Hey all,

 

Ok here is a recap of some of the changes coming to crafting for 6.0 (beyond what you have seen on PTS).

• Dramatically reduced the credit cost of the supplemental crafting materials on vendors.
  
• Crew Skill Mission times reduced by approximately 30%.
  
• Crafting times for combining materials has been reduced by approximately 30%.
  
• Materials required to craft Premium quality items has been reduced. Specifically, it no longer requires the Conquest crafting material and lowered the overall mat requirements.
  
• Reduced the overall crafting material requirements for crafted Set Bonuses and Tactical items.
  

 

One other note as well since I know there has been concern around material costs. Although the costs are higher players should be seeing a much higher in-flow of materials as well. If you are only doing Crew Skill Missions and nothing else it may feel slower though. However you will receive supplementary materials from playing content (such as boss kills) as well as via Jawa Scrap which you will receive from all deconstruction. For players who are actively harvesting materials we actually expect that you will be able to craft even faster than you could previously (due to a large in-flow of materials). As always, please keep any and all feedback coming. If what I stated above is not what you have been seeing then more changes may be necessary.

 

Thanks all.

 

-eric

Thank You …

I don't suppose you would care to offer similar help in the acquisition of gear. That would primarily be related to vendor purchases. The rest of the game RNG stuff .. I think we get that (even if we don't approve).

BUT... it just seems appropriate to me to give one last hard look at the vendor for gear. I would personally prefer to pay a little more (and know what I'm getting) … than just throwing tons of tech fragments out the window.

Note: this is not a rant ! Not going thermal on you. Just asking for one last review on this subject.

EDIT: I"m in game (running a PF).... So I'll keep this short: perhaps one of each styled vendor: One (as it is now that is RNG... no changes necessary) and one vendor that is NOT RNG based. That way both worlds are available ?

I'm just looking for a place were we can both meet and agree !

Thank You

Best Regards

Ol Buzzard

Thank You …

BUT... it just seems appropriate to me to give one last hard look at the vendor for gear. I would personally prefer to pay a little more (and know what I'm getting) … than just throwing tons of tech fragments out the window.

 

Note: this is not a rant ! Not going thermal on you. Just asking for one last review on this subject.

 

EDIT: I"m in game (running a PF).... So I'll keep this short: perhaps one of each styled vendor: One (as it is now that is RNG... no changes necessary) and one vendor that is NOT RNG based. That way both worlds are available ?

Honestly that vendor is fine. If you go an gear normally the idea is that you are gearing up 70-80% then going to the vendor for the stuff that didn't drop, which should be just about right. Then run a bunch of FP and junk to get the mods you need. For most players any mod works, but for min-max you might need to run more junk to get to the right level of mod.

To me the bigger vendor issue are the set bonus/tactical vendors. The 1 mil credits thing is too high, at least for set pieces. Tacticals it is probably about right, maybe up it to 1.25 mil or 1.5 mil if they drop the set pieces. Also the cap on shards since you will be getting more shards than you will credits if you are gearing.

For players who are actively harvesting materials we actually expect that you will be able to craft even faster than you could previously (due to a large in-flow of materials).

-eric

So I've been running around Onderon on Wednesday for Archaeology mats (harvesting planets was a huge income of mats for me during both 4.0 and 5.0) and ye, i was able to get some but it was droping way more purple and blue mats and I needed green to even start some crafting in the first place.. I also noticed quite some amount of nodes being stuck under the ground leaving them unobtainable. Mek-sha was afaik fine in this regard

However you will receive supplementary materials from playing content (such as boss kills) as well as via Jawa Scrap which you will receive from all deconstruction.

Thanks all.

-eric

Eric, unless the jawa scrap via deconstruction is increased by x1000, saying buying materials with it is a big F'U to all the players.

Please re-read the crafting feedback, where it is pointed out that it takes millions upon millions of jawa scrap to buy enough materials for even basic crafting for a single character (like just making 14 mk-11 augment kits, to outfit a single character).

I see nothing on that list about reducing the materials needed craft basic grade 11 components. Those needed to be adjusted to how every other grade has worked, which is 2/2/2, not 10/10/10, then x by 3-8 to make the next tier.

This is the single most requested feedback that has been constant from everyone. Please listen to this feedback.

Tacticals it is probably about right, maybe up it to 1.25 mil or 1.5 mil if they drop the set pieces.

