Critable orange gear undermines intent of removable epic base mods

100% sign @ OP.

Never seen so short thinking devs in any other mmporg.

OP is right one hundred and ten percent, I said the same thing when someone told me that the crafted orange gear would now be able to crit.

Biowares attempts at being different from the 'wow clone' mmo's is actually setting them back. I think someone should tell them of the idiom don't fix what isn't broken, meaning just put in a G O D D A M N E D wardrobe instead of create some convoluted idea for a system that has been in place in countless mmo's, but I guess bioware knows what they are doing... I mean the auction house is proof of that right.

While I like the idea of being able to get crits on oranges... I find that it won't help in a lot of cases, for reasons already mentioned... the coolest looks are all from commendation purchases, or flashpoints/ops.

So many of the orange items are simply not craftable. My sorc uses the Supreme Inquisitor set. I am definately looking forward to ripping put mods from other things to make this even better... but the two items I can't give up are the pants and chest, because lets face it... skirts are bad. heh.

with them being such a rare drop, would I risk trying to re a set to get the recipie? yes.... since I have a set already. Means getting the augment slots will take ages, and lots of cash... because the re will fail. a lot. (I know my luck)

That said... they haven't said that the set bonus moves with the mods for the removable base mods. I think it's likely they won't... because it would offset exactly the problem you are discussing. Yes, I can have augments on things... but no set bonuses.

thinking it's a step in the right direction, anyhow. I don't expect perfection out of the gate... nor do I expect each and every change to be perfect as it goes live... some things will take some trial and error experimentation... the fact that changes ARE being made is GOOD.

Start worrying when they stop changing things.

I have point to question on the other side of the majority of this thread. First let me state this fact, I am an armstech on my main personally, and there will probably be some bias in my own benefit in this issue. I'm looking at this from the weapon perspective of this, not the armor - so lets work with this some.

From what I noticed during my leveling Armstech and Reverse Engineering thing: It appears that you cannot learn everything from dismantling random drops you find. In fact, the only schematics I've learned through reverse engineering are those that I have made myself. This is probably my own luck, but I haven't learned Orange schematics until reaching that 400 mark.

Now for me to make one of those orange weapons: I have get my hands on multiple Biometric Crystal Alloys. Which is somewhat annoying to do to make said orange weapons (excluding the reverse engineering constantly to try to learn variants and then try to crit it as is).

Now lets look at weapons that we CAN'T modify. Imperial Agents and Smugglers know these too well: Vibroknives and Scatterguns mostly, Techblades and Techstaves to a lesser extent. We can't modify these and have to look at them base value. if we have augment slots on them, it gives us some sort of customization on those weapons. Why worry about crafting these without the chance to have a critical creation on these and make that Augment mod slot open.

This is just my opinion and I wanted to give a second half to the debate along with my reasoning. While the crittable gear vs endgame rewards is a good question, my debate with you is going to be mostly on the vibroknives and scatterguns. If you remove the ability to crit these, why should I bother crafting them as an armstech?

Wouldn't the simple solution be to just add augmentation kits that the crafters can make that anyone can use on any piece of gear to add a augment slot. That way noone can claim a orange piece of gear is superior to a ops item both with the same mods. Cause your have to raid to get that piece anyway so why shouldn't they be allowed to transfer the mods to a orange they like the look of better.

You know, you give someone a little too much rope... and you cross your fingers they'll hang themselves... Oh well

i have an idea...let's give everybody the option to have whatever gear they want with whatever stats they want just after choosing their advanced class. also, when creating a character, allow uploading pictures so your toon can look exactly how you want. that way everybody can have what they want with no excuse. this can't go wrong.

the augment slot is a crit...it's not guaranteed. why should you want something to make an augment slot on everything you can get? because you want everything as easy as possible. if you could simply add an augment slot to raid gear, and raid gear is better, nobody would craft it. then you would complain that the crafting is useless in the game and they need to fix that. i mean seriously, why not just make all mods have xx amount of points available and let you decide what stats it boosts?

pve gear vs pve gear+augment which are you gonna choose? thats basically the argument. What is the largest increase on max level epic augments? 30 (don't remember). Thats 10 augment slots to make use of (helm,chest,gloves,pants,boots,bracers for armor, earpiece, implantsx2, weapon). 11 if its a marauder. so thats +300 to a stat of your choosing, of course you're going to choose it. Whatever cap you're trying to reach you dont have to worry about it.

now pragmatically, the rate at which you acquire these pieces depends both on crafting crit rates, and getting the pve to pull the mods so theres a time synch involved which isn't a bad thing. It also would allow for people to progress a little faster towards more end game content (craft gear+daily mods+augment) can compete with pve hm/ops gear.

its good/bad/ugly.

side notes: how long until an operative rolls into pvp with marauder armor on, warriors dressed as bh's and vice versa with decked out pve gear?

Thats what they mean by extractable base mods. It means the set bonuses will move. They have already said this.