here is two fold, one is BoP recipes to "reward dedicated crafters" a cry from the gaming community, a thing people complaining about this move still support, and the fact that we can't dare let crafters keep up with raid progression, otherwise people need not raid for loots.

Crafting skills in games with raid progression and BoP items will always suffer and only those skills that make consumables will ever be viable at end game.

Want to fix other crew skills, give everyone high end consumables and remove BoP. Won't happen, but so be it.

But we all knew this was coming the second people started the clamor. This is because the current raid progression model is not compatible with a healthy crafting model.

Eve works cause there are no raid drops and nothing BoPs. <Not even PLEX.>

In other words, Bioware are letting a small number of hardcore dictate the game's design.

 

kthxbai.

In other words, you've got it backwards, and okaywewontmissyou.