Underworld Trading:

There seems to be something weird with this crew skill. Most of the time, I see too many gift missions and too many fabric missions. I need metal missions almost all the time. It's needed for my cybernetic character, my armortech character, and my synthweaving character.

But I hadn't posted anything about it because, presumably, it's just random luck of the draw. Until I noticed that I never seemed to have problems with getting Mullinine, the Grade 2 Underworld Metal. I did a number of tests just to see what sort of missions the game would give me for Grade 2, and you know what? It's the fairest distribution. I see good amounts of Metal and Fabric missions compared to every other Grade.

Okay. So maybe I'm just lucky. So I go check the GTN. I see maybe 1-4 pieces of Grade 1, 3, and 5 Underworld Metals on sale, a ton of Underworld Fabrics, and then ... stacks, upon stacks of 99 Mullinine.

So my question here is: is this working as intended? Because if all Grades of Underworld Trading functioned as Grade 2 did, I would have no complaints about the crew skill. It'd be working quite well to produce the missions we need.

Scavenging:

On the whole, scavenging seems to work very well in terms of missions and node availability. Except for Grade 1B materials, Aluminum and Laminoid. Here are the four issues:

1. They are 1B materials, which means you need to wait for Abundant (at minimum) or higher yield missions to appear. So what? This happens on all Grades. Except this compounds the problem by making it just that bit harder to collect materials.

2. For Republic side, you only get 1B nodes in the Works area. Everywhere else on Coruscant provides just 1A nodes (Desh and Silica.) You don't even get 1B nodes in Jedi Temple area -- that's mostly archaeology nodes.

3. Once past The Works area, which is only for one or two levels, your next chance of nodes is in Taris, but Taris is already rare for 1B nodes because they're competing for spawns with 2A (Bronzium/Plastoid) and 2B (Chanlon/Plasteel) nodes.

4. The recipes that require 1A materials tend to be wrists/bracers/gloves. These only need 2-4 of each 1A material. The recipes that require 1B materials tend to be chest/legging/boots. These require 6-8 of each 1B material.

5. With the exception of Grade 1 and Grade 6 materials, all the other grades have multiple planets including a rising tide of nodes, highest point of nodes, and falling tide of nodes, all overlapping with other node frequencies. What this means is that Grade 1 and Grade 6 materials don't have as many planets for you to gather from. That's fine with Grade 6 because Grade 6 materials don't have a 6A and 6B component. They're just Grade 6.

What this means is: I'm always short on aluminium and laminoid. If I'm crafting for alts, those two materials require me to make trips into The Works. It's annoying. I gather so much faster than newbies at that level so I feel embarrassed to be outstripping them for the nodes. If I see someone of the appropriate level trying to gather the nodes, I just leave the planet because I feel bad for them, but it means I have to come back later.

I can't be the only person who feels that there's way too many Desh/Silica nodes and not enough Aluminum/Laminoid nodes. Please add more Aluminium/Laminoid nodes to earlier sections of Coruscant/Dromund Kaas.

The metals vs fabrics issue is easy to understand. There are a few crew skills that need metal for all of their crafting categories. But the only time fabrics are used is for Synthweaving to craft light armor (medium and heavy use metal). So huge demand for metal, almost none for fabric. But as far as missions go they come up about even.

A good fix is to make all Synthweaving armor classes use fabric instead of just the one, or to make metal missions come up more often than fabric.

And I've seen the aluminum laminoid problem myself. Very annoying but also not super profitable for crafting so I avoid anything that uses them in crafting. More common nodes would definitely help.

The metals vs fabrics issue is easy to understand. There are a few crew skills that need metal for all of their crafting categories. But the only time fabrics are used is for Synthweaving to craft light armor (medium and heavy use metal). So huge demand for metal, almost none for fabric. But as far as missions go they come up about even.

A good fix is to make all Synthweaving armor classes use fabric instead of just the one, or to make metal missions come up more often than fabric.

 

And I've seen the aluminum laminoid problem myself. Very annoying but also not super profitable for crafting so I avoid anything that uses them in crafting. More common nodes would definitely help.

Personally, I think a better solution is to change the crew skill missions so that they cut lower skill gift missions out of the roster. Once a gift mission hits grey, it's no longer available.

The way gifts work in the game, I've never said to myself, oh, new companion at 0 affection, better start with Grade 1 gifts and work my way up. Nope. If I can give a Grade 5 gift, I'm giving a Grade 5 gift.

I'll always have a use for even moderate yield Grade 1 missions, but never grey gift missions. Once a gift mission goes grey, it's clutter.

Personally, I think a better solution is to change the crew skill missions so that they cut lower skill gift missions out of the roster. Once a gift mission hits grey, it's no longer available.

 

The way gifts work in the game, I've never said to myself, oh, new companion at 0 affection, better start with Grade 1 gifts and work my way up. Nope. If I can give a Grade 5 gift, I'm giving a Grade 5 gift.

