This is pointless. I just maxed out Artifice. I could buy the 168 schematics from start (at 600) and thats all. So from 600 - 700 i got nothing, well one new dye modul and som bonded attachments that i never even liked before the expansion.

I know that you can craft some schematics to get the new amplifiers and someone mentoined 176 gear. But there where No 176 hilt schematics at the Artifice vendor, so i guess you get them from deconstructing 168?

I agree that the crafting system with all the materials needed is BS. But also the disapointment, standing infront of the Artifice vendor, hitting 700, clicking the vendor and then empty window. Should there not be some kind of end reward when maxing out any type of progression.

The crafting in SWTOR was never good. First of all they need a smartphone app for this. I know people are gonna say. This will not work. YES IT WILL. Just like we can add cartel coins to our Account from the website. The only problem is inventory and online state of your character. So make it simple. When you open the app, you login > choose server > select character name > and then companion crafting window and material window pops up. Here you manage everything and it’ts running by it self like a small game on it’s own (your character will not be online). All final items go into the renown stash or something similar. You will be able to deposit crrdits to the app just like you do with your legacy bank. Ofc you will not be able to gain any influence on your companions while sending them on missions from your phone but who cares.

Second thing that needs to be changed is item value. Either you can craft gear like you do now but then it needs to be High end gear otherwise it’s pointless. Or split things up and remove all the armorings, mods and enhancements and focus on augments and these new Amplifiers for crafting. The gamerule for gearing could be...

Armoring, mods, enhancements = vendor purchase

barrels, hilts, relics = loot (Flashpoints, operation etc)

Augments, implants, earpiece = crafting

then it would be a valid market for crafters to sell things they make.

First, there's no developer left from the beginning that understands this engine. Second, none of them play the game. Third, they are brutally short staffed and under budget. There's nobody there that can link the game to an app (I really want this to be child psychology, but I don't think it is).

And finally EA is probably breathing down their necks to max profits will little production. Seriously, I am surprised they didn't add a new monthly subscription to crafting.

If I didn't care, I wouldn't be here.

I have a completely opposite view on this, and think this is a move in the right direction.

I post very rarely, and there was significant effort into people voicing their opinion, so I did as well.

First, my view on all aspects of a game is you do not get good if you do not put a significant amount of effort into it, and secondly that if you do you are somewhat rewarded for it.

Until 6.0 crafting, like it is in many (probably nearly all) MMOs was an afterthought, a hobby, a pastime, if you want an apt comparison, its like fishing in LOTRO. Yes its there, but it could be done by anyone, and as such had little to reward you if you wanted to be really good in it.

Materials could be gathered just as you did other stuff, were plentiful, and as such even if you couldn't be bothered doing it yourself, they were so cheap you could just buy them. Crafting itself was extremely easy, and research was a given (60% research rates anyone?).

So, it made no sense for anyone to say, hey, my focus in this game is CRAFTING. It was pointless. It was like saying, hey focus in this game is standing on fleet and trolling, it was about as easy.

So, crafting, in general, for me is fun, and I like to tool my play experience around it. I like making things (in real life too). I like to invest time into a set goal, which is NOT easy, and achieveing it. So crafting in 6.0 is exactly that. Far from perfect but a huge step in the right direction.

There are 3 steps for me in the process.

Gathering base materials is still extremely easy. However the sheer amount of materials makes this non trivial - and as the there are only 2 node sources, Onderon and Meksha, both heavily populated, having multiple alts on gathering missions is necessary. Also, nearly nothing is now made with just base resources, and the "special" resources require missions. So, you need multiple alts, with max skills and invest time (no personal skill necessary) to cycle them regularly to continue.

Now, you need to get the extra material not available through the wrold or missions. 2 main sources, PVE and PVP (both do pretty well for me). So if you want to craft, you need to play the game. Amazing isn't it? A crafter can't just stay in her/his stronghold. You need to do FPs, Ops and WZs to get the materials you need to craft. As a corolary, you will achieve your conquest goals pretty easily (it takes me around 2 hours on average now to achieve personal conquest goals on my PvE characters and 2:30 on PvP, depending on ranked WZ pops. Could be slightly higher if you do unranked.)

Now, the third part (my favourite) you actually craft. Basic stuff is the same as always. Just more mats needed, and the result is useless. But the new crafting system doesn't care about the base. You have multiple levels of research, which means that the people who bother to invest time will be rewarded.

5% research chance for augments and 10% for stims/adrenals (basically the only items which you can't get anywhere other than crafting, since the gear level curve is so fast, crafting will not compete) is difiicult, since you need a fair amount of time invested to gather the mats, and the most important one, the matrixes, you have a max of 4/6/8 (depending on conuest target) you can get per character per week. So, actually getting to the point where you have the ability to craft these should give you some sense of achievement (unlike old crafting which did absolutely nothing since anyone could craft anything). Actually crafting them at this stage of the expansion is both (for me) game rewarding, and if you care nothing for that, at least its credit rewarding.

