Mass manipulation generator needs to be removed from level 30 crafted components.

This needs to be done or level 30 craftables need to be removed from the game. I state this because the only way to my knowledge to get these components is to clear HM SV or HM TFB. Now the logic is if you can clear either operation you will be getting an abundance of gear that contains level 31 components so why would you need a level 30 component crafting material. Why not just use them to crafter level 31 gear at a future date.

If you believe that by removing the mass manipulation generator is a bad idea because it allows peeps to gear quicker then you can easily just double the current mats. It will take some time to get 8 equalizers.

I don't think that will happen due to the complexity and number of changes to schematics / balancing mats.

I SUGGEST the following instead:

DROP in all 55 OP instances (TFB/S&V - HM/SM) at least 2 in each and keep 4 in total for S&V HM.

• TFB - Drop one at each of the Two Original Chest locations (Loot groups now)
  
• S&V - Both Armstraders would drop one Mass Generator with Exotics
  

Right now many teams are just skipping S&V Armstraders since Exotics are like ~20k on GTN and not worth it.

I suspect the limited number of Mass M. Generators was on purpose to keep down the explosive gearing of level 30 crafting market (congrats - prices are like 800k each now). The actual impact has driven prices up on those as well the related items used to craft with them. (Common to see $1+ million level 30 crafted items)

Well whatever the solution BW needs to figure this out because the current model makes crafting level 30 components impractical.

I agree.. Run a couple HM FP's and "Poof" we have instant gear. (Even if it's not Min/Max)

Plan "B" is run dailies for 2-3 days to afford the Mats and find a crafter to make for you a single item or you purchase for all those credits you just made after 2-3 days. LOL

Cost of crafting 28 stuff is just crazy cheap as well to make.

God forbid they actually add some difficulty in crafting.

The issue with mass manipulators is not that they are difficult to obtain.

The issue is with the things they are useful for, which let's face it, are pretty ******.

Who's gonna waste millions of credits to craft second best gear? And even if someone does, who would be willing to pay the high price to buy the crafted mod if they can get a better one by running an operation?

Also, even if we let this aside and consider the lvl 30 mods somewhat "useful", the difficulty in obtaining the mass manipulators only results in people crafting for mats, which doesn't promote a healthy economy where the prices are determined by the market (GTN).

I like that the mat drops in them. Someone in the raid gets to make nice creds off of it. It's just an added incentive to do the HMs.

It also makes sense to me; the mat will remain fairly rare this way.

So I vote to keep it in the HMs.

It is ridiculous, the way that crafting is currently setup. Mass Manipulation generators do drop on the last two bosses of SM S&V 16 man, but not 8 man. This limits the market flow to such an extent that the economy is practically non-existent. It is impossible for the economy to be in any sort of functional state as things currently stand. The raw mats are practically unobtainable. It is vastly easier to simply farm Elite coms or even get Arkanian drops than it is to obtain mats for crafted mods. I'm not sure why this was ever considered a good design, but it *isn't* working.

My opinion is that the rarity of the Mass Manipulation generator would be appropriate if they were used in the crafting of 31s (but not 30s). It takes about as much time to farm enough Ultimate coms to get a few mods as it would take to get the same number of Mass Manipulation generators (adjusting for RNG). Thus, crafting would be an essentially equal route to obtaining level 72 gear. Of course, level 72 gear isn't craftable, so the point is moot.

The really salient thing is that level 69 gear should be craftable solely with the blue exotic mats. Without this change, we will never see the GTN economy return to the health it was in pre-2.0.

God forbid they actually add some difficulty in crafting.

This is ridiculous. The difficulty in crafting grade 30 is totally inadequate to their worth. Manipulators are too rare which makes them expensive. It's not about difficulty in crafting, it's about difficulty in SELLING. No one is gonna pay million + for the enhancements which is far from best-in-slot and will be replaced soon.

Just because you see modifications on gtn put on for large sums it doesn't mean they sell and someone is making good credits on them.

I'd say don't bother crafting until they fix things or manipulator prices will go down drastically. 200k is what they are actually worth, I say, despite their rarity. They are rare but they craft TRASH.

At least it's better than the crafting situation pre 2.0... Top tier gear should NOT be craftable, ever. If you want that gear you should have to earn it by killing the bosses (being able to ship gear across toons in legacy shells is still a problem, but at least you have to be able to down the content on one character to gear up another). That said, I wouldn't mind if the generators were not used for mods/enhancements, much like the matrices were only for armorings and hilts, but mods and enhancements were just stabalizers. 69 gear is kinda trash anyway given how easy the two "hard" mode operations are right now, so allowing people to craft full 69s isnt an issue since it takes like a week to get them the real way anyway.

