We've seen players ask about this before, and have some clarification for you from Jason Attard (Senior Game Balance Designer):

 

This behavior was unintended, but we do not consider it an exploit. We do intend to make reverse engineering more consistent in the future, and that may be by not allowing this or by allowing players to reverse engineer this type of mod by design. We do not consider this a violation of the rules.

 

Thank you for the response Allison. Shortly after I had originally posted this, the thread was deleted, or hidden or in whatever manner questionable threads are dealt with. I was frustrated by that, so I submitted an in-game ticket providing the original url and asked what was going on. The Customer Service Live Agent I spoke to actually said that once the mods are bound, the research becomes available Because the mods are bound and specifically said that this feature was, as the agent put it, "working as intended." I'm not sure if that's actually the case or if the agent simply told me that because they didn't know, especially since the senior balance designer explicitly said that this was not intended at all.

 

Interestingly, I spoke to several prominent crafters on my server (the harbinger) about a month ago and they told me that they had been doing this "trick" for a while to learn new patterns. I myself still only have a couple of 24/columi patterns and 26/black hole patterns on my cybertech toon. It's simply not worth crafting mods anymore, though. I'm not sure if that's been influenced by these "shortcuts," for lack of a better word, like those above, with an excess mods flooding the market from crafters who learned patterns from other people's mods, or just general supply and demand/market fluctuation, but now whenever I post mods on the gtn, I'm usually undercut by 3+ crafters in less than a couple of hours. So in terms of people buying their mods rather than raiding for them, they certainly benefit from lower prices, but nearly all crafters, except for the top few richest ones, will definitely not benefit, as profit margins in crafting continue to shrink.

 

But yeah, I've read some of the posts in this thread by people mentioning the availability of 27 mods on various servers and I know rich crafters on the harbinger are taking advantage of this shortcut, as within a day or two of some Might 27/Resolve 27 armorings showing up on the gtn, suddenly there were 7 crafters who all "coincidentally" learned the patterns and began undercutting one another.

 

I'm not sure if removing this feature would be the right path though. After all, now that there are 27 mods on the GTN, there's really no point in learning patterns for 26 mods. Furthermore, if the 6-week new content release schedule keeps up and 28/29 mods are in-game within a few months, I don't see a problem with people learning 26/27 patterns. I would like to see research schems added for rakata tier stuff though, that would be nice, as I have a cargo bay full of rakata mods that I'm just saving for alt if I choose to level the same class or a mirror class on the other faction. So it would be worth REing that stuff for a chance to learn a pattern vs just vendoring it/saving it for a future alt.

 

In any case, thank you for undeleting/unhiding/etc. this thread and getting me an answer directly from a developer. I actually only noticed that it was undeleted because I saw my username on the front page of the darthhater site, lol.

This is bad for two reasons:

1) People can gear up way too quickly without stepping foot into TFB

2) For the craters, it's disheartening to put the work into HM TFB and risk wasting BiS mods only to have someone take the easy way out and essentially "steal" your recipe

 

Take a look at the crafting list in my signature to see how quickly people have learned multiple recipes.

 

I do agree with your second point, all the risk is ultimately on the first person who gets that piece of gear and attempts to RE it, not knowing if they'll get something good out of it, or just a couple crafting mats. In that respect, it is a little frustrating that the megawealthy in the game can just buy 10 of your mods, RE however many, then learn a pattern, since to them it's just credits, which will be recouped when they sell the new mods 1 credit lower than yours. Though, a counter point to that would be that if the original crafter stops playing, then that pattern is lost and stops showing up on the gtn, so in that respect, in context to helping people get geared up the credit way, it's a good thing. I know there were some crafters on Drooga's Pleasure Barge that either no longer play or no longer sell their crafted mods on the gtn.