It should be said that legendary augments, top level stims etc are not necessary, You can play the game perfectly well, not being able to craft them and not having them on your gear/using them. You will get to 306 gear just the same, and hell, you can use old stims/augments (cheap and easy as dirt) and they still give you something.

Aside, personally I don't like that everyone can get top level gear doing just regular stuff, and would prefer you DON'T get top gear unless you do something exceptional (MM Ops or significant ranked WZ wins as an example).

But at least for crafting, if you want those extras you get to work for them a little bit.

That will likely last a month or two, and then the system will be changed so its easy, and I'll start to lose interest again, but at least its given me a good couple weeks right now.

Now, you need to get the extra material not available through the wrold or missions. 2 main sources, PVE and PVP (both do pretty well for me). So if you want to craft, you need to play the game. Amazing isn't it? A crafter can't just stay in her/his stronghold. You need to do FPs, Ops and WZs to get the materials you need to craft.

I'm glad you're enjoying 6.0 crafting. Frankly, I'm glad someone is. But I really don't agree with this part of what you said. Crafting is playing the game. We're not not playing when we're crafting... we're in the game, using its systems. Not only FPs, Ops, and WZs are "real" play - any way we choose to play is playing, and crafting is a core system that deserves its own style and method of advancement. We were told 6.0 is "play your way." That doesn't seem to apply to crafting if, even to make entry-level items, we need materials from specific content of other playstyles that don't appeal to all of us.

Needing over 10k materials to make a single item is absurdly grindy, vs. it being possible to get to full 306s in a day of spamming Red Reaper stealth. And, of course, while doing that flashpoint spam, people will gain a bunch of other stuff, rather than consuming resources, as crafting does. The idea that we're supposed to be grateful for a painfully grindy crafting process in the same update that enables quickly-obtained top-rated gear via a different playstyle is not intellectually consistent.

Moreover, 6.0 crafting should not be all about stats anyway. Many previous grades allowed us to make a wide range of purely-cosmetic items (you know, for people for whom "play your way" is pretty much Space Barbie), but 6.0 adds almost nothing by comparison. Why does everything have to be about stats? That's not "play your way" either.

First, there's no developer left from the beginning that understands this engine. Second, none of them play the game. Third, they are brutally short staffed and under budget. There's nobody there that can link the game to an app (I really want this to be child psychology, but I don't think it is).

 

And finally EA is probably breathing down their necks to max profits will little production. Seriously, I am surprised they didn't add a new monthly subscription to crafting.

 

If I didn't care, I wouldn't be here.

Well this is the frustration answer and i get you. Yes they are prob understaffed but if they just created a new material inventory, then they can create an app. People think that apps are rocket sience. If you combine the changes they made in 5.10.2 and 6.0 i would say that they have very good knowledge of how the engine works. To change these things they had to rewrite some of the underlying code. It’s easy to complain about things we don’t understand but in 2019 they have made changes that most people don’t think about. VFX Preview window, DYN changes and now the new material inventory window. All these things have been in game since launch so changing them must have been alot of work.

I have a completely opposite view on this, and think this is a move in the right direction.

I post very rarely, and there was significant effort into people voicing their opinion, so I did as well.

 

First, my view on all aspects of a game is you do not get good if you do not put a significant amount of effort into it, and secondly that if you do you are somewhat rewarded for it.

Until 6.0 crafting, like it is in many (probably nearly all) MMOs was an afterthought, a hobby, a pastime, if you want an apt comparison, its like fishing in LOTRO. Yes its there, but it could be done by anyone, and as such had little to reward you if you wanted to be really good in it.

Materials could be gathered just as you did other stuff, were plentiful, and as such even if you couldn't be bothered doing it yourself, they were so cheap you could just buy them. Crafting itself was extremely easy, and research was a given (60% research rates anyone?).

So, it made no sense for anyone to say, hey, my focus in this game is CRAFTING. It was pointless. It was like saying, hey focus in this game is standing on fleet and trolling, it was about as easy.

 

So, crafting, in general, for me is fun, and I like to tool my play experience around it. I like making things (in real life too). I like to invest time into a set goal, which is NOT easy, and achieveing it. So crafting in 6.0 is exactly that. Far from perfect but a huge step in the right direction.

There are 3 steps for me in the process.

Gathering base materials is still extremely easy. However the sheer amount of materials makes this non trivial - and as the there are only 2 node sources, Onderon and Meksha, both heavily populated, having multiple alts on gathering missions is necessary. Also, nearly nothing is now made with just base resources, and the "special" resources require missions. So, you need multiple alts, with max skills and invest time (no personal skill necessary) to cycle them regularly to continue.

