So...what will be the point of crafters now. Why allow any and everyone to just use an augment table to get augment slot. They could have simply allowed crafters to create an augment kit, that could be traded/sold, that a player could then in turn take to a augment table and use...but no.

Adding an augment to an item through the augment table will require an augment kit and credits. The kits can be traded and are created by crafters. RE'ing crafted items gives you the materials required to create augment kits.

This. Considering they cost maybe 3k per augmented item to make on average, selling for 20-30k is pretty decent profit. Try to sell for much more than that and people will just make their own.

 

It costs quite a bit more than this on "The Ebon Hawk"

Making one augmented gun will take me on average 6 tries. I am not home right now but that is 4 purchased items, 12 (8 of one 4 of the other) green items, and 4 blue items per try. So 24 of the purchased vials (500 credits each), 72 green materials (GTN normally 4k/10 or 400 each), 24 blue items (for armstech they are cheaper than other classes so around 8k/4), and i can sell the failed guns back at about 2k/gun to a vendor.

24x500 + 72x400 + 2000x24 - 5x~2000 = about 78,800 per gun for the cost to build - this doesn't include the 1.5hrs of crew time spent on crafting that could be used to harvest materials or gifts to sell on the GTN.

 

If you say i can just harvest those materials myself and then it is 100% profit, you are right. However, i could just sell those materials for the prices listed above to some other schmuck and he can make/sell them at a loss. I personally don't bother selling augmented guns for under 90k, people can go look for them elsewhere.

I play on a fairly average population server. I have ~13 mil credits (after mailbox and ship droid, and maybe a few other perks).

 

I've sold a couple augmented items for people that specifically wanted a certain look - both for 200k. I'd agree that except for weapons, there isn't a huge demand for this yet - mostly due to 99% of the population being unable to transfer set bonuses, and no gloves/boots for non-PVPers (until we start RE-ing black hole / campaign). I think as the game continues past Rakata and more looks are added in, finding someone with that special look you want will in higher demand.

 

But, I've sold probably two dozen augments that I've crafted, for anywhere between 90-130k. So I'd say that market is pretty booming. I'm Synthweaving and I wish I had an Armormech character just so I could be pumping out Aim and Cunning augments too.

 

I think it's stupid to freak out about the augment tables in 1.3 until we hear the details. I'm pretty confident that they'll tie them to crafting skills like they did the creation of augments.

Edited May 9, 2012 by nezitx

^ Ignorance is bliss I guess.*

 

Obviously, augmenting a piece rather than rolling the dice when crafting will probably be expensive.

 

* /sarcasm

 

If the market is flooded with augmented gear wouldnt the price go down? Or did I miss your point?

 

/sarcasm off

Edited May 9, 2012 by Mancer

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I almost see this as a way to IMPROVE the economy. Currently many find that the only kind of gear that sells well on the GTN is gear that already contains Augment slots. With the ability to add augment slots to non-critted gear, it opens up an entire market for regular, non-critted items to sell on the GTN. This still allows the min/maxers to get what they want (augment slots) while allowing crafters to sell their wares rather than breaking them down for mats and trying all over for a Crit.

Adding an augment to an item through the augment table will require an augment kit and credits. The kits can be traded and are created by crafters. RE'ing crafted items gives you the materials required to create augment kits.

 

Probably the smartest thing ive ever seen the devs do since this game released, i think i feel some hope , it better not just be heartburn.

It costs quite a bit more than this on "The Ebon Hawk"

Making one augmented gun will take me on average 6 tries. I am not home right now but that is 4 purchased items, 12 (8 of one 4 of the other) green items, and 4 blue items per try. So 24 of the purchased vials (500 credits each), 72 green materials (GTN normally 4k/10 or 400 each), 24 blue items (for armstech they are cheaper than other classes so around 8k/4), and i can sell the failed guns back at about 2k/gun to a vendor..

 

May I suggest NOT making the Elegant ones and instead make the lvl 20 ones? Higher crit rates (assuming elegant ones are still orange @400) and WAY cheaper/faster to harvest mats? I have yet to really meet anybody who really cares what their weapons look like all that much, and you can't preview their look on the GTN anyways, so all people are buying is the "stats". So if YOU want to try to compete against equivelent quality guns that cost 3k to make and can be used 30 levels earlier with your 90k to make guns, I'm gonna guess it isn't going to go that well for you. As somebody else said. L2Economy

 

Oh, and PS. When you actually ARE doing higher level crafting, run missions for the fluxes. The Calius Saj Leeloo or w/e mission costs like 2k to run, and returns over 30 of those high end fluxes. (According to TorHead, average cost is 61 per). That alone will cut your expenses by ~10500 credits.

I like the idea of kits made to do this. I would love to drop the gear I have with the "Made by poopyhead" tag. Whatever they do maybe they could also get rid of the "made by" tag after items become bound.

Probably the smartest thing ive ever seen the devs do since this game released, i think i feel some hope , it better not just be heartburn.

