Critable orange gear undermines intent of removable epic base mods

Appearance tabs will kill a good chunk of the system that is going on here. They just need to get a way to make augments more relevant without neglecting craft crits.

Maybe they will need to kill crit crafts for it. Maybe not.

While this idea is sound, it would leave the previously crit on items out on the market without complaining, and if anyone has one of those without it being bound? You're looking at the market rushing towards those few people in almost record times. And what about all those augments already out on the world? If we were to remove critting on crafting, what would those be good for?

Removing the ability to crit a craft skill isn't going to be the solution this far in, if it was back in beta, maybe pr-erelease, that may have been a chance to look at. There are too many things out there with augments floating around now and augment-able gear where removing it will either punish those who bought/crafted or drive the majority of the economy into the select people who spent over a month slicing up a storm for augments.

I really like that idea, a nice armourmech perk. That would help counteract the usual mmo malady of "I'm a master crafter but the best stuff I can make is scrub rags compared to raid gear." However, you can not invalidate the achievement of raid gear by allowing a crafter to proliferate it at will. If crafting any raid gear required a raid drop mechanically equivalent to getting the original raid item then it has possibility.

Appearance slots would only kill the current system because they do everything it does and more. It is simpler, it is more powerful, it's just plain better.

As a side thought I love the crafting crit system. Instead of just crafting a bunch of identical gear, I always look forward to going through and seeing if I was lucky enough to get a better version. It also adds another level of customization.

I think it should be like this:

Ops normal mode, get you the Columi tier gear + recipes for tier Columi gear which can crit.
Ops HM, get you Rakata gear + recipes for Rakata gear which can crit.
Ops Nightmare mode get you Rakata gear with augment slots plus same recipes for Rakata gear which can crit.

The same should apply for Hardmode FPs, where you should also get one recipe per boss + the usual gear token.

Problem solved. Everyone can get everything and yet crafting is still useful.

Of course this could give Synthawavers an unaffair advantage, so we could have 4 pieces of end-game gear that can be crafted by each profession.

for instance: Artifice could have : lightsabers , relics and offhands
Synthawaveing: handwraps, belt, feet and gloves
Biochem: implant, earpiece, stim.

You forgot Armormech, Armstech, and Cybertech

Armormech kinda fits in with Synthweaving...but the other two....

No, it doesn't. First, there is no single "appearance tab" system. Many games have different versions of this, all with their own nuances, details, and restrictions. These are all things that swtor would still have to figure out for itself as well. Which is exactly the growing pains the current mod system is going through right now.

Second, an appearance tab doesn't provide stat customization AT ALL. The mod system can/should easily support that with nothing but a bit of extra itemization (more mods with different stat balances but equal budgets). So you either stick with the mod system and just tweak it, or you throw it out, replace it with an appearance tab, and then STILL need to come up with a stat customization system on top of that.

Third, an appearance tab certainly gives lots of flexibility and options, but that's not necessarily what the game designers want to allow, and I'm OK with that. What we need as a feature is the freedom to not look like clones of one another. That doesn't necessarily mean that we need the freedom to look any way we please.

I like that the current mod system preserves the light/medium/heavy silhouettes, and even some class silhouettes, because you either cannot or don't want to (for armor value reasons) wear gear outside of your armor range. Could you replicate this with an appearance tab? Sure, but then it's yet another set of rules and restrictions for the new appearance tab to figure out (which is just the first point all over again).

Fourth and finally, the mod system plays really well to potential complexity and content for crafters. Rare mods, rare orange patterns based on grinds or, better, epic quests, and RE'ing existing stuff for orange patterns all work very nicely as simple future additions to give crafting some more content and love. Yes, all this stuff can be done in ways that work with an appearance tab too, but again, that means change from the ground up rather than just a few tweaks to a system that is nearly 100% functional already.

I brought this up like a month ago. Does anyone know anything yet?

Whatever modable gear has augment slots will be what everyone uses. IF they had something that could add augments to existing gear, everyone would use them. Either way everyones gear will have augment slots in the end. So what is the the uniqueness of augments in either solution?

I wouldn't get to worked up over it, I suspect the gear will be available to be crafted in later releases and higher tiers/levels are introduced. In the meantime, is it so wrong that players who master crafting and earn the high-end gear to pull the mods from should be able to manage an edge over over those who only earn the high-end gear.