Now, you need to get the extra material not available through the wrold or missions. 2 main sources, PVE and PVP (both do pretty well for me). So if you want to craft, you need to play the game. Amazing isn't it? A crafter can't just stay in her/his stronghold. You need to do FPs, Ops and WZs to get the materials you need to craft. As a corolary, you will achieve your conquest goals pretty easily (it takes me around 2 hours on average now to achieve personal conquest goals on my PvE characters and 2:30 on PvP, depending on ranked WZ pops. Could be slightly higher if you do unranked.)

Now, the third part (my favourite) you actually craft. Basic stuff is the same as always. Just more mats needed, and the result is useless. But the new crafting system doesn't care about the base. You have multiple levels of research, which means that the people who bother to invest time will be rewarded.

5% research chance for augments and 10% for stims/adrenals (basically the only items which you can't get anywhere other than crafting, since the gear level curve is so fast, crafting will not compete) is difiicult, since you need a fair amount of time invested to gather the mats, and the most important one, the matrixes, you have a max of 4/6/8 (depending on conuest target) you can get per character per week. So, actually getting to the point where you have the ability to craft these should give you some sense of achievement (unlike old crafting which did absolutely nothing since anyone could craft anything). Actually crafting them at this stage of the expansion is both (for me) game rewarding, and if you care nothing for that, at least its credit rewarding.

It should be said that legendary augments, top level stims etc are not necessary, You can play the game perfectly well, not being able to craft them and not having them on your gear/using them. You will get to 306 gear just the same, and hell, you can use old stims/augments (cheap and easy as dirt) and they still give you something.

Aside, personally I don't like that everyone can get top level gear doing just regular stuff, and would prefer you DON'T get top gear unless you do something exceptional (MM Ops or significant ranked WZ wins as an example).

But at least for crafting, if you want those extras you get to work for them a little bit.

That will likely last a month or two, and then the system will be changed so its easy, and I'll start to lose interest again, but at least its given me a good couple weeks right now.

None of what you said is accurate.

Only someone who wins the RE lottery and learns a schematic on the first couple of attempts would say the current system rewards level of skill or investment into crafting and the meta aspects of crafting such as companion influence, crafting achievements, and even the new amplifiers.

Also outside of the augments (the only ones available this expansion - not special mid-tier legendary ones tied to harder content) and some of the biochem items (depending on the content), the majority of items which can be crafted are junk - far inferior to the gear that can be picked up running vet Hammer Station.

Anyways, I'd accept many of the changes including higher materials requirements and added complexity IF I had agency, such as learning schematics from completing more challenging content or having RE chance affected by companion influence or increased through crafting related activities.

But a system where player A learns a schematic in one attempt using 15-20 million in mats and an hour of time while player B burns through hundreds of millions in mats and hours upon hours of effort and does not learn the schematic, even though player B completes harder content and has invested more into crafting, is not reasonable and does not reward skill or effort.

Would you enjoy real life equivalents - such as having your next paycheck or promotion based on 5% random luck chance versus your own effort and agency?

The worst problem with the system is the obvious gating they put in place with the conquest material requirements. If they at a minimum moved that to purple recipes, it would go a long way towards fixing this mess.

PS Why is there such little communication from community team on the main forum? You would like they would try to calm people down in these 10 page threads.

PS Why is there such little communication from community team on the main forum? You would like they would try to calm people down in these 10 page threads.

Those of us on PTS found frustatingly little engagement with our massive amounts of detailed feedback. One of the few posts that did engage is coincidentally the last dev comment we received on crafting, posted over three weeks ago:

Hey all,

 

Ok here is a recap of some of the changes coming to crafting for 6.0 (beyond what you have seen on PTS).

• Dramatically reduced the credit cost of the supplemental crafting materials on vendors.
  
• Crew Skill Mission times reduced by approximately 30%.
  
• Crafting times for combining materials has been reduced by approximately 30%.
  
• Materials required to craft Premium quality items has been reduced. Specifically, it no longer requires the Conquest crafting material and lowered the overall mat requirements.
  
• Reduced the overall crafting material requirements for crafted Set Bonuses and Tactical items.
  

 

One other note as well since I know there has been concern around material costs. Although the costs are higher players should be seeing a much higher in-flow of materials as well. If you are only doing Crew Skill Missions and nothing else it may feel slower though. However you will receive supplementary materials from playing content (such as boss kills) as well as via Jawa Scrap which you will receive from all deconstruction. For players who are actively harvesting materials we actually expect that you will be able to craft even faster than you could previously (due to a large in-flow of materials). As always, please keep any and all feedback coming. If what I stated above is not what you have been seeing then more changes may be necessary.

 

Thanks all.

