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Crafting Improvements


Eyesore

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I understand the crew skills system quite well. It seems to work fine and keeps you busy, but are there any plans for an overhaul to the actual crafting system? I realize this is not Star Wars Galaxies, but a really good crafting system makes the game more interesting. You could spend hours crafting in SWG and refine your items with much better detail. The current crafting is rather bland and random and I feel it would really add to the game.
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You are not the first, nor will you be the last, person to ask for a more SWG crafting system in SWTOR. The chances of BioWare implementing anything like SOE SWG crafting system is nil for one very important reason - SOE owns the rights to that system (via copyright), they could use it again in another MMO. Why would they give it to a competitor? This would mean that BioWare would have to reverse engineer (pardon the pun) SOE's crafting system and then figure out how to incorporate it into the current SWTOR crafting system. Neither of which is easy by any stretch of the imagination.

 

The best we can hope for are improvements to the existing system like:

- better sorting/filtering options

- improved chance of reverse engineering

- being able to pick and choose the RE result

- a specialization system that makes buying from a specialist worth the investment but not a requirement.

 

However, the fact of the matter is that in many MMOs the crafting system is tacked on at the last minute and is one of the last major functions to get any sort of "love." This is often why crafting is imbalanced and full of bugs to start.

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You are not the first, nor will you be the last, person to ask for a more SWG crafting system in SWTOR. The chances of BioWare implementing anything like SOE SWG crafting system is nil for one very important reason - SOE owns the rights to that system (via copyright), they could use it again in another MMO. Why would they give it to a competitor? This would mean that BioWare would have to reverse engineer (pardon the pun) SOE's crafting system and then figure out how to incorporate it into the current SWTOR crafting system. Neither of which is easy by any stretch of the imagination.

 

The best we can hope for are improvements to the existing system like:

- better sorting/filtering options

- improved chance of reverse engineering

- being able to pick and choose the RE result

- a specialization system that makes buying from a specialist worth the investment but not a requirement.

 

However, the fact of the matter is that in many MMOs the crafting system is tacked on at the last minute and is one of the last major functions to get any sort of "love." This is often why crafting is imbalanced and full of bugs to start.

 

Also as some of the crafting skills would interfer with CartelMarket items, (Mounts, Ship parts, Orange Armor, Weapons jsut to name a few). Wh ywould they do something for free when they put it on the Cartel Market or random pack and earn more cash?

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Also as some of the crafting skills would interfer with CartelMarket items, (Mounts, Ship parts, Orange Armor, Weapons jsut to name a few). Wh ywould they do something for free when they put it on the Cartel Market or random pack and earn more cash?

 

Exactly. At most, I hope for some small improvement in the UI but nothing actually new. I wouldn't be surprised if there's further usurpation from the CM, like doing the same kind of thing with earpieces and implants like what they did with crystals.

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Exactly. At most, I hope for some small improvement in the UI but nothing actually new. I wouldn't be surprised if there's further usurpation from the CM, like doing the same kind of thing with earpieces and implants like what they did with crystals.

 

I disagree. I think the CM is a work in progress. As it stands yes there is a lot of usurpation, but over time BioWare will balance it out.

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SOE owns the rights to that system (via copyright), they could use it again in another MMO. Why would they give it to a competitor? This would mean that BioWare would have to reverse engineer (pardon the pun) SOE's crafting system and then figure out how to incorporate it into the current SWTOR crafting system. Neither of which is easy by any stretch of the imagination.

 

I agree with most of your post, except this part. There was nothing magical about the SWG system. No reverse engineering needed. It was a crafting system and it worked a very specific way and was far from perfect, itself held down by legacy development that never got re-engineered.

 

It's not hard to design a crafting system just as complex and probably better, on the other hand to actually implement it is quite a bit of developer time, especially coding.

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I agree with most of your post, except this part. There was nothing magical about the SWG system. No reverse engineering needed. It was a crafting system and it worked a very specific way and was far from perfect, itself held down by legacy development that never got re-engineered.

 

It's not hard to design a crafting system just as complex and probably better, on the other hand to actually implement it is quite a bit of developer time, especially coding.

 

The only thing I know for sure is that SOE did, after the game got shut down, get their trademark approved for their resource spawning system.

 

As for a more "swg-like" crafting system, and this is coming from someone who crafted for 8.5 years in that game on many different servers, I don't think it has any part in this current existing version of the game.

 

Now, hypothetically, if (and it's a BIG IF) EA/Bioware ever develops a JTL-esque space expansion, I would love to see ship parts crafted like they were in SWG, with options to experiment choices from multiple possible lines.

 

Want a faster engine, you need to add some mass, or sacrifice some pitch/yaw/roll.

 

To make crafting individualized.

 

However, that involves creating what was called "snowflake" items and I don't know if this game was built to handle that kind of database strain.

Edited by Darev
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