 

Agreed. Makes me wonder if they were listening to our suggestions/guesses... I must say I'm wondering if the augment mats are obtained from REing *all* items, or just crit crafted ones? That part was a suggestion I made way back when.

Whatever they do maybe they could also get rid of the "made by" tag after items become bound.

 

I hope not, half the enjoyment of being a crafter is seeing other people using the stuff you made. One of the reasons I'm an inspectaholic.

I wouldn't go crazy about this yet, we don't know how it will work.

 

I'd involve all the classes that can already craft crit gear, and give them each a component that can be sold and is used at the augment table. That way there would be a few components to acquire per item, but the economy would be going with the amount of medium cost components being traded.

RE'ing crafted items gives you the materials required to create augment kits.

 

So I guess that explains why we can't RE orange gear in game right now.

Adding an augment to an item through the augment table will require an augment kit and credits. The kits can be traded and are created by crafters. RE'ing crafted items gives you the materials required to create augment kits.

 

This narrows it down a bit, thanks. Though I do have some other questions on this before I can feel easy about it.

 

1. Are players the only way to obtain these kits? Because if they're put on a vendor like everything else for a token amount of commendations then there's really no reason to bother crafting them.

 

2. What items will be RE'able to get the materials to make the kits? Right now we can still only RE greens, blues, purples and the 1.2 oranges and orange drops, not oranges we create, which has driven the price of crafted non-crits to just above vendor price. (I realize this is a dangerous question to answer, since players will try to stock up on the items ahead of time.)

 

3. Where will the schematic for the augment kit be obtained? As it is, any level 10 with a companion can craft 99% of the items a level 50 can, though at a slower rate. As poor as this system is for a dedicated crafter, it's better than the way the orange gloves/boots schematics are distributed- by random chance and gated by being in an operation.

The no-win question is, will the schematic be available to everyone and their wookie or will it require the elitism of an operations group?

It's not learn to use the market when there is no demand for the items. As I said there is almost a 0% demand for augmented items on my server. Augmented armor around 20-30k might sell, anything over that just sits there. The only items that sell post 1.2 are the augments, which I sell alot of, and they will sell better once everyone can add an augment to any piece of gear they want to.

 

Which server are you on? On the The Harbinger, I've sold a lot of augmented items and I sell them in the 70-150k price range. I might have to put some of them back on the GTN once or twice though because sometimes you get undercut on price by someone else. Of course, you have to be selective about what you're trying to sell too and focus on the armors that people are more likely to wear.

I like the idea of kits made to do this. I would love to drop the gear I have with the "Made by poopyhead" tag. Whatever they do maybe they could also get rid of the "made by" tag after items become bound.

 

They aren't going to drop the tag. They want crafters to be able to get some recognition in their community. Just randomly ran into someone the other day who was wearing a chestpiece I made and it was kind of cool. Plus, I've had people email me requesting a particular item because they saw that I had crafted it.

 

However, the tag fades over time and wears off so eventually you won't have any tag on it anyway.

Ok, just listened to the pod cast, and I'm getting the impression that adding augments might be limited to end game gear. Also I think if there is a crafting limit placed on how augments can be added, a lot of people will be very unhappy with that.

 

It doesnt sound like it will be limited to endgame gear. Quoting the podast "It also means that things like the - was it the pilot outfit - the sand trooper, the sand person outfit all of those things in particular on the social vendors as well as the armor on the collector's edition vendors and the security vendors all that stuff will be able to be worn at end game, especially when you combine it with the augment table technology"

Crafting is useless in TOR. Any use it has is limited to a short time after a select patch, until the "raiders uber alles" mentality kicks in again among devs and they make sure crafting has no use at all again.

 

In order to make crafters not useless they'd have to adjust the schems so what we make is actually useful for the endgame, and not just for leveling alts.

 

Armormech/synthweave: As it is crafted armor won't even be good for companions, they are better off with hand-down loot from raiding. The crit crafted orange shells were viable for a bit, but there are not enough schems around (without any good reason) and we can't make most of the actually nice things. PvP armor is right out - BW could have given us the recruit gear schems, but chose to make that vendor only. Rakata belt and bracers used to be BiS, but as gear progresses they are rendered useless (and can't be sold anyway). Augments are the remaining hope, but when I start an armormech I want to craft armor people use, not some gimmick.

 

Cybertech: LOL. Any mods we make are useless as soon as people start dailies, and we lack some mod types still (tanks). Ship parts are about the only decent thing to sell, no one sane buys speeders at those material costs (and such limited selections). Grenades are a gimmick, but have some uses in pvp. Earpieces are rendered useless by gear progression.

 

Armstech: In the endgame we can crit-craft cheap oranges, one per player. That's it. Barrels are useless, people use the barrels from daily comms or loot. Augmetns help out some, but all in all you're crafting for low levels.

 

Artifice is a mixture of armormech/synthweave and armstech. As with the rest, any endgame products are rendered useless by loot.

 

Biotech - only crew skill you can actually use at endgame, since there's no looted stim/medpack/adrenal that's better, though pvpers might get by with pvp stims and medpacks, provided they spend the comms.