Absolutely not as long as preffered players credit cap stays at 1 mil.

Hi! I am trying to do the Phase 3 achievements, but I can't seem to find it in my Achievements Tracker. Phase 2 is there and complete, but I can not find anything that says Phase 3. Is this going to be an issue preventing me from getting the achievement? I can't even track how many group activities I have done for it by now.

Both achievements were in the Legacy/Achievements/Feats of Strength section on the PTS and were right next to each other. I believe the subcategory was something like Activities, but I'm away from my computer and can't check.

Hey all,

 

Ok here is a recap of some of the changes coming to crafting for 6.0 (beyond what you have seen on PTS).

• Dramatically reduced the credit cost of the supplemental crafting materials on vendors.
  
• Crew Skill Mission times reduced by approximately 30%.
  
• Crafting times for combining materials has been reduced by approximately 30%.
  
• Materials required to craft Premium quality items has been reduced. Specifically, it no longer requires the Conquest crafting material and lowered the overall mat requirements.
  
• Reduced the overall crafting material requirements for crafted Set Bonuses and Tactical items.
  

 

One other note as well since I know there has been concern around material costs. Although the costs are higher players should be seeing a much higher in-flow of materials as well. If you are only doing Crew Skill Missions and nothing else it may feel slower though. However you will receive supplementary materials from playing content (such as boss kills) as well as via Jawa Scrap which you will receive from all deconstruction. For players who are actively harvesting materials we actually expect that you will be able to craft even faster than you could previously (due to a large in-flow of materials). As always, please keep any and all feedback coming. If what I stated above is not what you have been seeing then more changes may be necessary.

 

Thanks all.

 

-eric

Are you going to address the insane amount of stat variation on the same type and item level for all mods and pieces of gear, and the fact that it is all RNG? It's been mentioned by quite a few of us.

Are you going to address the insane amount of stat variation on the same type and item level for all mods and pieces of gear, and the fact that it is all RNG? It's been mentioned by quite a few of us.

This times 1 trillion, and that fact that we have heard nothing on it is what worries me the most about gear. It not that gear will be hard to get it the fact the we will be fight the RGN wheel and hoping we get lucky when we shouldn't have too. I have no problem with a degree of RNG its been apart of MMO's since as long as I can remember but there has also been a way to off set it buying exactly what you want in some form or fashion.

• Dramatically reduced the credit cost of the supplemental crafting materials on vendors.

Good.

• Crew Skill Mission times reduced by approximately 30%.

Also good.

• Crafting times for combining materials has been reduced by approximately 30%.

Good as well. I don't feel this was a serious problem, because it always took much longer to get the materials than to craft the basic components (due to the material cost), but frankly with new crafting being in such dire need of help I'll take any improvement I can get, even miscellaneous ones.

• Materials required to craft Premium quality items has been reduced. Specifically, it no longer requires the Conquest crafting material and lowered the overall mat requirements.

Okay, this is great, and one of the serious problems that many of us were hoping BW would address. Thank you. When you mention the conquest crafting material do you only mean the purple one? (The description of the blue one does not mention conquest, but says it comes from group activities that not everyone will want to do, namely operations, master mode FPs, and ranked PvP.)

I am interested to know how much the overall mat requirements have been lowered. I think the really fundamental change that still needs to happen is basic components going back to 2/2/2 (in line with this cost for other grades) rather than the 10/10/10 (the quintupled cost applied to grade 11).

• Reduced the overall crafting material requirements for crafted Set Bonuses and Tactical items.

Great.

One other note as well since I know there has been concern around material costs. Although the costs are higher players should be seeing a much higher in-flow of materials as well. If you are only doing Crew Skill Missions and nothing else it may feel slower though. However you will receive supplementary materials from playing content (such as boss kills) as well as via Jawa Scrap which you will receive from all deconstruction. For players who are actively harvesting materials we actually expect that you will be able to craft even faster than you could previously (due to a large in-flow of materials).