What I would actually drastically prefer to any change in crafting would be the ability to reforge enhancements similar to what you can do with gear in WoW. For instance, say you have an enhancement with 46 End, 52 Pwr, 79 Surge. For some credits and maybe a few crafting mats, you should be able to switch equivalent stats, i.e. change the surge to accuracy, alacrity, or shield and change the power to crit, defense, or absorb. I feel like this would eliminate the need for crafting pretty much entirely, since the only true and important benefit to pre-2.0 crafting was if you were an enhancement or mod short of being fully min/maxed you did not have to take an entire piece of gear that someone else could use a lot more only to vendor the shell and mod and swap out your enhancements.

As an example of this, I play a marauder and have the underworld head. It's a good armoring (might 31) a deft mod 31, but the enhancement is power and alacrity. As it is now I will need to get either a second main hand, off hand, or chest to get the power surge enhancement I want, and then waste potentially a 72 hilt that someone else could use simply because someone thought it was a good idea to put alacrity on marauder gear. Consuming crafting mats to realign your stats on gear of a level you have already earned enables optimization for end game gear without the need to waste 66-75% of a loot drop, but would still make it so only people who can clear the content can obtain the gear of an appropriate level, and provides a good use for the rarer crafting mats that as of now are kinda useless.

Obviously the idea isnt perfect, and perhaps more obviously im sure no one at Bioware will read this or care, but I think that may be a much better solution than just making it easy for everyone to craft themselves great gear they dont deserve practically for free.

I like your idea One Shot! It would be nice to see CRAFTING become a viable skill again.

The ability to re-Stat an item might run into some issues as the naming convention might be tweaked instead.

The downside is that crafters that have learned certain schematics would become useless. It would be a severe game changing mentality to shift from crafters making certain items to doing modifications. Maybe crafters can make a "KIT" like the MK-9 kits that allow a one time change to a certain craftable name/config.

At least it's better than the crafting situation pre 2.0... Top tier gear should NOT be craftable, ever.

I agree with this statement.

At least it's better than the crafting situation pre 2.0... Top tier gear should NOT be craftable, ever.

The stupidest anti-crafter sentiment I ever heard, and sadly heard too often eversince WoW happened.

The stupidest anti-crafter sentiment I ever heard, and sadly heard too often eversince WoW happened.

Well I'm for crafter's but it's my honest opinion that you shouldn't be able to get the best gear in game without stepping into an endgame operation. Now if they want to release a new operation that drops a new tier of gear and make it so that the level 31 components are craftable that is fine with me.

Well I'm for crafter's but it's my honest opinion that you shouldn't be able to get the best gear in game without stepping into an endgame operation. Now if they want to release a new operation that drops a new tier of gear and make it so that the level 31 components are craftable that is fine with me.

What you're suggesting is pretty much what we already have: we can craft second best gear but not the best.

Endgame crafting aside, the game has always treated crafters like a dog. Bioware throws them a bone every now and then (be it augmented orange gear, augmentation kits or augments) but in general, crafting has never been a great source of income. Since the Cartel Market was introduced with its much better looking armor sets, weapons/lightsabers, mounts and color crystals, things have been even worse for crafters, who only get to make credits when something new is added (e.g. Aug. Kits MK-9) and even then everyone rushes in to craft it so prices go down very fast.

Crafted endgame gear was NEVER supposed to be a viable alternative to raiding and frankly, how many people had the credits or even considered it necessary to have BiS PVE gear from the GTN, if they were not raiders?

It's not like the rest of the game is hard enough to require BiS gear.

Crafted endgame gear was a way for raiders to min/max their gear without having to /roll on something just for an enhancement or a mod. Obviously people abused it because they could RE crafted gear but THAT was the part that needed fixing, not endgame crafting in general.

What we had pre-2.0 was endgame crafting that didn't work because too many people were able to learn the schematics. So we reached a point when the mats were more expensive than the final product (even though molecular stabilizers were fairly easy to get for a while before 2.0). But, people were at least able to use their crew skills to make useful items.

What we have now, is endgame crafting where the mats are extremely expensive and they are used to craft items that are not worth it, because they are not BiS, they do not have set bonuses and, worst of all, drop in simple HM FPs. Why buy a single mod for 1+ mil credits when you can simply farm HM FPs for it, al the while getting elite comms so that even if you are not lucky enough to get it you can still buy it for comms?

