I haven't read if you are denied to ability to earn planetary comms for missions below your current level, and I am highly concerned how this change to the comms system will impact the GTN and crafters. I apologize if this is too long for you to read, as most forum-ites have the attention span of a knat.

Way to make a compelling case. I assume this is just another random QQ.

The comms system has nothing to do with impact on crafting. The comms you get allows you to buy crap level gear mods, only good for companions and maybe totally new characters. No one is going to pay hundreds of thousands of credits per mod for crafted mods for companions, and its not difficult to get a superior set of "basic" gear for your character.

Crafting needs to be gutted and redone to be viable in this game, blaming comms for craftings issues is misplaced.

The comms system has nothing to do with impact on crafting. The comms you get allows you to buy crap level gear mods, only good for companions and maybe totally new characters. No one is going to pay hundreds of thousands of credits per mod for crafted mods for companions, and its not difficult to get a superior set of "basic" gear for your character.

 

Crafting needs to be gutted and redone to be viable in this game, blaming comms for craftings issues is misplaced.

Wow, this post, Its just so wrong in every way.

One could only conclude from your post that the devs should remove the planetary comms and vendors altogether, as they are so pointless to have in the game.

Seriously, only an idiot would say that the comms/vendors have no impact on crafting, they are directly competing for a space. economics 101.

Nothing is as easy as it seems, the devs must play a balancing game, if you were to remove the comms and vendors, would enough new crafters enter the market and pick up the slack and provide all the stuff necessary to progress in the game, thus lowering the prices? or would there be massive holes where people run into brick walls because their gear has become so obsolete, and they cant find replacments?

In a way, its really too late for a call like that, it should of been done at release, then tuned as the game matured, because to supply a server, hundreds would have to enter the market now to supply enough gear for levelers, and I just cant see that happening.

A possible solution is open up the faucet on all the 1 - 49 crafting mats including the purple, so that niche can be exploited more fully by anyone wanting to enter the market.

I think what you are not understanding is that some people don't want to see how hard the game can be. I prefer things to be easy, concentrating instead on the story and the exploration. Also, my level doesn't directly determine how easy the game is, my equipment does. Why should I be forced to swear in frustration and pull my hair out to play the game in a way I don't enjoy? What difference does my play style make to you?

 

Also, I don't do end-game content. Once I get to that point, I reroll. What you are proposing is that somehow, my play style and how I enjoy playing affects you. It does not. Get over yourself.

I would think the obvious response to a statement like this is... yes, if changes are made to a particular system to favor a particular type of player, then it absolutely affects every other type of player. Now... I am not an MMO player by nature. SWTOR is my first, and I've actively avoided them in the past due to the inability to rely on any group of people when there is not community incentive. Many of the basic design choices of the game are not my thing. However, I also embrace the "when in rome" concept of community interaction. I accept that this is an MMO, and that it comes with certain requirements and obligations on my part, and that participation in the game world involves adapting to the playstyles therein.

I did not come into SWTOR, point out all the ridiculous design choices as compared to any respectable modern RPG, and insist that the game be tailored to the way I want to play. When in Rome.

It seems to me you have not embraced the nature of the MMO in your playtime... and that's fine for you. However, then acknolwedge that the game is designed around players that DO embrace those basic MMO concepts, and as a result of your deviation from those concepts in your own play, you may not be able to get the best experience from said system. Remember too that it was your choice. It is not the game's responsibility to adapt to you.

Wow, this post, Its just so wrong in every way.

One could only conclude from your post that the devs should remove the planetary comms and vendors altogether, as they are so pointless to have in the game.

 

Seriously, only an idiot would say that the comms/vendors have no impact on crafting, they are directly competing for a space. economics 101.

Nothing is as easy as it seems, the devs must play a balancing game, if you were to remove the comms and vendors, would enough new crafters enter the market and pick up the slack and provide all the stuff necessary to progress in the game, thus lowering the prices? or would there be massive holes where people run into brick walls because their gear has become so obsolete, and they cant find replacments?

In a way, its really too late for a call like that, it should of been done at release, then tuned as the game matured, because to supply a server, hundreds would have to enter the market now to supply enough gear for levelers, and I just cant see that happening.

A possible solution is open up the faucet on all the 1 - 49 crafting mats including the purple, so that niche can be exploited more fully by anyone wanting to enter the market.

I think, ultimately, the only to ever ensure crafting will always have a place in the economy, and in fact be highly sought after by consumers, is to differentiate player created goods from those generated by the game.