As it happens, during my big RE experiment, I was also actively harvesting. I didn't mention it in my posts because it didn't seem statistically significant. I only found one good harvesting spot for archaeology on Onderon (not good compared to Yavin or Zakuul, just good compared to the rest of Onderon), so I left one of my archaeologists parked in that spot. Whenever I logged in to collect her crafting mission results and send her companions out on more missions, I also gathered whatever nodes I could see. None of them were away from groups of mobs. (Compare, for instance, with Yavin and Zakuul, where the majority of nodes are away from mobs.) Even with a stealther, I had to kill some groups. In the time it took to defeat the mobs and gather from those nodes, I could've just swapped to another character, collected their missions, and sent out their companions instead. The only real benefit to the gathering was that it was free. It did not make a notable positive impact on the speed at which I acquired materials. As such, I would concur with Damask_Rose's comment:

Based on what I've seen from harvesting on Onderon, harvesting out in the wild will not be adequate for anything but the most casual crafting. When I have the entire planet to myself it's ok. Just ok. Add some competition for nodes and it will be woefully inadequate.

Even when no one else was gathering "my" nodes, it didn't make much of an overall difference. But once 6.0 hits, there will be competition for nodes. Unless you add a lot more than what we saw on the PTS, it's not going to have the impact you seem to think it will have. And even if you do, for example, make nodes as abundant as Yavin or Zakuul, the competition element will still come into play. You know the thing about missions I send my companions on? There's zero competition for those materials. That's not to be sniffed at. So... I am absolutely sure that "players who are actively harvesting materials" will not "be able to craft even faster than you could previously." My harvesting absolutely did not yield a "large in-flow of materials." But even if it did? The cost of everything is so prohibitive that even what would have been considered a large amount of materials previously is virtually nothing now. Unless basic components go down to 2/2/2, and many times more nodes are added to all 6.0 maps, I can't see harvesting making a significant impact.

As for jawa scrap being a helpful supplement, my understanding was that you specifically priced grade 11 materials astronomically high to make things hard for people with a lot of stored scrap to dominate the market. If things will be hard for them, they'll be virtually impossible for the rest of us. For example, the jawa scrap "compensation" for failed missions is so small by comparison to the yields we should receive from said failed missions as to be negligible. (And really, only the highest difficulty of mission should be failing at all, no? A moderate yield mission, of gray difficulty, run by a 50 influence companion, should never fail. But such missions currently do sometimes fail.) At the current rate I receive jawa scrap from failed missions, and the current price offered by jawa vendors, I would have to fail missions hundreds of times before I earn enough scrap to buy the normal yield of one such mission.

In all honesty, I have never even bought grade 10 materials with jawa scrap. In the current version of the game, it is always much better value for me to buy grades 9 and lower, since I use all grades in my crafting. Because of so often making that calculation, I feel I understand why you're changing the prices of all materials above grade 1, proportional to their grade. 4 scrap for grade 4, 7 scrap for grade 7, etc. I mightn't like it, because I enjoyed leveraging my scrap for the best value possible, but I can see it is a more fair set of prices overall. This is not the kind of price change I'm going to argue about. But I do think that grade 11 materials should cost no more than 20 scrap at the absolute maximum. An argument could be made for making them cost 11 scrap, in line with the other grades of material, but I expect you won't do that, in spite of the various ways in which material costs are heightened at grade 11.

Anyway, these changes are something. I do not think they are enough, but they are better than nothing. In my opinion, it would still be better to follow the suggestion of JediBoadicea: of the various changes to crafting costs you have implemented, keep only one, the subdivision of all materials into three quality grades.

My opinion, for whatever it's worth, and it's obviously not worth much, is that if you are hell-bent on "making crafting more difficult" then the only change you should keep is the addition of blue and purple quality components. That change alone makes the system three times more expensive and three times more time consuming. Even if you were to knock every single component (green, blue, purple all) back down to requiring 2/2/2 mats, the system would still be three times "harder" than it is now.

For making top-of-the-line gear, it's actually more than three times harder, more like nine times harder (since a purple component takes triple a blue component, which takes triple a green component, never mind the extra time involved in crafting all the extras). So just this change, and nothing else, would be more than enough to make crafting more demanding in terms of time and material cost.

I stand ready to test the new crafting when it comes out, and give feedback based on the implemented changes. I appreciate that devs probably want to take things incrementally rather than making many huge changes all at once (though, if I may be permitted some snark, that doesn't seem to have stopped ye designing a system with many huge changes all at once). However, there is a really good case to be made for making more drastic changes before 6.0 launches. If you still keep time and materials costs relatively high in 6.0 (and they absolutely are still high, by comparison to pre-6.0 crafting, even with these reductions, though of course you haven't given us specific % on every change you made), and then feedback is so anguished that you eventually bring costs down to be much closer to pre-6.0 norms, a lot of early adopters will have wasted a lot of time and materials. And some of those players may be gone from the game by the time you make further changes. You could, instead, believe the severity of the feedback we're giving you now, and make deeper changes that'll make things less painful for everyone when 6.0 launches. Changes that will let crafting actually be fun. We are, I trust, still playing RPGs to have fun, not to work a second job.