 

As for your first point, I have mixed feelings. On one hand, if people will quit playing once they get fully geared, then that is definitely a bad thing for the game. On the other hand, if people are only allowed to raid denova/tfb once a week and either lose the rolls for gear they need or don't get the drops they need at all, they could quit playing just due to frustration. While there are certainly a lot of hardcore raiders who maxed their gear, got bored, then quit playing, the vast majority of the population in the game are either casual players, who may or may not be interested in raiding or who may develop an interest in raiding later on. I personally only started playing earlier this year, pugged a bunch of hard/nightmare ops after pugging a million flashpoints for gear and bh comms on my main, then started gearing up alts. Most of my guildmates, however, have been playing either since launch or since the beta and mainly only pvp'd or just ran hm fps, maybe an ev run here or there, but despite not raiding at all, they're still subsribed almost a year later. So despite the fact that this is an mmo and raiding is an aspect to the game, for most, it's not the only aspect that will make or break them continuing to subscribe.

 

In terms of gearing up fast, I would think bioware wants people to be able to gear up as fast as possible to be able try out new content, otherwise they never would have added purchasable black hole gear at all, bh comms for running fps, or the new campaign armorings that are being added in 1.5.

 

Since I've done all the ops, now most of my guildmates are interested in raiding on a regular basis and trying out hard/nightmare ops. Some are full BH geared (from months of random hm fp runs), some aren't, but all of them are eager to try out new ops. So for my guild at least, it has very little to do with gear progression and more to do with the experience/fun of completing missions together. In fact, some of them prefer to be overgeared before trying new ops. So while people Can gear up very quickly without setting foot in TFB, that doesn't mean that once they're geared they'll never run it, if anything, it encourages them to run it. After all, people aren't going to drop millions of credits into gtn mods just to run only belsavis dailies. Moreover, just because this stuff is available on the gtn doesn't necessarily mean people will buy it. I think I'm only one of two people in my guild who have actually bought mods from the gtn to itemize my gear.

 

In any case, the biggest appeal of this game is still ultimately the story, so with that said, I'm hoping for a lot more story content in the future.

And for those that think us people learning from crafted items have it easy, think again. It took me seven tries to learn the Advanced Artful Mod 27. The only one that could craft was refusing to do so directly, and I had to buy all seven on the GTN. For 2.5 million credits each. Of course I crashed his market 45 minutes after learning the schematic (mostly to protest his ridiculous crafting policies), but it still drove me nearly broke and made him, the one that learned it from a piece of dread guard, filthy rich.

 

I'm actually glad you did that. Let's face the facts for a moment, when a crafter in gen chat says "Free with your mats" the only reason why he's doing that isn't out of the goodness of his heart but because he knows that if one of his companions happens to crit and make 2 mods from the materials for 1, he's going to keep one for himself and give you yours. No way he's going to say, "oh hey, my companion amazingly critted 5 times, so here's your 10 mods." With that said, the less greedy crafters will say "Free with your mats" and still take a risk of spending their game time to craft you a mod not knowing if they'll really get anything out of it other than their time spent making people mods for free.

 

Knowing that, what does bother me is when people who advertise something like let's say a might hilt, and say "your mats, pst." then you whisper them and they demand all of the mats (market price of like 1.2-1.6 mil) and then 1 mil credits ON TOP of the mats, still knowing mind you, that they could crit and get 2, but they'd Still only give you 1.

 

I've done direct crafting for people before, didn't charge anything, but again, that's mainly because if I trade mats for the mod, then happen to crit with those mats when crafting the mod again, I essentially get a free mod for myself. There's a risk I could waste 45mins for nothing, but there's also a chance I could get a free mod to resell.

 

So in context to that crafter demanding credits only and refusing to directly craft/trade mats for you, glad you crashed his market. When TFB first came out, I noticed a lot of crafters with that attitude, cash only (and A Lot of it, as OP said, 2.5 mil+), no trades, then after a few days, suddenly they were willing to craft for free after 10+ people learned their patterns and were undercutting them with their own mods.

just to add to the party, Kaloom/Flippa instigated the "craft for free" back in canderous when he wanted to spite who charged for crafting, and now its done a full full 360 arguing that people do the "craft for free with your mats." end of the day you do what you have yo do, no one is ever going to agree on set prices as some crafters will just spam the gtn with multiple mods while others may only have 1 or 2 at a time, and those who are wealthy in pixelated currency like kaloom, will just take his auction off the gtn and repost it to undercut you by 1 credit just because "he can" as he puts it

One of the biggest flaws this tier is the itemization of the Dread Guard tier. The only way to reach BiS in a reasonable amount of time is to have literally 80-90% of your gear crafted. If you disagree, take a second look at the gear and tell me it isn't true. At least with stock columi/rakata you were putting out passable dps, heals, and threat.