One way to do this would be to create a sort of... condition? system. In the real world most things devalue if they're not new, first-time purchases. You could buy a shirt in a store, walk out the door, and immediately sell it to someone else, and it's value would autmatically be less, even if only through perception, for the fact you could no longer consider the item "new" or "unowned." A similar concept could be applied to items sold second-hand on the GTN, where items received from the game and then resold on the GTN would have some aspect of their nature changed in a way that would make them slightly less desireable than a crafted version of that item. Perhaps in a mod a slight reduction in the stats for that item over a crafted verion, or perhaps less armor value... something to that effect. Not enough to render the "drop" item useless, but to merely make a crafted item more attractive - and not for the dropped item itself... only when the item was resold on the market.

You could also turn that concept on its head, by making crafted items somehow slightly better than non-crafted items of the same type in all situations.

In an effort to better establish a proper learning curve for crafting, and ensure a proper distribution of many crafters building cheap items at the low level, and a few elite crafters building the rarest and most valuable high end items, there should be a more... expansive learning curve. Currently that curve is more like a straight line, with no real added incentive to continue to the farthest reaches in any particular category. That could be changed to ensure that few crafters would ever be able to reach the absolute peaks of the profession, but that when they were there, they could produce some of the rarest goods, largely competition free from each other (making no crafter ever able to learn more than a fraction of what's out there, like in real life), and able to make a living from their expertise.

You would have to run planetary missions for the comms. I don't think they would come from Raiding and 5-mans at end game level. But I could be wrong.

Either way its far easier for you to craft the items plus the amount of planetary commendations you can get from missions seems very limited and the amount you have to spend for some are ridiculously high especially considering the limit of commendations one person can have.

As someone who is currently farming planetary comms on my lvl 55, i can tell you that it takes a very long (and boring) time to get even a decent amount of comms.

(and if you are wondering why im farming comms its because im trying to buy all the blasters available for planetary comms to test on my youtube channel)

I love the comm system the way it is. Before I rarely if ever paid attention to any comms from any planet, and it was a wasted mechanic in the game. Now with the lower limit you are 'encouraged' to use them, and mod up your gear every few levels. It's awesome!

I can completely ignore greedy crafters as well,. these guys had a corner on the market and were charging OUTRAGEOUS amounts of credits.. This saved me.. I am NOT paying 55,000c for a stupid level 35 armor mod, and it was about time this changed.. Prices are already being driven down, and this is a good thing.

I always hated how crafters tried to control games. They remind me of greedy corporations in the real world that always try to control everything people do. It gets disgusting after awhile, and now we have alternatives to keep the economy in check.

I am NOT paying 55,000c for a stupid level 35 armor mod, and it was about time this changed.. Prices are already being driven down, and this is a good thing.

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Bingo! Exactly my thoughts...

I can completely ignore greedy crafters as well,. these guys had a corner on the market and were charging OUTRAGEOUS amounts of credits.. This saved me.. I am NOT paying 55,000c for a stupid level 35 armor mod, and it was about time this changed.. Prices are already being driven down, and this is a good thing.

The only mods I consistently saw those prices on pre-2.0 were the purple ones. And i'd say it's a perfectly reasonable price, given the value of the materials (9k for just 1 purple material, and you need 4 of them + the usual materials to craft the item, not to mention their rarity in case a crafter worked self-supplied) and the reverse engineering required.

For blue mods, the prices were generally between 3k and 16k. I know, since I posted plenty of them, and wouldn't have sold them if I had asked for anything more. 3k untill about lvl 20, then climbing up to roughly 16k for a lvl 41 mod, to then enter a steep decline down to maybe 4k for the lvl 48 mods.

Though it is very possible that all the reasonably priced mods were sold out when you were looking, or that some GTN flipper was trying to take over, which happened rather regularly on the mods market. The latter means it was NOT the crafters charging rediculous prices, but someone "playing the market" as they like to call it. And let me tell you, it took quite some effort to kick those leeches out of the system again. I really would've liked it if crafted mods had only been sellable on the GTN by their crafters, making resale through the GTN impossible. The market would certainly have looked different. Just the "OMG free market!" leeches would've started complaining, but ah well, who cares about THEM?

I would think the obvious response to a statement like this is... yes, if changes are made to a particular system to favor a particular type of player, then it absolutely affects every other type of player.

You are not talking about the same thing I was. It's true that any change they make affects everyone. It's also true that how I choose to play does NOT affect you in the slightest. There's nothing unfair with the system. I'm not doing anything that anyone else can't do. If you want more challenge, then you certainly have the ability to deny yourself comm upgrades to your current level and that's perfectly ok. What is NOT ok is for you to go on a tantrum and say that I have no right to play the other way. I enjoy different things about the game than you do, and despite what you believe, that's perfectly OK too.

It seems to me you have not embraced the nature of the MMO in your playtime... and that's fine for you. However, then acknowledge that the game is designed around players that DO embrace those basic MMO concepts, and as a result of your deviation from those concepts in your own play, you may not be able to get the best experience from said system. Remember too that it was your choice. It is not the game's responsibility to adapt to you.