I'm not so sure onderon gathering is that great, I didn't feel like I got near enough green mats. What will that be like with competition, since we can't share nodes?

Also, unsure about blue augments still requiring conquest mats, you said premium quality it was removed. Which is great, but I just don't know.

Jawa Scrap really doesn't feel like its mitigating anything, without huge stacks of things to deconstruct. Maybe that will feel better as time goes on and all drops are gold.

On the gear side of things, why so many modification variations? I know a lot of people may not care, but it seems punishing to the people that do. They already have to worry about getting the right set bonus, tactical, mats/money for augments and rolling for amps.

Can you please also explain how exactly the bolstering works across the game? There's still huge amounts of people that still don't understand the current system. Is it intentional, that mastery/power relics and mastery power adrenals will not work in anything scaled? Doesn't that make it so people feel less of a pull to gearing? According to a few writes up I saw, it could be beneficial to have an extra set of gear for dps and heals to use defense mods in scaled content, because otherwise they are wasting stats. (this exists now in world content, but fps are scaled differently and ops aren't scaled down)

I'd love to see a detailed write up of the intentions of the system, and how the systems work.

Honestly that vendor is fine. If you go an gear normally the idea is that you are gearing up 70-80% then going to the vendor for the stuff that didn't drop, which should be just about right. Then run a bunch of FP and junk to get the mods you need. For most players any mod works, but for min-max you might need to run more junk to get to the right level of mod.

 

To me the bigger vendor issue are the set bonus/tactical vendors. The 1 mil credits thing is too high, at least for set pieces. Tacticals it is probably about right, maybe up it to 1.25 mil or 1.5 mil if they drop the set pieces. Also the cap on shards since you will be getting more shards than you will credits if you are gearing.

Respectfully:

1. mods don't do any good if most of what you have does not use them ( very few drops were modable)

2. 100% RNG Vendor is almost a contradiction of terms.

Several other players presented detailed information as to why a VENDOR that is RNG is just as bad as the nonsense that crafting was faced with.

As for the continued silence from BW and the determination to utilize this form of gearing, public outcry notwithstanding, tells me all that I need to know.

That's OK ! I'll sit patiently and wait. NO BW will never change.

In the back of my mind I knew that the final outcome of gear acquisition based on past experiences was a distinct possibility. I had hoped that I was wrong.

IMO … this is not over yet !

One other note as well since I know there has been concern around material costs. Although the costs are higher players should be seeing a much higher in-flow of materials as well. If you are only doing Crew Skill Missions and nothing else it may feel slower though. However you will receive supplementary materials from playing content (such as boss kills) as well as via Jawa Scrap which you will receive from all deconstruction. For players who are actively harvesting materials we actually expect that you will be able to craft even faster than you could previously (due to a large in-flow of materials). As always, please keep any and all feedback coming. If what I stated above is not what you have been seeing then more changes may be necessary.

Hi Eric,

I think you are still theory crafting the whole system and don't see its flaws in practical aplication. That line is simple not what is happening and will not happen even with the announced changes.

You think the in-flow of mats will be higher because of gathering and boss kills? That per se has one problem each:

* Bag of mats from boss is rolled, not personal look and not that much inside.

* Nodes will be available only on two very crowded planets

But there are other bigger issues that are a result of the system in general and testers have noted them here many times. You are ignoring that not only the amount of mats requirements was was increased....

* There are 3 rarities overall were we used to have 1 for gathering and 2 for missions.

* There are new components that require slicing and mission. From needing the occasional slicing on a couple of toons to privide mats for all professions, now we will practically need to have a 4th crew skill on all of them just for it.

* Adding tiered components that require previous tiers ones. This creates a dependancy on Premium materials that is significantly higher than the others. 1 Purple requires 3 Blue and 1 Blue requires 3 Green. So for each purple component, we need 3 times Blue and 9 times greens.

The in-flux: be it gathering, bosses and amount of missions we can run should provide should be balanced to those requirements.

And to be clear: Reducing mission time do not even come close to solve that problem.