 

This is why our guild has two dedicated groups to learning the schematics. Those groups are also why we have so many (see Korrig's Signature). But along that line, we are sacrificing every piece of gear from every clear to have a chance at learning. Our blood, sweat, and tears (both of happiness and despair) are the currency of purchase that we use to gain these. I feel like the people who have worked hard should be rewarded for the time and effort they have put in. We use these patterns to gear up, make the guild richer (for current and future repairs), and make our players richer. Like gearing up, in game money is also an incentive to keep playing when content is stale.

 

If someone can just pour money into learning patterns without ever stepping foot in an operation and possibly making their toon/guild BiS overnight, the whole experience experience is cheapened. Those who have worked for it are robbed of the revenue they deserve, which brings me back to my first point: CRAFTING SHOULD NOT BE NECESSARY TO GET 80% OF YOUR GEAR BIS.

 

I saw someone say that they had to pay a premium to learn the patterns and that is the reward those players deserve before they undercut/ruined that crafter's market. But it's not true. They had every right to keep earning that amount, because this is a capitalistic system. Greed works both ways. A player on my server was price gouging the Resolve Hilt 26 for weeks before anyone else learned it. The people who felt like they wanted the gear that bad scrambled for it. But it must not have been that many people because within a few days his crafting price dropped from 500k to 400k. Then a few days later it dropped again. Then, someone else learned it and their competition drove the price down to about 1.8mil or 200k crafting. Consumer money will always determine the end price of a product.

 

So let's talk a little about free crafters. A lot of these guys just take advantage of "legit" crafters by having products crafted cheap, learning the schematic, and flooding the market. Let me ask you: where are those "legit" crafters' 20mil? To be honest, every RE is a gamble. You do not have the RIGHT to learn. You are throwing dice on the table. Some players are paid in full for their wager; some lose it all. I feel like the currency should always be time and effort. The players who are copying are taking a shortcut and are actually being rewarded. It's predatory and, to be honest, ethically wrong.

 

Though you may not like it, prices also control WHO gets gear. Many players complain about highly geared players joining their operations or guilds that don't know how to play their class or what to do in an operation. Those restrictive prices, in a sense, sift out bad players. And it's not only because they can't afford it; it's because they're not going to value getting that expensive stuff if they can't even get into the new content or top tier guilds. I understand that good players who are unlucky feel like they should have access to top gear, but you have to understand that there are two sides to that coin. If you can get all the gear cheaply crafted or bought, the inexperienced and the ignorant also get that gear. It's a disease that our society as a whole has been propagating. You are honestly not entitled to anything you didn't earn, and I don't feel like using credits to learn a schematic is earning the right to use it.

 

 

 

To sum up, cheap crafts obtained through reverse engineering player made crafts not only hurts the original crafter/guild, but the top level raiders on each server as well. I don't hold it against any player that wants to do it now that BW has officially made a statement acknowledging and accepting it (for now), but I don't think it should exist in the future.

 

 

 

 

 

On a side and partially unrelated note, I do like the idea of mod/hilt/enhancement/armoring tokens. It would let players gear up in an even more customized way. It would also eliminate or at least limit the need for crafting:

 

...

I suggest BIOWARE do the following: STOP trying to create gear for us! Drop TOKENS for each component so we can make our own end game gear! I'd love to see in an HM OP (8) Set Bonus Armor Tokens, (8) MOD Tokens, (8) Enhancement Tokens, (2) Offhand/Mainhand Tokens and the Shell's drop with the ARMOR token.

...

Edited October 20, 2012 by IronAznSnsation

Epic post, IronAznSnsation.

 

Couldn't have said it better myself.