You are wrong in that they design the game for ONLY one type of player. If you were right, I'd not be able to play the way I like. And it would be wrong to design the game so rigidly that people could only play one way. The goal of any game designer is to get as many people to play and subscribe as possible. That means having a diverse system that is adaptable to many styles of play.

Also, I'm not missing out. I've done all the end-game things in WoW before I got here. I'm thoroughly burned out on grouping with idiot pugs containing morons with bad attitudes that think the world revolves around them. I'm sick unto death tired of dailies. I never did like Raids because of how stupidly complicated they are, and I have zero interest in the gear grind at end game that is invalidated the moment an expansion comes out. However, I do enjoy questing and exploring and the game easily supports this. My play style is perfectly acceptable, as is yours and everyone else’s. Just because you have a narrow minded view of what an MMO should be doesn't mean that the game designers need to remove options to hammer the system into your narrow minded point of view. It's fine the way it is.

The only mods I consistently saw those prices on pre-2.0 were the purple ones. And i'd say it's a perfectly reasonable price, given the value of the materials (9k for just 1 purple material, and you need 4 of them + the usual materials to craft the item, not to mention their rarity in case a crafter worked self-supplied) and the reverse engineering required.

 

For blue mods, the prices were generally between 3k and 16k. I know, since I posted plenty of them, and wouldn't have sold them if I had asked for anything more. 3k untill about lvl 20, then climbing up to roughly 16k for a lvl 41 mod, to then enter a steep decline down to maybe 4k for the lvl 48 mods.

 

This would a true statement last summer.. but from last fall onward.... you are looking through rose tinted glasses. And the crafter greed (and my friend.. it was greed to price predatorally on sub level mods) caused a general inflationary pressure on a wide range of sub-level items as lower level characters who did not have a cash cow 50 were trying to scrape up credits to buy mods at inflated prices.

The change here is difficult for some crafters, but good for the overall playerbase and economy. If the crafters cannot adjust... they were not good crafters to begin with IMO.. just opportunists. Good crafters move with the market forces AND.. competition from the in game world is healthy.

I love the comm system the way it is. Before I rarely if ever paid attention to any comms from any planet, and it was a wasted mechanic in the game. Now with the lower limit you are 'encouraged' to use them, and mod up your gear every few levels. It's awesome!

 

I can completely ignore greedy crafters as well,. these guys had a corner on the market and were charging OUTRAGEOUS amounts of credits.. This saved me.. I am NOT paying 55,000c for a stupid level 35 armor mod, and it was about time this changed.. Prices are already being driven down, and this is a good thing.

 

I always hated how crafters tried to control games. They remind me of greedy corporations in the real world that always try to control everything people do. It gets disgusting after awhile, and now we have alternatives to keep the economy in check.

Yes the comm system, like the social system, was a half-thought out, half-abandoned system for the longest time, but making it meaningful at the expense of crafters is crazy.

If this remains as it is, it will kill crafting and prices on everything will go way up because the game will have less crafters. Less crafters means less competition, means less price controls. As a crafter, I don't even bother making my own anymore. Why bother? I have to spend these comms on something and the rest of the gear available for comms is either ugly, junk, or ugly junk.

I think, ultimately, the only to ever ensure crafting will always have a place in the economy, and in fact be highly sought after by consumers, is to differentiate player created goods from those generated by the game.

 

One way to do this would be to create a sort of... condition? system. In the real world most things devalue if they're not new, first-time purchases. You could buy a shirt in a store, walk out the door, and immediately sell it to someone else, and it's value would autmatically be less, even if only through perception, for the fact you could no longer consider the item "new" or "unowned." A similar concept could be applied to items sold second-hand on the GTN, where items received from the game and then resold on the GTN would have some aspect of their nature changed in a way that would make them slightly less desireable than a crafted version of that item. Perhaps in a mod a slight reduction in the stats for that item over a crafted verion, or perhaps less armor value... something to that effect. Not enough to render the "drop" item useless, but to merely make a crafted item more attractive - and not for the dropped item itself... only when the item was resold on the market.

 

You could also turn that concept on its head, by making crafted items somehow slightly better than non-crafted items of the same type in all situations.

 

In an effort to better establish a proper learning curve for crafting, and ensure a proper distribution of many crafters building cheap items at the low level, and a few elite crafters building the rarest and most valuable high end items, there should be a more... expansive learning curve. Currently that curve is more like a straight line, with no real added incentive to continue to the farthest reaches in any particular category. That could be changed to ensure that few crafters would ever be able to reach the absolute peaks of the profession, but that when they were there, they could produce some of the rarest goods, largely competition free from each other (making no crafter ever able to learn more than a fraction of what's out there, like in real life), and able to make a living from their expertise.