 

-eric

As testers could predict, and as everyone has no doubt found since 6.0 released, even those are who "actively harvesting materials" are not "able to craft even faster than you could previously." The changes made from initial PTS did not address most of the issues we found most pressing (the main exception being the removal of purple conquest materials from green schematics - although armormech did not see this reduction, clearly an oversight rather than intended). I do not think even blue schematics should need purple conquest materials - I think only purple schematics should. As it stands, conquest materials are a massive bottleneck on crafting progression, particularly considering that RE % chance on many items is as low as 5%. And one of the most severe issues, as we keep on saying, is that basic components need 8/10/10 materials, not 2/2/2 as before, and this is only compounded by every new quality of component needing three components from the previous quality. Until these fundamental issues are addressed, 6.0 crafting will continue to be a punishing experience that most people I talk to are only dipping their toes into, or avoiding entirely, rather than embracing enthusiastically (which I think we would all like to be able to do!).

Eric says that we should keep feedback coming, so let's do exactly that, and insist that more changes are in fact absolutely necessary.

Those of us on PTS found frustatingly little engagement with our massive amounts of detailed feedback. One of the few posts that did engage is coincidentally the last dev comment we received on crafting, posted over three weeks ago:

 

As testers could predict, and as everyone has no doubt found since 6.0 released, even those are who "actively harvesting materials" are not "able to craft even faster than you could previously." The changes made from initial PTS did not address most of the issues we found most pressing (the main exception being the removal of purple conquest materials from green schematics - although armormech did not see this reduction, clearly an oversight rather than intended). I do not think even blue schematics should need purple conquest materials - I think only purple schematics should. As it stands, conquest materials are a massive bottleneck on crafting progression, particularly considering that RE % chance on many items is as low as 5%. And one of the most severe issues, as we keep on saying, is that basic components need 8/10/10 materials, not 2/2/2 as before, and this is only compounded by every new quality of component needing three components from the previous quality. Until these fundamental issues are addressed, 6.0 crafting will continue to be a punishing experience that most people I talk to are only dipping their toes into, or avoiding entirely, rather than embracing enthusiastically (which I think we would all like to be able to do!).

 

Eric says that we should keep feedback coming, so let's do exactly that, and insist that more changes are in fact absolutely necessary.

Having tried out the new crafting system for the last couple of weeks, I have to agree and join the chorus here for pretty much the same points you have raised in your post. The new system is incredibly tedious and an unnecessary complication to what we previously had. I used to craft quite a bit for myself and my toons, but now I'm not even bothering to level the skill to 700 on all of my toons. As you said, crafting has become a punishing experience instead of a fun or rewarding one.

How about that garbage synthweaving armor set(that says an 'armormech set bonus') crafted via the token from the weekend vendor that requires 22 Matrices, 30 embers, and 35 purple synthweaving components?

 

And for what? An uninteresting general inquisitor set that NO ONE will ever un-ironically use.

This claimed to be one thing, was something completely different, and is not remotely usable when so many other options are available. The set involves resetting whirlwind after killing someone affected by whirlwind... seriously?

 

I hate to think the Dev's idea of fun is making a virtually worthless item requiring over 6,000 archaeology materials and 150m worth of exotics.

I wish you had posted this just a couple hours earlier as it would have saved me the trouble of buying and crafting it. The material cost on this set is absolutely astronomical for such a horrible set bonus. It's not only archaeology materials but it's also underworld and slicing materials (sorry for the horrible formatting):

Gathering Materials.............................Quantity..........Source

Standard Veda Cloth...................................2,520......Archaeology

Premium lustrous Bondar Crystal...........1,800......Archaeology

Premium Lustrous Artifact Fragment......1,800......Archaeology

Premium Woven Syntex.............................1,350......Underworld Trading

Premium Data Spike..................................1,350......Slicing

Prototype Lustrous Artifact Fragment.........600.........Archaeology

Premium Veda Cloth.....................................840.........Archaeology

Prototype Lustrous Bondar Crystal............600.........Archaeology

Protype Data Spike.......................................450..........Slicing

Protype Woven Syntex..................................450..........Underworld Trading

Protype Veda Cloth.......................................420...........Archaeology

Artifact Lustrous Bondar Crystal................300...........Archaeology

Artifact Lustrous Artifact Fragment.............300..........Archaeology

Artifact Data Spike..........................................225..........Slicing

Artifact Woven Syntex....................................225...........Underworld Trading

TOTAL............................................................13,230

Exotic Materials................................Quantity..........Source

Processed Isotope Stabilizer......................120...................Flashpoints

Solid Resource Matrix...................................22....................Conquest

Legendary Ember..........................................30..................Special Missions

Yes, all of a sudden Synthweaving crafting requires Slicing! Traditionally Synthweaving has only required Archaeology and Underworld Trading (except for Augments) but now, all of a sudden, it requires a third gathering material (not only for this schematic but most of the new 6.0 schematics).

I can't totally complain because someone did buy the three pieces for 100m each but I won't be crafting this set again.

