Tionese grade recipes mostly are BOP/BOP for the recipe and output. Columi is mostly BOP/BOE. This leaves a soloist or small group crafter out in the cold for being able to make actually useful gear. What's more a lower level implant/belt/bracer/earpiece is BOP where the higher grade columi is BOE. How does this make any sense at all.

In ops we regularly get recipe drops for crew skills not present in the group, and yet the loot drop for set pieces is locked so someone in the group could use the drop. Why the disparity? Then these recipes are bop so they are vender trash. That last bit really pisses me off so often (if I only brought my other alt). It makes no sense.

For daily coms or blackhole coms, artificers (crystals) and biochems (stims and adrenals) can buy the 56 grade recipes. Why on earth is that? Where are the synthweave, armormech , rest of the artifice, armstech, and cybertech recipes? It makes no sense.

Tionese grade gear is thrown at you left right and center in flashpoints now, but it is superior to the purchasable crew skills products in just about every way. 8 daily coms will better the hilts plates or barrels from crew skills, please consider the effort vs reward here, it makes no sense.

Any of the rare random drop recipes take ingredients from the flashpoints or ops to make, why bother to make them when the gear that drops in the flashpoints and operations is better? It makes no sense.

The whole end game crafting system seems very haphazard and thrown together. We really need someone at Bioware to grab a hold of this system and make is coherent.

I nominate this system as a better legal defense than the Chewbacca defense, as it makes even less sense.

Good points, let me add a few.

First, did Bioware want the crafting system to get used? I seem to remember a lot of advertisement of the wonderful crew skill system once upon a time. Gear out your companions, gain affection with them, send them out to gather and craft, it will be fun. While it is fairly enjoyable during leveling, the fun sort of drops off at endgame. You can spend considerable time and/or credits gathering huge piles of materials, then reverse engineer like mad in the hopes that you will get a recipe unlock that you actually want. You can spend hours and hours leveling your crafting skills, all sorts of time investment that is fairly monotonous after the first few days. Then maybe, if you've been very diligent and lucky with the RNG, you can craft something that is almost as good as what you can buy for doing a few hardmode flashpoints. Why are we crafting in this game again?

Second, what is the point of the Legacy system? Where am I going with this? I'll tell you. As far as I can guess, the Legacy system is meant to reward people leveling alts and seeing the storylines and companion arcs for all of the classes. Now, if a person levels a bunch of alts, are they going to want to raid with every one of them? Maybe some will. I don't. I have one or two alts that I raid with, the rest I really don't want to go through all of that again for. But I craft with all of my alts, and manage to get them into some semblance of crafted endgame gear between all of the collective crafting. Of course, I don't really craft much of anything for my raiding characters. Why? Because I got better gear for them after maybe half a dozen ops. To get to the point then, I would think that crafting would work better for gearing multiple alts than raiding and re-raiding. So if Bioware wants us to have multiple alts, see the Legacy system, why on earth do they make crafting so much less rewarding than raiding? I'm not saying that crafters should be able to craft up rakata or black hole gear, but can we at least get to columi level? Hell, even tionese level for things like armor plates, mods, and enhancements?

Finally, what is the point of companions in the game? Certainly the Legacy system rewards would imply that Bioware wants us to get to maximum affection with our companions, and see their various story arcs. But if endgame is all about group content and PvP, then are companions supposed to be discarded at endgame? After all of that investment? What is a fully realized companion good for? Well, crafting maybe. But oh, right, crafting output is virtually useless next to group content rewards at endgame. So long compies, it was fun, now go wait on the ship until the next content update. Maybe I'll bring you out to do dailies if I need credits... for materials... to try another 20 attempts to unlock that one recipe again.

Im sorry to rant and rage but,

This is my first forum post. I came on here to complain about how unbalanced the lvl 50 craft system is, and no doubt, within 30 seconds i find this post, commenting on the exact problem i have.