 

I'll always have a use for even moderate yield Grade 1 missions, but never grey gift missions. Once a gift mission goes grey, it's clutter.

But for Armormech/Synthweavers, each mission is a chance to get a schematic, and gift missions cost less and take less time than metal/fabric missions do, so for those that want to grind for schems, that would be a big disadvantage. You can always scramble your missions to get more metal by passing through a load screen (such as entering or exiting your ship) if you aren't seeing enough of what you want.

But for Armormech/Synthweavers, each mission is a chance to get a schematic, and gift missions cost less and take less time than metal/fabric missions do, so for those that want to grind for schems, that would be a big disadvantage. You can always scramble your missions to get more metal by passing through a load screen (such as entering or exiting your ship) if you aren't seeing enough of what you want.

That is a good point. It has never occurred to me that people would grind the gift missions to unlock schematics.

To me, now, it just seems like Crew Skills are such a bad, horrible design, that grinding grey gift missions (which is essentially throwing away credits,) would actually be a worthwhile tactic.

As for scrambling missions by repeatedly going through load screens. That reminds me of how once upon a time, RPGs used to include a roll for stats at character generation. The developers found that this would just cause players to sit at the screen, re-rolling until they got the numbers that they wanted. It was neither fun nor interesting. So they got rid of it by just having points you can assign. Later on, they realised that even that was bad -- lot of players wouldn't know enough about the game to make meaningful decisions for their stat allocation at character creation, not to mention, for most classes, there was only one good choice -- everything else meant you gimped yourself in some way. Most modern MMOs don't even have stat allocation on character generation any more.

I think it's time to say goodbye to that annoying limited roster for Crew Missions. Sure, you don't get any randomness, but the tedium is taken away -- and it would solve a lot of the frustration.

The randomness with crew gathering missions only forces you to send a companion on a fast tier one missions until the mission you actually want comes up. In the case of UWT that means sending them on tier 1 gifts missions until you get the metal mission you want. I don't mind it so much but sometimes it can seem like there aren't enough metal missions and I'm just gathering stacks of tier one gifts.

(It's a lot easier than going through load screens however. Tier 1 gift missions are like 95 credits per and they only take a couple minutes, you can do it while you're questing.)

The randomness with crew gathering missions only forces you to send a companion on a fast tier one missions until the mission you actually want comes up. In the case of UWT that means sending them on tier 1 gifts missions until you get the metal mission you want. I don't mind it so much but sometimes it can seem like there aren't enough metal missions and I'm just gathering stacks of tier one gifts.

(It's a lot easier than going through load screens however. Tier 1 gift missions are like 95 credits per and they only take a couple minutes, you can do it while you're questing.)

If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying to make use the low cost and fast Tier 1 missions to reset the roster, because every time a companion comes back from a mission, the game repopulates the available missions.

Here's my problem with it: It's still a workaround to a flawed system.

I don't think that it's more fun or meaningful for us to send companions off on throwaway Tier 1 gift missions or zoning in and out of your ship repeatedly just so you can repopulate the roster of missions for the chance of getting the mission you need.

Since this suggestion continually rears its ugly head I have saved my response. See below.

Being able to choose what you want when you want sounds great...for the individual, but when you consider that everyone would have the same ability, it loses some of its luster. You may not care about material and crafted good value but there are a lot who do. The relative randomness of missions to acquire materials gives those materials more value. More valuable materials means more valuable crafted goods.

 

Further, be careful what you wish for. I see a couple of ways that BW could screw over a system of better choice:

 

1 - increase the cost of the missions: sure you can choose whichever material you want but instead of the mission costing 2000 credits it now costs 10,000

 

2 - decrease the return the missions provide: right now you get a certain amount of material from a mission depending on its "quality" (moderate, abundant, etc). Allow people to choose what material they want when they want and I guarantee that return will be cut in half.

 

3 - or worse BOTH of the above.

 

In any MMO, there is no limit on the supply of materials due to respawn of nodes and in the case of SWTOR - missions. The ONLY limiting factors available are time and money, which by the way happen to be interchangeable. If you have the time to be patient you can save money, if you have the money you can get materials more quickly by paying others.

 

The randomness of missions is an attempt to curb supply. You may not like it but at least you do not have to go foraging for EVERY material you need. That is a BIG step in MMOs.

That is a good point. It has never occurred to me that people would grind the gift missions to unlock schematics.

That's the only good thing about those missions.

I don't even bother anymore with the actual gift. If I'm close enough to vendor, I just trash it (unless ofc is a purple one). If I'm questing, I just destroy them. CBA. If I need affection from companions, I just go to the vendor and spam the proper gift.

I don't see why people gripe about the metal issue. It's only an issue if that's all you take.

If you balance the missions you take they come up about 33% of the time. I can always find rich or bountiful missions, they may be level 3 but often times the lower level items have the biggest ROI.