And one of the most severe issues, as we keep on saying, is that basic components need 8/10/10 materials, not 2/2/2 as before

I've been running around with my material inventory open while gathering biochem materials while learning (and unsurprisingly I'm still going to have to do at least another few dozen loops). 1000 at a time then back to crafting. It takes ages even with a good gathering loop to gather enough materials to begin considering crafting due to the insane amount of materials required, before you even start to RE stuff to learn the next step up.

One thing I've noticed. Yields on gathering nodes have not increased 4-5 times what they were, at absolutely best it's three times more, but mostly twice the amount you get on normal nodes. I thought that was addressed during the PTS phase, or did BioWare only consider increasing the yields on crew missions? How do they think crafters gather the majority of their materials?

Also, why do slicing nodes not provide slicing materials instead of jawa junk?

Anyway, if BioWare are only going to increase yields on harvesting nodes by 2-3 times, the most we should be required to use for crafting is 5/5/5, which is the average of 2 to 3 times the amount of 2/2/2.

It seems to me, BioWare didn't read the PTS feedback at all, or were given the wrong salient points about the feedback being given. That lays squarely on the shoulders of the person who communicated the feedback to the developers for not doing their job properly, which is why we're seeing these threads.

Not crafter here, but I can tell this system is a disaster just by looking at the gtn prices for new mk-11 stuff.

20 mil for one new augment ? Don't know about you, but that just isn't normal...

Not crafter here, but I can tell this system is a disaster just by looking at the gtn prices for new mk-11 stuff.

 

20 mil for one new augment ? Don't know about you, but that just isn't normal...

Yes, the complicated and materials-heavy 6.0 crafting is pretty much demanding high prices, just to avoid making a loss vs. simply selling the materials. This thread shows the materials requirements for purple augments. Let's work out how much one could currently sell those materials for on my server, Darth Malgus. (Prices naturally vary over time, so this is just a snapshot using the prices at the time of writing this post.)

• 10 processed isotope stabilizer @ 12k = 120k
  
• 5 solid resource matrix @ 2.5m = 12.5m
  
• 5 legendary ember @ 700k = 3.5m
  

That's the simple (albeit still expensive) part. The unassuming-looking further requirements of bonded attachments and bonded cloth break down to the following costs:

• 576 Standard Veda Cloth @ 300 (crew skill vendor price) = 172,800
  
• 192 Premium Veda Cloth @ 350 (crew skill vendor price) = 67,200
  
• 96 Prototype Veda Cloth @ 400 (crew skill vendor price) = 38,400
  
• 450 Premium Lustrous Bondar Crystal @ 18k = 8.1m
  
• 450 Premium Lustrous Artifact Fragment @ 4k = 1.8m
  
• 150 Prototype Lustrous Artifact Fragment @ 800 = 120k
  
• 150 Prototype Lustrous Bondar Crystal @ 300 = 45k
  
• 75 Artifact Lustrous Bondar Crystal @ 1k = 75k
  
• 75 Artifact Lustrous Artifact Fragment @ 1k = 75k
  
• 270 Premium Woven Syntex @ 20k = 5.4m
  
• 270 Premium Data Spike @ 11k = 2.97m
  
• 90 Prototype Data Spike @ 1.5k = 135k
  
• 90 Prototype Woven Syntex @ 10k = 900k
  
• 45 Artifact Data Spike @ 5k = 225k
  
• 45 Artifact Woven Syntex @ 12k = 540k
  

Someone might want to double-check, but adding this all up I come to the total of 37,863,400 credits... so there's a sale price just on the mats here of much more than 20m. Assuming you were talking about purple augments in your initial post, then, someone on my server listing that item at 20m would be making a loss compared to the price they could get just selling the materials. (And, by the way, sale price on my server was 17m at this time, so materials sold for 217% more.)

Now, this is assuming no crits during crafting (both on the component level and the augment level), but since different people will have different crit rates I don't think it's simple to take crits into account in a one-size-fits-all way. (And crits would not, I think, cover a 217% mark-up, even with crits applying at more than one level on the way to making the item.)

(Re. the surprising price of green-quality power crystals, there's an oversupply of artifacts vs. power crystals... for some reason gathering seems to be giving more fragments than power crystals - maybe because crystals are split between power and colour?)

(Also note: just as I predicted in my testing feedback, the highest-demand materials are greens, the ones we need most which aren't supplied adequately either by gathering or by available missions.)

I suspect crafting is broken on purpose. Look for monetized fixes in the future.

I agree I think cartel coins will be the solution.

So, crafting, in general, for me is fun, and I like to tool my play experience around it. I like making things (in real life too). I like to invest time into a set goal, which is NOT easy, and achieveing it. So crafting in 6.0 is exactly that. Far from perfect but a huge step in the right direction.

Investing time into a set goal only works when there is little RNG involved, or if there is a cummulative increased chance of good outcome as a form of RNG protection.

If I am a scientist, and I am trying to conduct an experiment, lets say something medically oriented by testing whether mice missing some gene can survive and reproduce, there are certainly unknowns in that experiment. If my experiment goes wrong, I can go through a series of troubleshooting steps, and figure out what's wrong. Furthermore, I can publish the steps in my experiment and others can try to replicate it.