Still, thanks for the announced changes. I would have really liked to experience that in PTS. As someone who enjoys crafting it was important to experience the system on witch i spend lots of time in the game. You had feedback on this matter since PTS 1, i know because it was a comple post by Darev that rised an alarm for me on this that you were planning big changes to crafting. One of the reasons i finally decided to make space in my ssd to install PTS. A real shame.

* There are new components that require slicing and mission. From needing the occasional slicing on a couple of toons to privide mats for all professions, now we will practically need to have a 4th crew skill on all of them just for it.

It might be helpful if they actually gave us a 4th crew skill to learn if they are going to cross over so much,

What would help with QOL :

1. Learning a 4th crew skill on the same character

2. Allowing 12 companions to do missions when you reach lvl 75

GREAT!

Thank you for listening Eric!

Now there is just 2 real issues left for me.

1: Cost of Amplifiers is still too high uncapped. No one will even actively mess with amplifiers until end-game thanks to this. They will just use whatever and I bet even then it mostly gets ignored as players just look at armor rating and otherwise go about their business.

2: Game is still very unfriendly to those of us who swap mods, armorings, enhancements in and out of our shells. Yes, you did deliver more drops. However, I can tell you doing 10 flashpoints over the last 2 days, the rate of value replacement for a shell (so I could keep my set bonus) felt like about 1/3 of what it would have been had I just replaced the equipment outright (and lost my set bonus to do it). That is a double punishment - it punishes those who mod, and also acts as a set bonus deterrent. Keep in mind, those of us who use the armorings, mods and enhancements need 3x as many as someone just swapping equipment (armor/barrel/hilt slot, mod slot, enhancement slot). We need more there to truly even out. And just swapping equipment also acts as a deterrence againt augments as well - why augment a piece of gear at the costs it takes to make or buy them when you likely are ditching that piece of equipment in a short period of time for something better?

Those are the 2 outstanding issues left for me with 6.0

Both achievements were in the Legacy/Achievements/Feats of Strength section on the PTS and were right next to each other. I believe the subcategory was something like Activities, but I'm away from my computer and can't check.

On mine it wasn't. My Achievements only had what I had achieved, and showed nothing about achievements I had yet to do. There was only the Phase 2 showing completed and no Phase 3 beside it.

PTS Finished for good now then, won't be another change to get mount?

if so rip

GREAT!

 

Thank you for listening Eric!

 

 

Now there is just 2 real issues left for me.

 

1: Cost of Amplifiers is still too high uncapped. No one will even actively mess with amplifiers until end-game thanks to this. They will just use whatever and I bet even then it mostly gets ignored as players just look at armor rating and otherwise go about their business.

 

2: Game is still very unfriendly to those of us who swap mods, armorings, enhancements in and out of our shells. Yes, you did deliver more drops. However, I can tell you doing 10 flashpoints over the last 2 days, the rate of value replacement for a shell (so I could keep my set bonus) felt like about 1/3 of what it would have been had I just replaced the equipment outright (and lost my set bonus to do it). That is a double punishment - it punishes those who mod, and also acts as a set bonus deterrent. Keep in mind, those of us who use the armorings, mods and enhancements need 3x as many as someone just swapping equipment (armor/barrel/hilt slot, mod slot, enhancement slot). We need more there to truly even out. And just swapping equipment also acts as a deterrence againt augments as well - why augment a piece of gear at the costs it takes to make or buy them when you likely are ditching that piece of equipment in a short period of time for something better?

 

 

Those are the 2 outstanding issues left for me with 6.0

Something I noticed, but didn't explore in depth, is swapping out a mod/enhancement/armoring with another one "reset" the amplifier cost. I guess it becomes a "new item" or something?

On mine it wasn't. My Achievements only had what I had achieved, and showed nothing about achievements I had yet to do. There was only the Phase 2 showing completed and no Phase 3 beside it.

Very strange! My Feats of Strength section definitely showed achievements I didn't complete (e.g., Play to Give), and the Phase 3 achievement was visible while I was working on it. I hope whatever the problem was doesn't keep you from getting the achievements and rewards on live.

PTS Finished for good now then, won't be another change to get mount?

 

if so rip

They said it was down for good for 6.0 testing.

They said it was down for good for 6.0 testing.

Ah damn..

Was so close to finishing the mount achievement but just couldn't get enough time to play due to moving house.

Never forgive myself for missing out on it

feelsbadman