Lastly, there is a misconception that having BiS gear makes you a better player; it doesn't. I've seen people in BiS gear who had absolutely no idea what to do and I've seen people in less-than-perfect gear be extremely useful in an operation/FP. Gear and high parses in MoX never made anyone a great player.

So let's call it like it is: This is Raiders considering anyone who doesn't raid not good enough to have their gear - and I partially agree with that, because a. if you don't raid you don't need BiS and b. they should be rewarded for running the same content over and over again.

But there are other ways to reward Raiders without punishing Crafters by rendering what they find entertaining in the game, essentially, useless.

At least it's better than the crafting situation pre 2.0... Top tier gear should NOT be craftable, ever.

 

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the only true and important benefit to pre-2.0 crafting was if you were an enhancement or mod short of being fully min/maxed you did not have to take an entire piece of gear that someone else could use a lot more only to vendor the shell and mod and swap out your enhancements.

That was kind of the point. Since launch, EVERY tier of gear has had **** itemization and the developers have specifically stated that they purposely give you ****** stats (i.e., patron armorings on sniper gear, accuracy on tank gear, high endurance on dps/heal gear, etc.) to extend the gear grind for players.

That was the point of crafting pre-2.0, so you that you could do the raid, get your basic gear, then swap out an enhancement here or there, or even mod And enhancement.

Now that that's gone, you're probably better off ripping an adept enhancement off of a black market piece and using that than having a bunch of a stat that you don't need.

The current crafting system is just garbage, can't craft the endgame gear (leading to the above problems you just pointed out yourself, getting a piece for just an enhancement when somebody else can use the whole piece, loot fights, etc.), and the second best gear, which Can be crafted, is largely pointless to craft, since you can get the stuff more easily from grinding 55hm fps.

Economy in the game is definitely pretty ****ed though. First week, the elemental equalizers were like 900k each, now 30k, lol. The 28 armorings/mods/enhancements were like 400-700k each, now 70k. The lack of credits going around is definitely going to negatively impact those who spend real life money on cartel coins to buy gear with the sole intention of selling for Lots of in-game credits. Once people can't even get 200k for a full gear set that cost them $10, they'll stop buying cartel coins, which will in turn obviously hurt bioware's profits. Even some jagoff like myself can see the problems that will arise by the in-game economy crashing. They really should get an economist on their team, because clearly they don't have one at all right now.

Right now many teams are just skipping S&V Armstraders since Exotics are like ~20k on GTN and not worth it.

This is true and funny.

So they took out the chests and put tougher opponents to fight to get those mats, but now the mats are worthless so there's no point in fighting the tougher mobs.....what was the point of this again?

and you have to be geared in 30s to get the item that is used to craft 30s, interesting...

Well thought out design?

The intention was to kill crafting. Special snowflake raiders were upset that players had "their" gear without setting foot into raids (buy 27s, slot in columi). The game took a major philosophy shift in 2.0. 1.7 handed out entry level gear for pvp and pve at cap. Now the only way to get the set bonus is to raid. Campaign doesn't count since it was itemized by a monkey with Downs syndrome.

Besides you're totally supposed to be biochem for endgame. Reusable adrenals (even if inferior to blues) arre worth a hutt's weight in Arodium

We need to get back on track. The issue isn't whether or not you should be able to craft the final tier of gear. Most people that I have talked with are content with crafting a tier below endgame. The issue is that you need to do the highest level of endgame content to get the materials so that you craft the tier below endgame.

Hopefully, when new endgame is released that has better gear bioware will allow the verpine level gear to be crafted. It seems like a beneficial model that should satisfy all parties involved.

Well I'm for crafter's but it's my honest opinion that you shouldn't be able to get the best gear in game without stepping into an endgame operation. Now if they want to release a new operation that drops a new tier of gear and make it so that the level 31 components are craftable that is fine with me.

1) Crafting materials or blueprints should NEVER be exclusive to group exclusive endgame content. That's not crafting, that's a sign of elaborate loot aquisition.

Group exclusive endgame content having a better aquisition ratio for crafting materials than other content is acceptable, but it should still not *ever* be an exclusive.

Similarly, group exclusive blueprints are acceptable if their exclusivity is derived from their appearance, while their specific stats are also available from blueprints obtainable through other means. Example: a blueprint for a black robe as an operation exclusive, while a blueprint for a white version of that robe is obtainable through other means.

2) Crafting the best gear should be made more elaborate.

Crafting times can be increased (where are the 24 hour crafting times we saw in beta?).

Components aquisition can be made more elaborate (repeatable single-player-missions with the specific goal of obtaining non-tradable materials for the crafter).