I was planning on outfitting all of my chars with crafted rakata bracers/and waist armor, until now, i find out they are BOP.(After i wasted a biometric crystal alloy on one.) Synthweavings only usefulness is making augment slots. My other account has artifice. Artifice is totally useless. It has nothing to do with BOP/BOE; there is nothing rare, or special that can be crafted anymore with this skill. The crystal market is flooded.

The reason i find this to be unbalanced is because of Biochem. Biochem can craft OP medkits and stims, unbound columni implants, and reusable non consumables. $$$$$$$$$$ I go on the GTN to get a Exotech might stim, and the cheapest one is 20,000 credits, and thats if i buy them in a pack of 5. A exceptional medpack is 1,500 and a exotech medpack is 20,000. The difference is slight but noticable. How did prices become that inflated?

This is a great game, very balanced for the most part, im just very frustrated over this BOP/BOE deal. It needs work. My suggestions:

1. If Bioware doesn't want people selling the rakata gear, at least make them Bound to legacy so all of my legacy can benefit from the skill.

2. Create a vendor that sells lvl 50 stims/medkits/adrenals.

3. Add some new artifice schematics. Items that cannot be obtained throughout the game. Once i hit lvl 50 all of the hilts, enhancements, and crystals i make will be trash since better gear is so easily obtainable.

And btw, im sure if you asked a bioware employee about the crafting system, he would plead the chewbacca defense.

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BW needs to make craft gear atleast bound to legacy, not BOP. if they dont want to us selling stuff on GTN, atleast alow us to gear up our alts and comps

If they were worried about tio gear getting out there they should not be throwing it at you in the hard mode flash points as they have done since 1.3 hit. Now the op recipe drops, if doing a crew skill check was too hard, then how about making them BTL and rakata crafted gear BTL. Seriously if they want people to actually use materials to make Tio grade implants belts bracers and earpeices they need to be BOE, more so for the non tioneese/columi set gear.

The posts here are top notch and should be stickied for people to read as they scratch their heads and wonder why a much anticipated game that takes place in the SW universe tanked and faded away. Although just the tip of the iceberg they do touch on a few important things.

To point, my wife and I love the companion system and are dedicated crafters. Even though the crafting system needs much improvement, it does have value and is worth pursueing for characters until a short period after they reach cap. Then the game changes. It whole heartly embraces the WOW formula of raid or die, which ironically the devs at Blizzard are finally starting to realize is flawed and broken and actually excludes the majority of their potential customers. So the soloist / small group player is left with no option but to level alts knowing that ultimately they will end up being shelved and not played and second rate in every aspect becaues there is no way for them to progress. They know that the characters that they have spent time and effort to level will hit the progression wall and have nothing to do. So bye companions, I loved you all. And bye crafting, it was fun when it had some value. Sorry Charlie, but the game is over for you at 50.

The raider and larger group players will throw away their companions (to me the best part of the game) after following their stories and becoming involved with them and get on the flashpoint / raid treadmill. As noted, crafting becomes useless. So they get to run flashpoints over and over to get mats to craft gear that they either can't use or has no value to them and that most players (the soloists who do not have the raid gear) can't afford to buy.

The BOP/BOE mess is just a small part of reality that is swtor which is not close to what was pitched to the unwashed masses of MMO gamers. I, for one, do not see things changing.

The posts here are top notch and should be stickied for people to read as they scratch their heads and wonder why a much anticipated game that takes place in the SW universe tanked and faded away. Although just the tip of the iceberg they do touch on a few important things.

 

To point, my wife and I love the companion system and are dedicated crafters. Even though the crafting system needs much improvement, it does have value and is worth pursueing for characters until a short period after they reach cap. Then the game changes. It whole heartly embraces the WOW formula of raid or die, which ironically the devs at Blizzard are finally starting to realize is flawed and broken and actually excludes the majority of their potential customers. So the soloist / small group player is left with no option but to level alts knowing that ultimately they will end up being shelved and not played and second rate in every aspect becaues there is no way for them to progress. They know that the characters that they have spent time and effort to level will hit the progression wall and have nothing to do. So bye companions, I loved you all. And bye crafting, it was fun when it had some value. Sorry Charlie, but the game is over for you at 50.