I also noticed that once you pull out somebody else's crafted mod from a piece of armor, the crafter's name is gone, in addition to the 20% research chance appearing.

 

does this work for "mods" only, or it works for armoring mods and enhancements as well? What about barrels and hilts?

Or did you mean "mods" as a general term to designate all of the item modification slots (mods/enh/armor/etc)

Thanks

does this work for "mods" only, or it works for armoring mods and enhancements as well? What about barrels and hilts?

Or did you mean "mods" as a general term to designate all of the item modification slots (mods/enh/armor/etc)

Thanks

 

Works for everything that you can make "bound" by putting into gear and removing the crafter's name when you pull it out, so...hilts, barrels, armorings, mods, enhancements. So as of right now, can't do that with crafted implants/earpieces/relics/shells for armoring/etc. With that in mind, it may be that bioware might simply allow everyone to RE other people's stuff to bring the implants/etc in line with the individual mods, since that's usually how it is for under 50 stuff, for blues and greens at least.

What I found ridiculous is that it was going on since 1.2 (I think I was server-first to discover it accidentally) and it was known to a smaller portion of people. How the heck it remained a big secret until 1.4 is a mystery to me. Shame that many fools learned about the process. Crafters should make their prices go sky-high right now, because of a totally increased chance of having their schematic stolen... Even darthater.com writes about the process on their main page.

 

Seriously, I just got resolve 27 schem and I am being asked to craft like 5 pieces per order - what the heck are they going to do with it if not r/e? I refused, obviously!

 

And I urge any end-game crafter to keep prices on their rare stuff sky-high and watch who they sell their wares to. Keep the supply low enough to make others pay the rightfully deserved money. Otherwise you won't enjoy your trophy for a long time.

Edited October 21, 2012 by Alec_Fortescue

... There was no "Carrot on the stick" to keep chasing becasue you already devoured it. If there's no reason to continue to raid for gear, what reason is there to go into it? Winning? The first kill is extremely satisfying from a Hard mode perspective, but if everyone is completely geared out... the next kill leaves a sense of "why are we doing this again?" There's no thrill, there's nothing to look forward to going in there and after you've finished you've come away with completely nothing but some Black Hole coms to spend on gear to give to your alts.

 

... However, there are always those few folks in the raid who feel it's a burden to be in there if there's no point to it for them. They are then debbie downers for the entire run....

 

This is one of many reasons why I recommend guilds use the "Credit Run" or "GDKP" loot system. For those players who don't need gear, they can earn credits for helping others get gear. Operations are my favorite aspect of MMOs, and getting 'paid' to raid is like a cherry on top.

 

I hate having to pay millions of credits to crafters so I can get crafted gear, and then see comparable gear drop from an operation and have to pass on it for someone who was too poor/lazy to buy crafted gear. That ruins my motivation to buy crafted gear.

 

By using the "credit run" loot system it puts players who buy crafted gear on equal footing with those who do not. Guilds who have full cleared content, and are just waiting for the next teir of content have a reason to log on, as they can earn credits by helping guild members get those 1-2 rare drop slots. They can even invite players who are not in their guild, and bring credits into their guild.

 

For those unfamiliar with the "Credit Run" loot system, you can read about it here

 

Essentially every complaint I have heard about loot drama, or gearing up too fast, or not having a reason to log on, can be solved if more guilds used this loot system.

does this work for "mods" only, or it works for armoring mods and enhancements as well? What about barrels and hilts?

Or did you mean "mods" as a general term to designate all of the item modification slots (mods/enh/armor/etc)

Thanks

 

Works on hilts , barrels , armor , mods and enhancments ,, its just like taking it out of BH/CP/DG gear ...

 

with one item thats armor, any that can only be put in a slot ,ike chest , groves , legs etc can't be Re for a schamatic in any way unless you were luckly enough to get one that was Re able before they stoped it ...

 

 

Hope that helps

I need to say this why I was called moron in game by some in this posts is beyond me all i was trying to do was state a fact if you lower the price you will sell more faster and sooner , i got so mad i was veniting in my guild chat for like 30 mins , and still don't understand there reasoning behind charging 4.2 mll for a 27 armor that if they lowered the price like 2 mill might sell more and make more faster ... so to me calling me a moron for being nice is like the pot calling the kettle black ...