 

In order to make crafting viable BW has to stop elevating loot above all. Crafted stuff should always be around second/third best, not dead last in the gear progression. I'd suggest that whenever BW introduces a new tier of gear, the oldest tier gets added to the crafting schems. So we'd be crafting collumni-quality armor, mods and weapons when people start gearing up with campaign gear.

Adding an augment to an item through the augment table will require an augment kit and credits. The kits can be traded and are created by crafters. RE'ing crafted items gives you the materials required to create augment kits.

 

basicly what there saying is nothing changes for crafters were still going to have to craft a ton of wasted items to re them to get the mats to make the kits. then sell the kits to thos who want the augment slot.

 

so for crafters this changes nothing instead of makeing 10 items for one augmented item we now make 10 items to make one augment kit.

 

whats the point.

BW can't please everyone, and nor should they. this game instead of evolving seems to be going backwards. I fear for the future of this game. Honestly though bikini's in the Star Wars universe, I know Leia had the slave outfit. Doesn't mean you can but bikini's on. Fix the real issues with the game instead of appealing to the masses. Edited May 10, 2012 by XDrcaul

In my personal opinion - by having several "end game" armor sets in the game so early into the release of the game, a player crafted ecomoney, never had a chance to get some footing. Games add several "tiers" of armor when they do not do a vertical expansion (aka higher levels) and instead do a laterial expansion. This game wasn't old enough for any laterial growth loot itemization.

 

Other MMOs like WoW and EQ2 have a ton of laterial itemization but this is becasue they have been out for years and years and rarely do a vertical expansion. TOR was too young for this to be in place - perhaps after the first true expansion with is a year or more out. This alone is throwing the natural ingame crafting enviornment out of wack.

 

Make raids harder if people are blasting though them too fast - raids are meant to be hard, make raiders earn the gear. Easy raids and several tiers of gear is just not the way to go "out of the box". I'm sure the same could be said about WoW (never played it) but in EQ2 people were stuck on raid encounters for at least a few days, if not weeks, and sometimes months. I know people like casual gameplay but it has to be balanced with a bit of difficulty or people will just get bored and leave.

 

I know there is a current movment in the genre to make these games as casual as if a person was playing a console game. Stop it. Stop it. To a degree it is ok but don't go overboard. They are different for a reason - if hard-core mmo players wanted to play consoles they would be playing consoles. (edit/note: by "hard-core mmo player", I mean just those that play a lot, nothing more)

 

Sorry for the side rant.. :-/

 

TL;DR - Too much end-game laterial itemization too early in the games life cycle.

Edited May 10, 2012 by Ironcleaver

At this point, just bring out the tables and let it be done with.

 

The post 1.2 crafting is a joke. The demand (at least on my server) for armor with an augment spot is almost 0%, and unless they are almost given away they don't sell on the GTN. There were no new schematics added. So all those different sets of orange armor that I did want to craft for an augment spot, I'm not able to.

 

Once they add augment tables in 1.3, I'll be able to set up the sets of armor I want to use for pve/pvp, have the look I want and will then drop armormech right away for biochem, since it's the only craft skill that still matters. I'd drop it now, but still need to make a few more augmented sets for alts and guild members.

 

I guess people on your server just aren't very interested in crit crafted gear then. This has worked out quite differently for me. I regularly sell critted gear for 100k-150k. Economies are quite different from server to server and Bioware has to look at how changes affect all the servers and not just one of them one. From your point of view as a crafter, you might just be on the wrong server.

Adding an augment to an item through the augment table will require an augment kit and credits. The kits can be traded and are created by crafters. RE'ing crafted items gives you the materials required to create augment kits.

 

This will work very nicely if the augment kits are level-tiered. That way, the items you create for the purpose of skilling up can be used, as a byproduct, to create sellable kits -- and if you do happen to crit-craft a piece of gear in the process of skilling up, you can try and sell that directly on the GTN rather than breaking it back down for the materials.

 

From a consumer view, it makes it viable to use augment kits on levelling characters, along with low-level augments, priced appropriately.

 

Looks like it could well be a win-win situation all around.

Edited May 10, 2012 by Ancaglon

Adding an augment to an item through the augment table will require an augment kit and credits. The kits can be traded and are created by crafters. RE'ing crafted items gives you the materials required to create augment kits.

 

Will there be different augment kits for different armor/weapon slots/types, or different kits for different level items, etc? Or just one generic "augment kit"? 'Cause if it's the latter, it makes crafting very boring. Just one item that every other crafter is making as well :/

Will there be different augment kits for different armor/weapon slots/types, or different kits for different level items, etc? Or just one generic "augment kit"? 'Cause if it's the latter, it makes crafting very boring. Just one item that every other crafter is making as well :/

 

if it's just one generic kit...expect that to be selling for cheap, thus rendering crafting useless again. I want to think they will get this right...but I have lost faith in BW's ability to get anything right.

Sorry, forgot about Social armor.

 

Then again, what we were lead to believe about changes in patch 1.2 reguarding armor, new schematics and the ability to transfer mods, ended up being very different, and lets face it, very disappointing.