 

The raider and larger group players will throw away their companions (to me the best part of the game) after following their stories and becoming involved with them and get on the flashpoint / raid treadmill. As noted, crafting becomes useless. So they get to run flashpoints over and over to get mats to craft gear that they either can't use or has no value to them and that most players (the soloists who do not have the raid gear) can't afford to buy.

 

The BOP/BOE mess is just a small part of reality that is swtor which is not close to what was pitched to the unwashed masses of MMO gamers. I, for one, do not see things changing.

To give you some hope for change, for daily coms you can now buy exotech grade adrinals and exo grade saber crystal recipes from the daily quest (mostly solo) vender. They also de-BOP the raid grade crafting mats in 1.2. That is a positive change imo in 1.2 and 1.3. They however have only done right by one and a half of the crew skills.

I certainly hope they put more thought into a coherent crew skill plan for the announced move of the level cap. While I do not expect to have top teir op grade gear, the mid grade flash point gear should be accessible by more means than daily running hard mode flash points on every alt, in this legacy alt driven game.

To give you some hope for change, for daily coms you can now buy exotech grade adrinals and exo grade saber crystal recipes from the daily quest (mostly solo) vender. They also de-BOP the raid grade crafting mats in 1.2. That is a positive change imo in 1.2 and 1.3. They however have only done right by one and a half of the crew skills.

 

I certainly hope they put more thought into a coherent crew skill plan for the announced move of the level cap. While I do not expect to have top teir op grade gear, the mid grade flash point gear should be accessible by more means than daily running hard mode flash points on every alt, in this legacy alt driven game.

Thank you, good to know and I wil take a look.

My wife and I have been leveling alts to see an entirely new story line over the last few weeks and have not run dailies over that time. The last I looked the daily vendors had no recipies.

Although we play as a team and interact with other players as much as we can, we probably would be considered soloists and have missed having anything to do on or any way to progress our mains. I think that like many many players, I did the dungeon and raid thing in WOW and will never go back to it again (just me and no criticism of raiding intended).

So thanks again for your nice response to my post.

Thank you, good to know and I wil take a look.

 

My wife and I have been leveling alts to see an entirely new story line over the last few weeks and have not run dailies over that time. The last I looked the daily vendors had no recipies.

 

Although we play as a team and interact with other players as much as we can, we probably would be considered soloists and have missed having anything to do on or any way to progress our mains. I think that like many many players, I did the dungeon and raid thing in WOW and will never go back to it again (just me and no criticism of raiding intended).

 

So thanks again for your nice response to my post.

You are quite welcome, my wife and I also like crafting and alt-ing. We consider ourselves duo'ist rather than solo'ists. Sounds like we have a lot in common, did the raid thing in swg (what little there was), lotro, rift, and was never happy with that style gameplay. IF they were to put more recipes/mats on the daily/BH venders then I would be a very happy camper. The raiders would still have better gear, but I would not be stuck out at 50% the raiders stats when new content comes out.

The 50% is just rediculous, and that is grade 49 versus grade 61, the best a solo'ist can craft vs the best a raider can get. How do they plan to balance content roll outs, either it will be way too tough for casuals, altaholics and crew skill players, or way too easy for raiders. MMOs are about balance, they need some here.

I think the failure to get crafting right at end game is related to the credit sink. If we had a working crafting system that encouraged crafters and raiders to trade mats/gear via GTN it would help reduce the amount of surplus credits in the system. SWG had this nailed down and SWTOR should have copied that system. I would have loved to create a craft only toon that could be a viable participant in the end game (no pew pew).

Encouraging players to recycle credits is better than having tons of credit sources(dailies) and credit sinks(mods, legacy). Sources and sinks are still needed to keep the system running but they could become marginal. Honestly, if they instituted a commendation exchange system where players could trade / sell / buy commendations that would help also. Credits should be the universal modicum of exchange ... you know like in a real economy.

The WoW mentality of Raiders Uber Alles must die pronto!