 

my thought on the whole thing is i hope BW keeps this mistake , its one of those mistakes thats a good thing for reason I won't get into here . )) TY and watch the moron stuff in game you can make emerys you dont want later on .....

Edited October 21, 2012 by moonshoter

theres forums are hopeless i called someone a pretty much a fool for being so moody about people buying 27s from him and RE .......

 

not hes reported me and i got this

 

"This infraction is worth 3 point(s) and may result in restricted access until it expires. Serious infractions will never expire."

 

funny how BW have the time to look at this and do this to me in 24 hours but i have a in game ticket of two toons stuck in the hologram in my space ship

 

Just one more mistake by the swtor team be it in game or on the forums and i am gone ( 11 months) being play your game and u can t answer my in game ticket after 2 weeks ,,

theres forums are hopeless i called someone a pretty much a fool for being so moody about people buying 27s from him and RE .......

 

not hes reported me and i got this

 

"This infraction is worth 3 point(s) and may result in restricted access until it expires. Serious infractions will never expire."

 

funny how BW have the time to look at this and do this to me in 24 hours but i have a in game ticket of two toons stuck in the hologram in my space ship

 

Just one more mistake by the swtor team be it in game or on the forums and i am gone ( 11 months) being play your game and u can t answer my in game ticket after 2 weeks ,,

 

So you call someone, who opposes stealing, a fool and then you wonder why you are getting in trouble with cs. Fair play to you. At least that's the only thing they can do right now to you, schem robbers.

So you call someone, who opposes stealing, a fool and then you wonder why you are getting in trouble with cs. Fair play to you. At least that's the only thing they can do right now to you, schem robbers.

 

lets not play dumb here alec u reported and May i went abit OTT but i still think your on your high horse.. with them 27s people putting up for far to much . even raiders get sick of days of endless alt dailys to buy mods armour

 

i am going to take my 3 points as a chill out and try not to reply with anything bad ^^

Edited October 23, 2012 by Murder_Toys

Fyi I never report. I don't have a single player on my ignore list... And what dailys are you talking about? Daily quests? They're not a way to make credits. I have over 120 million right now and I only raid once a week and spend few minutes a day on crafting. Edited October 23, 2012 by Alec_Fortescue

Fyi I never report. I don't have a single player on my ignore list... And what dailys are you talking about? Daily quests? They're not a way to make credits. I have over 120 million right now and I only raid once a week and spend few minutes a day on crafting.

 

i am saying there is not a easy way to make money, if u don t have crew skill thats GTN heavy

 

you say " u have 120 mil" whats fine i believe but why bring up " oh i have this much " or " i dont log on much"

it rums people up the wrong way

 

I am happy that 1.5 u can buy 26 armourings from bh . Cybertech and all the crew skills that make mils from sell 27 and 26 needed a nerf you guys have to much power i feel in my eyes

 

I like you have completed all content on hard mode but sometimes iI don t need for a item when a guild member needs it more it seems silly to me that a crafter can pull a number out of thin air

 

don t take this as a attack on you. but u know it to be true about people with cyber tech have way to much power .

 

anyhoo bid u a good day ^^

Edited October 23, 2012 by Murder_Toys

I've thought about this subject a lot. Overall, I'm in favour of this being kept in the game.

 

My guild is a medium sized social guild - our core team of raiders could pretty much handle any PvE content, we were progressing in HM Denova.

 

A few people have left the game as can happen and our frequency of tackling HM Denova has seriously reduced. We're back to running KP/EV HM to help our newer 50s improve. I can accept all that as part of the social aspect of the guild.

 

We are running a risk of our raiding activity completely tailing off as we're just not able to complete content, if people can improve the chances of success by getting some improvements (and in my guild they are much more likely to simply buy then try to RE) cheaper, it'll help keep us together.