Some materials can be made extremely rare.

Crafting components can require cooperation between crafters, where items created by one crafter serve as material to another crafter.

One of WoW's big failures was, that it became raid-or-die at some point. Crafters were the first to notice that change. It would be a BIG shame if this game went down the same chute, and this early already.

Dude. I am from ToFN as well. I actually call for a darn boycott of this thing. Prices should range from 200-300k. They are more expensive than the stuff they can be turned into, which is ridiculous. No one is willing to pay mods which aren't best in slot and cost half -a-million

It looks like Bioware mistaken mass manipulation generator for the Isotope-5! What the hell is Iso-5 for anyway? No uses! Mass manipulators were meant for end-game gear but they decided to scrap the idea but didn't tidy up properly.

The intention was to kill crafting. Special snowflake raiders were upset that players had "their" gear without setting foot into raids (buy 27s, slot in columi). The game took a major philosophy shift in 2.0. 1.7 handed out entry level gear for pvp and pve at cap. Now the only way to get the set bonus is to raid. Campaign doesn't count since it was itemized by a monkey with Downs syndrome.

 

Besides you're totally supposed to be biochem for endgame. Reusable adrenals (even if inferior to blues) arre worth a hutt's weight in Arodium

This is how I feel it. In our last game and also before 2.0 I was happy being a crafter and used the credits I earned to buy the end level gear. Kept me piling gear on the GTN for people to buy (droid, ship, armour etc). Ive never been a end game player or raider but like to spend the credits I earned buying the gear so if someone needed help or were a tank short on a guild run I could step in and help. So the person selling and me buying were happy and I made sure i stocked alot of gear for all levels on the GTN weekly.

To an extent I can still do this (with 30 armorings and enhancements) but since 2.0 I now have to raid now to get the top stuff as its no longer available on GTN and players no longer have the option to sell as its all BOP and hence ive simply stopped crafting as little need for credits now as nothing else to buy I need.

It looks like Bioware mistaken mass manipulation generator for the Isotope-5! What the hell is Iso-5 for anyway? No uses! Mass manipulators were meant for end-game gear but they decided to scrap the idea but didn't tidy up properly.

The Isotope-5 requiring schematics are pretty decent atm. They are provided from the vendor next to the crew skills vendor on fleet.

I do agree with you if they replaced the MMGs with Iso-5 for Level 30 components we would have a better crafting system.

I would be okay with allowing the MMGs and Iso-5 to craft Level 31 Components given that the schematics were random drops in HM TFB and HM SV.

Couple issues here.

1) They made the Level 28 stuff too easy to craft and they are dirt cheap.

2) They made BiS non-craftable. (Debate will always continue on this due to Casual vs. Elite POV)

3) They made drop rate and obtainable nature of the MMG pointless. (IE: Need 69+ gear to reach them)

Removing Crafting of BiS created a vacuum that used to address the lack of a properly balanced gear stats. Basically that was done on purpose to drive up the time it takes to gear into BiS. The sad part is many of the progression guilds are gearing up, but get very little value out of these runs as they can't sell any craftable BiS gear and the only real "Value" is the MMG being sold on the GTN for 800k-1.2mil.

Basically. They killed the economy and crafting for sake of dragging out gear progression and at the same time most likely bored most the crafters to tears. Heck I've already learned almost a dozen 30 Schems and the gear drops like candy in HM FP's so it's not hard to have plenty of opportunity.

Resolution. Do we have one? Not really, but several suggestions have been made (in the past as well recently).

PLAN A: I'm calling on Oneshot's idea I think on this one, but it's a great idea. The ability to re-engineer your ENH is the key to making this game functional (Quality of Life). Throw the crafting community a BONE here and create something like the AUG KITS that allows you to CHANGE out for a fee with a "ENH-KIT" the type of ENH you have. You take said 69 or 72 Mod/Enh to the table and "FIX" it to another model (Has to be a specific model in the menu) and convert with a FEE, the ENH and ENH-KIT. The only catch is you can't change the main stat type (Values YES, but Aptitude 30 mod would only convert to Mettle mod's). The big tickets "Solution" is the crappy ENH that are in most gear. Ability to PICK ANY of the same level ENH. ADEPT > QUICK SAVANT or SAVANT or whatever.

PLAN B: Suggestion from long time ago prior to 2.0 was to drop TOKENS for MOD/ENH in ENDGAME and gear dropped tokens include just the Armor and Shell. The (Like in PVP now) you can go purchase the MOD/ENH of your choice - ARMOR is also not available.