People balk at taking gift missions but selling the purple gifts to got on a rich mission can be as big of cash cow as ant metal.

People who bother with jumping through loading screens are really just trying for a few purple metals (or neural augs). But the low critical chance on those hamstrings the process. Focus on running all rich and bountiful missions at all levels and all types and sell all the excess. The money will roll in surprisingly fast because the pennies add up. And you'll still crit like before to sell purples for huge bucks.

The workarounds are out there.

The current system does nothing to restrict the supply of the materials and makes the players jump through hoops.

If they wanted to cut down on the amount of materials returned from a mission and/or adjust costs and/or time to run them, that would be okay with me.

At least I could send my companions on the missions that I wanted to send them on without entering and exiting my ship multiple times.

Heck, I would be okay with them putting missions on cooldowns, so I could only run a particular mission once every 24 hours or whatever.

As long as I could just run what was available without all the silly little tricks to force them to repopulate the list.

The metals vs fabrics issue is easy to understand. There are a few crew skills that need metal for all of their crafting categories. But the only time fabrics are used is for Synthweaving to craft light armor (medium and heavy use metal). So huge demand for metal, almost none for fabric. But as far as missions go they come up about even.

A good fix is to make all Synthweaving armor classes use fabric instead of just the one, or to make metal missions come up more often than fabric.

 

And I've seen the aluminum laminoid problem myself. Very annoying but also not super profitable for crafting so I avoid anything that uses them in crafting. More common nodes would definitely help.

They do not come up even. I, and others have tested this a number of times. The disparity is there in excess of 2 to1. Couple that with the demand for metal, the interference from gift missions (at over 3 to 1), and the disparity becomes very apparent.

Since this suggestion continually rears its ugly head I have saved my response. See below.

Your suggestion does not curb the problem, but simply alter the source of the problem. The problem of supply and demand being skewed beyond reason would still exist. It exists only for this particular item. All others are balanced, which would tend to demonstrate the fault in this particular system.

OP,

This has been an ongoing problem since launch. It was demonstrated to be so within weeks of the launch.

On a personal note, I've burnt out trying to craft for and level alts for this very reason. I've not really logged on for 20 days now. I find that to be very disheartening for a game that I otherwise enjoy very much. It would be to everyone's advantage to fix this with the new patch, but I'm not really holding out hope.

I don't see why people gripe about the metal issue. It's only an issue if that's all you take.

If you balance the missions you take they come up about 33% of the time. I can always find rich or bountiful missions, they may be level 3 but often times the lower level items have the biggest ROI.

People balk at taking gift missions but selling the purple gifts to got on a rich mission can be as big of cash cow as ant metal.

 

People who bother with jumping through loading screens are really just trying for a few purple metals (or neural augs). But the low critical chance on those hamstrings the process. Focus on running all rich and bountiful missions at all levels and all types and sell all the excess. The money will roll in surprisingly fast because the pennies add up. And you'll still crit like before to sell purples for huge bucks.

It's not about the return on investment. It's not about the credits.

It's about having to do stupid things to circumvent a flawed system. It's about wasting time.

The workarounds are out there.

 

The current system does nothing to restrict the supply of the materials and makes the players jump through hoops.

 

If they wanted to cut down on the amount of materials returned from a mission and/or adjust costs and/or time to run them, that would be okay with me.

 

At least I could send my companions on the missions that I wanted to send them on without entering and exiting my ship multiple times.

 

 

Heck, I would be okay with them putting missions on cooldowns, so I could only run a particular mission once every 24 hours or whatever.

As long as I could just run what was available without all the silly little tricks to force them to repopulate the list.

Yes. Someone here gets it.

They do not come up even. I, and others have tested this a number of times. The disparity is there in excess of 2 to1. Couple that with the demand for metal, the interference from gift missions (at over 3 to 1), and the disparity becomes very apparent.

That's my observation with Underworld Trading too, except for Tier 2 (as you may have noted in my opening post.)

For some weeks, I found that it was much better value to just wait for a Rich or Bountiful mission. Moderate missions tended to return just two metals. Abundant missions felt like a break even point. So every time I logged on or switch zones, or when someone returned from a mission, I'd scour the Tiers, starting from Tier 1 through to Tier 6, looking for Rich or Bountiful missions.

What was the result? Too much Mullinine. I tried to sell it, but there were already stacks of 99 Mullinine on the GTN. All other tiers had 3-4 pieces of metal for sale, not stacks, pieces. So I stopped sending companions out on Tier 2 metal missions.

I thought, okay, over a period of weeks, that's got to be weird luck. But you know, I've got two characters with Underworld Trading. It happened to both of them. There has got to be something up with Tier 2.

But that's the thing. If this is a bug with Tier 2, I don't want it fixed. If nothing else, Tier 2 is the only tier of Underworld Trading that I feel works well.