With RNG chances of only 5%, you are far more likely to fail than succeed. Honestly, what company would fund a project that was 19 times more likely to fail than succeed, and result in no knowledge being acquired even in the face of failure because it was all random?

I'm fine with putting work into a good end-product of crafting. The trouble is that it is quite easy to end up with nothing to show for your work. There is no reasonable expectation of any benefit without any RNG protection.

EDIT:

So, moving on to your second point.

However the sheer amount of materials makes this non trivial - and as the there are only 2 node sources, Onderon and Meksha, both heavily populated, having multiple alts on gathering missions is necessary. Also, nearly nothing is now made with just base resources, and the "special" resources require missions. So, you need multiple alts, with max skills and invest time (no personal skill necessary) to cycle them regularly to continue.

Absolutely agree.

Now, you need to get the extra material not available through the wrold or missions. 2 main sources, PVE and PVP (both do pretty well for me). So if you want to craft, you need to play the game. Amazing isn't it? A crafter can't just stay in her/his stronghold. You need to do FPs, Ops and WZs to get the materials you need to craft. As a corolary, you will achieve your conquest goals pretty easily (it takes me around 2 hours on average now to achieve personal conquest goals on my PvE characters and 2:30 on PvP, depending on ranked WZ pops. Could be slightly higher if you do unranked.)

Let's put aside the insinuation, as Estelendis correctly called you out on, that people who focus on the business aspect of crafting and trading are not "playing the game." I don't have a problem with higher quality crafted results requiring rare and valuable materials. What I do have a problem with is starter end-products requiring those materials. Now, I have about a dozen or so Processed Isotope Stabilizers. I haven't done any "group" content in the past two weeks except for four GSF matches and the obligatory story-solo mode of Objective Meridian. Its clear that PIS's come at a greater frequency than Reinforce Isotope Stabilizers did in 5.x, which is a good thing. However, it is poor design to require PIS in the schematic to make a green, item rating 277, Versatile Hilt 77. Requiring these exotics in green stuff that is literally grinded away is punitive, not fun. It doesn't make the game more interesting. What it does is delay everyone's entry into the competitive GTN market, not just by delaying a crafter's acquisition of higher grade end-products, but also depriving them of an important niche market in grinding gear. People can and will buy green stuff to help improve their stats as they level. They all know they will be replacing a rating 277 hilt. But this just smacks of bioware not interested in allowing crafters to sell stuff that might allow players to bypass seven out of 36 levels of gear.

Bioware has said, in effect, that players must make and sell gizmos and whatchamacallits according to bioware's specifications, rather than allowing the market to decide.

Now, the third part (my favourite) you actually craft. Basic stuff is the same as always. Just more mats needed, and the result is useless. But the new crafting system doesn't care about the base. You have multiple levels of research, which means that the people who bother to invest time will be rewarded.

5% research chance for augments and 10% for stims/adrenals (basically the only items which you can't get anywhere other than crafting, since the gear level curve is so fast, crafting will not compete) is difiicult, since you need a fair amount of time invested to gather the mats, and the most important one, the matrixes, you have a max of 4/6/8 (depending on conuest target) you can get per character per week. So, actually getting to the point where you have the ability to craft these should give you some sense of achievement (unlike old crafting which did absolutely nothing since anyone could craft anything).

No, as I mentioned above its about as much of a sense of achievement as someone winning the lottery.

That will likely last a month or two, and then the system will be changed so its easy, and I'll start to lose interest again, but at least its given me a good couple weeks right now.

I think you confuse "challenging" with "laborious." There is no challenge in crafting. You collect the materials, you add them to the recipe, the product spits out, you have an astonishingly low chance of reverse engineering a better item. There are a lot more added steps, and a lot more materials to acquire, than in previous tiers. But there is no challenge. There is no hidden area of bonus gathering nodes that you can explore for, and unlock. There haven't been decoration resource nodes since grade 8 materials, so there's no reward to seek out there that benefits your hard work with more materials.

There are amplifiers to be acquired, and they can help with materials acquisition, but they are not acquired through crafting! There is no amount of "hard work" or "time invested" into crafting that will get you these amplifiers! The only way to acquire these crewskill related amplifiers is to, ironically, do anything BUT craft. And, since many of the "success" and "critical" oriented amplifiers are on mods, if you acquire a mod you like, you are obliged to either wear nerfed gear, or create a separate "crafting suit," forcing you to obtain shells and re-roll those amplifiers until you get the tertiary crewskill amplifiers you need. Again, that's all RNG, both in terms of the initial finding of an amp and in the re-rolling. Star Wars Galaxies (by the time it closed) had a similar system in which you could build a suit of armor, and there was an iterative "reverse engineering" process that actually had a decent outcome in the end, and allowed you to craft what were essentially Amplifiers into your suit that you could then wear for a benefit while crafting. THAT was interesting and challenging, and I'm glossing over most of what was amazing about crafting in SWG, rip.