What you've suggested is pretty well what I did, but with a lot of work on the devs end, It would be much easier to adjust the missions so they guaranteed level 1 to 5 purple mats for the appropriate missions, that way the crafters have that exclusivity and relevance.

As someone who is currently farming planetary comms on my lvl 55, i can tell you that it takes a very long (and boring) time to get even a decent amount of comms.

 

(and if you are wondering why im farming comms its because im trying to buy all the blasters available for planetary comms to test on my youtube channel)

Perhaps to get a large number of comms saved up, it might be be a long slog... but I can guarantee that the amount of time and effort put into it by redoing low level missions as a high level player is much lower than doing high level misisons, or for doing the low level mission as a low level player. You may only receive, for instance, 1 planetary comm for completing The Face Merchants on Coruscant... as an appropriately-leveled player that mission can take easily 15 or more minutes, and every fight is as difficult as you would expect a Heroic to be. As a high-level player though, you can complete the mission, including bonus, in about 5 minutes without using anything more than your level 0 attack... and that's from the point you accept the mission from the quest giver to the point you turn it back in. Doing the other Heroics as a high-level player on Coruscant yield similar results. Attempt to earn the same number of comms on a planet like Corellia or Belsavis, and I doubt very much it will be so quick or easy.

Of course, anything that makes it easier in the game to get what you want is going to be approved by gamers. As I've said, even I, as a player, am reaping the benefits of not having to buy any of my mods, or at least very few, for myself, and seeing the prices of high level blues at what was the price of low level greens pre-2.0 has certainly made it easy to get my companions all geared up too.... and all with barely a dent in my pocket book. For me, as a player, this is amazing in the short term... I've been provided with the sort of instant gratification - hell not even instant gratification... perhaps pre-emptive gratification... gratification before I even feel like I need it... that the ADHD-ridden youth of today craves.

But in the long term, this has been a horrible experience that has driven much of the incentive to continue playing and participate in the systems and content the game is built around in the long-term. There is much in leading players through all of the experiences in a journey of this kind to ensure that all possible opportunites are given in putting the proverbial carrot in front of the player and saying "see the carrot? Go through this part of the journey and you might get some." It's the carrot that keeps us all going in this game. The promise of something more on the horizon if we're just willing to work for it.

Ultimately, all we really want is the carrot. The journey is merely a means to an end... an often pleasant and often tedious journey for often, seemingly, meager rewards. But this is exactly why we play. What BioWare has done, in essense, is just handed us the carrot. They said "Oh, it's not as much fun to work for your carrot? You want more carrot right now? Well here you go." Why have a profession to earn credits to spend on items you want when you no longer have to? Why run Flashpoints and Operations over and over when you don't have to. Why expose yourself to any of the more challenging or group content because the rewards would have been otherwise better than merely breezing through the basic content when you don't have to? Why participate in a player-based economic system when you don't have to? Why, in essense, play SWTOR as an MMO at all, when you don't have to?

It shouldn't come as a surprise to any person over the age of 16, but working for the things you want is not nearly as fun as people just handing you those things for free. But in an MMO, just as in the real world, the whole system collapses once you start doing that. The old comms system ensured you were never overly rewarded, but also gave you a return on your investment regardless by encouraging participation in the player economy. In turn, crafters had a reason to participate in that system to fill in the gaps in the greater game system.

Despite all pretenses, the image of "greedy crafters" is pathetically false. As has already been shown, for the most part prices have been entirely too low for most crafted goods, and any whining to the contrary is just empty fallacy. It doesn't hold up to reality. Simply because a player does not wish to pay a certain price for a good doesn't mean it's not worth that much, and again, I'd point out that if we had only NPC vendors to rely on, in most cases the prices would be significantly higher. Pre-2.0, you were paying the same or less price for a crafter's blue mod on the GTN as an NPC vendor would charge you for a green. That's a fact. Crafters, for the most part, were giving you the deal of a lifetime.

Despite all pretenses, the image of "greedy crafters" is pathetically false. As has already been shown, for the most part prices have been entirely too low for most crafted goods, and any whining to the contrary is just empty fallacy. It doesn't hold up to reality. Simply because a player does not wish to pay a certain price for a good doesn't mean it's not worth that much, and again, I'd point out that if we had only NPC vendors to rely on, in most cases the prices would be significantly higher. Pre-2.0, you were paying the same or less price for a crafter's blue mod on the GTN as an NPC vendor would charge you for a green. That's a fact. Crafters, for the most part, were giving you the deal of a lifetime.

Good trade crafters don't care about this sort of thing. They understand player demand in the economy is constantly changing and they shift with it. They serve the community and they profit from the community in a balanced manner.

Opportunistic trade crafters on the other hand...don't like competition from the game world and want the player economy to themselves to exploit. Nothing more, nothing less.