 

While I don't like the intended coding has been worked around, it's already happened. Hopefully Bioware will learn the lesson and stick to proper schematics being dropped rather than the RE approach.

imo The schematics for all these items amour/mods/barrels..etc should be available to purchase from ones crafting trainer. atm we have a handful of lucky people who are controlling the whole market and charging stupid prices. Crafting has nothing to do with skill it's all luck.

Although initially a bug, I kind of like having the option for crafters that do not participate in Operations (or are not designated guild crafters that collect all the extra recipes) to gamble credits to unlock recipes (and hopefully make the credits back). That is an interesting meta-game for crafting, and helps drive demand up for credits and resources (which is important to a healthy in-game economy).

 

However, the whole craftable item system trivializes gear progression for dedicated PVE players. Having a base tier be completely collectable, craftable, learnable, etc is great, and really makes you want to keep running content to collect extra commendations or materials to make money, get gear crafted for your character or alts, etc. Introducing a Nightmare prestige tier (think the statistical differences between Dread Guard vs Campaign) that is not craftable and only available via drops removes the problems and allows hardcore PVE gear progression to exist.

 

I've described some of the problems and some suggestions to fix them here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=5297299

o! QQ

 

some people aren't getting paid their 2-3mil creds per armor/mod /enhance

 

O! mai mai

QQ!

Turns out we'll need this amount of money in order to afford cash shop's items from GTN. I appeal to all crafters to keep the prices high and steady! Fix them, like I always try to do.

Just giving you a heads up, any cc market you will try to sell for your usual crazy price im gonna be there lowering it by huge amounts

imo The schematics for all these items amour/mods/barrels..etc should be available to purchase from ones crafting trainer. atm we have a handful of lucky people who are controlling the whole market and charging stupid prices. Crafting has nothing to do with skill it's all luck.

 

IMO this would do nothing so solve the current problem, instead of people throwing credits to learn schematics at the alpha crafters they would just be throwing money into vendors for the same thing. And while I despise the state of crafting in the game right now this would make it even worse.

 

You may say there is a shadowy cabal of crafters who hold all the power of the market; and that very well may be true. But there is a reason for this; They did they content, They won the drop, They took the chance to RE it, and the rng just so happened to be in their favor that time. There is a reason that these people are charging "stupid" prices and that can come from any number of factors, the price of the materials, the supply of that item and the demand. If you don't like that, that's fine then don't buy it; you are under no obligation to all that is being offered is an alternative way to supplement your gear. You want to put them in their place? Then do what they did, do the content, get the drop, take the chance and offer up the item at a better price (preferably one that ends with you still making a profit.)

 

Opening up the highest current gear to something as easy to obtain as credits is just silly. I don't mind if the lower tier schematics are made more easily obtainable through drops of the actual schem or having them purchasable through the relevant comms at an increased price compared to the actual item itself. That is all fine and dandy but making it so easy to acquire BiS items schems without even stepping foot into the content where the gear that contains the item is a big no no in my books. All your suggested idea and the current system do is make it so there is no point of even stepping into the content, just throw money at it, throw in T1 shells and bam you are BiS dreadguard just like that. The problem with your suggestion specifically is that players with lots of credits probably the same crafters you alluded to in your post aren't at any disadvantage they more than likely have all the money to buy every single schematic they desire, only difference now is that other people can do the same thing but depending on the credits might not be capable of the same mass buying power as these players.

 

Personally I'm holding out for BW to one day soon put their foot down and say the barrier for entry into BiS crafting is the relevant content itself, if you want the schematic the only way to do it is to learn it is from the gear itself, no ifs ands or buts. Same thing with PvP crafting if it ever fills out with possible schematics like PvE imagine how silly it would be if I (someone who merely dabbles in pvp) was able to learn the schematic for BiS PvP items while not actually doing the content in any meaningful way instead just using my credits to learn everything off the people who actually were doing the content and taking the chance and reducing the functionality of their gear for an opportunity to learn something.

It all boils down to wheather BW wants to cater to the elitists who can only feel good about themselves by knowing they have something others don't, or keep the gear and crafting available for everybody.

For the looks of their response in this thread, they haven't decided yet what to do. I hope they keep it like this.