You admit that the amount of materials needed to craft stuff requires multiple characters running missions. How am I supposed to wait in queue for pvp, or GSF, or FPs, or OPS, if I have to keep switching alts to run crew skill missions?

The developers don't need to make it easy. The system is insanely broken right now. The fact that there are players on star forge selling resuable accuracy stims for tens of millions of credits isn't proof that the system is working, its proof that instead of penalizing the hoarders, Bioware actually rewarded them, because only the "Tres Comas" club can afford enough materials to grind through the number of purple items to RE a gold schematic, or be exceptionally fortunate.

They didn't actually achieve anything that you state with their crafting changes.

• 200 Jawa scrap per grade 11 material hurts players who have hoarded jawa scrap for sure, but it doesn't make crafting interesting or challenging, and it actually removes jawa scrap as being useful for crafting
  
• making the jawa scrap cost 1:1 to the material's grade also nerfs the hoarders, and does nothing to make crafting interesting
  
• creating these nested assembly components adds time, and sinks, but isn't all that interesting. In contrast, consider the quest to obtain the advanced magenta crystal, originally, back in 1.x. Figuring out how to obtain the various rare materials across the galaxy .. that was a challenge. Not nested assembly components.
  
• increasing the resource requirements thirty fold isn't interesting. Its a sink, either of credits, time, or both.
  

I mean, I could go on and on. You're certainly entitled to your opinion, and I don't think I could convince you that you are wrong, nor do I wish to change your mind or tell you that you shouldn't be having fun if in fact you are. But I have logical reasons for disproving just about every one of your claims, in the hopes that Bioware will see how absolutely broken the system truly is.

Does anyone at Bioware actually play this game? After spending 1.5 billion credits exploring the different crafting trees I am convinced none of them actually play the game anymore. What a hot mess...…..

They do play but they only develop and tune the content nowadays to the specific needs of NiM guilds they're in. Pricey crafting fits right into making that guild rich.

The damage to my relationship with the game has been done, the multiplicative crafting changes that taken all together, make it orders of magnitude more time consuming, costly, and frustrating to craft, while removing any sense of agency, have destroyed any desire I may have had to invest time or money into the game.

After spending a good portion of the weekend trying learn a couple of schematics (that I've been attempting for the past week off and on) and ultimately failing, effectively wasting hours of time and the equivalent of hundreds of millions in credits, I became very angry,

Angry at myself for falling for this appalling and blatant attempt to waste as much of my time as possible, angry that I had spent more time watching loading screens and clicking items to construct / deconstruct than I had watching the new story, angry that this is just one of several egregious random chance systems added to suck up players time and credits (which are a proxy for time) to mask the little content added and the low quality state of most systems.

For instance, the probability of failing to reverse engineer the legendary schematic 60 times in a row is less than 5%, however, there is nothing in the game to prevent that from actually occurring, because each "roll" of the reverse engineering dice is independent of the others. We can debate the thresholds, but proper RNG protection would mean that if I craft, for example, 60-stacks of purple Medpacks, I'll learn the schematic. The probability p of seeing n consecutive failures to learn the next grade schematic is (1-RE chance)^n. We can debate what satisfactory levels of p or n should be, but no such system exists in the game, and as such, there is no amount of "hard work" that can result in a good outcome.

The annoying thing about the "5%" is in fact the lack of RNG protection built into this system, especially when you consider the sheer volume of materials required to have multiple attempts at reverse engineering and the amount of time it takes to collect and then craft the base components even with level 50 companions. (which are not cheap when multiplying by 8 per character).

Also. You have to mention medpacs.

The annoying thing about the "5%" is in fact the lack of RNG protection built into this system, especially when you consider the sheer volume of materials required to have multiple attempts at reverse engineering and the amount of time it takes to collect and then craft the base components even with level 50 companions. (which are not cheap when multiplying by 8 per character).

 

Also. You have to mention medpacs.

I mean, I could mention augments too.

But yeah. Now, if the deconstruction system were set up that basically said, if you deconstruct a stack of at least X things, you'll learn the schematic, and you have a smaller chance with quantity < X, then that might be ok, but it wouldn't work for things that don't stack, like pretty much anything other than biochem consumables.

Even if you take 8 companions to task to make 40 stacks of medpacks, you will, at most with rank 50 comps, end up with 20 stacks of 4 packs and 20 of 5, for a grand total of 180 packs, which ends up being equivalent to 45 stacks of 4 each, 4 being the minimum quantity you can RE. So, the probability of not learning the schematic after making 45 stacks is just under 10%. Remember that 180 is the best case scenario, assuming you get effectively a 50% critical rate. That often happens with grey difficulty items, like the cell grafts, but is rare for orange difficulty stuff, like the advanced medpacks. Having that sort of effective critical rate is going to require the amplifiers (not gained via crafting, by the way). Also, any critical rate that results in a stack of packs not divisible by 4 is going to result in wasted mats. Finally, if you otherwise would have been so lucky that you would have learned the schematic on the first try, the system doesn't stop your deconstruction process and give you back the stacks ... it happily destroys all that work for maybe 50% of the original materials back.

Now, the existence of "waste" isn't new to the RE system ... but the RE chances were much higher, which resulted in less waste overall, and in some cases in the past, actually got better the more exotic materials were required.

Taking the time to have eight influence rank 50 companions, to maximize critical chance, and committing all eight of those companions to craft initially 40 stacks of the purple advanced med packs ... which by the way required you to have previously made 120 of the blue prototype cell grafts which themselves needed 360 of the green cell grafts which required 3600 of each of the green materials ... even that is not enough to virtually guarantee, statistically, a good outcome. (I consider virtual guarantee to be less than a 1% chance of failing to learn after X attempts)

How is that "interesting," "challenging," "fun," or "exciting?"

Anyway, its important for the developers to define their goals:

1. Should crafting be a sink, either in time or credits or both?
   
2. Should crafting be competitive? This could mean competitive to looted gear but also competitive market wise?
   
3. Should crafting be interesting? Should people who take the time to level up companion influence, seek out amplifiers, seek out rare schematics, seek out gathering nodes, grind through deconstruction iterations, be rewarded for their efforts?
   

All the developers have done with this system is #1. And I guess if by "Challenging," you mean, "challenging my patience and/or my sanity," then sure, the system is "challenging."

They took away companions with crew skill bonuses in whatever update that happened, maybe 3.0? All part of play your way, sure, but why not bring them back, especially with all the companions available to people in the Alliance recruitments? Give older players a reason to do that content over and over again. Reward players who have reached crafting achievements with new grade 11 material decorations. Make discoverable areas, perhaps instanced, with high-density of gathering nodes. Make amplifiers discoverable through crafting. Make interesting side quests, like the Ilum Force Ghost and the original Advanced Magenta crystal quests. THAT's how you make crafting interesting.

Not by installing three layers of nested components and increasing resource requirements forty-five-fold. Not by nerfing reverse engineering chance so that the practical resource requirements are up thousands-fold.

They took away companions with crew skill bonuses in whatever update that happened, maybe 3.0? All part of play your way, sure, but why not bring them back, especially with all the companions available to people in the Alliance recruitments? Give older players a reason to do that content over and over again. Reward players who have reached crafting achievements with new grade 11 material decorations. Make discoverable areas, perhaps instanced, with high-density of gathering nodes. Make amplifiers discoverable through crafting. Make interesting side quests, like the Ilum Force Ghost and the original Advanced Magenta crystal quests. THAT's how you make crafting interesting.

These all sound like good ideas, with the possible exception of high-yield instanced areas (bots would love that) and bringing back the old companion bonuses. Many companions are available to all characters via the Alliance, but far from all (e.g. best armstech crafter Corso is still smuggler-only), plus plenty of people will have exiled or killed some companions without any idea that they'd be cutting themselves off from a crafting bonus by doing that. I'm not absolutely opposed to it, but it does seem like a move that would need to be considered carefully. Every suggestion apart from those two, I wholeheartedly endorse.

This is insane and feels punitive. What the hell?! Why should I have to do conquest on 4 characters just to get 8 Solid Resource Matrix to craft ONE green level jacket just because I like how it looks. NOT to mention all the other grade level mats AND combined mats. Frustrating beyond words!

Clearly the devs only care about subscribers that do Ops and PVP. That leaves a LOT of other people out. No wonder people are cancelling subscriptions.

These all sound like good ideas, with the possible exception of high-yield instanced areas (bots would love that) and bringing back the old companion bonuses. Many companions are available to all characters via the Alliance, but far from all (e.g. best armstech crafter Corso is still smuggler-only), plus plenty of people will have exiled or killed some companions without any idea that they'd be cutting themselves off from a crafting bonus by doing that. I'm not absolutely opposed to it, but it does seem like a move that would need to be considered carefully. Every suggestion apart from those two, I wholeheartedly endorse.

Yeah, I forgot about the bots, though if its instanced it would be easy to catch them. Regardless, when I said bring back the old companion bonuses I actually was thinking of bringing the bonuses only to globally available comps. As you say it would have to be carefully implemented. But, the larger point is that there are lots of ways to make crafting interesting without making it tedious.

What if killing a certain type of creature unlocked an achievement, and at the end of the achievement you could get an item that could substitute in for an exotic? Or, killing certain droids unlocked a grade 11 scavenging decoration you could place in your stronghold? Or, rather, harvesting from certain droids unlocked something?

There are all sorts of things they could have done. But what they did was make the system a travesty.