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This is kind of a big deal for me and my biggest gripe with everything I heard and saw about SWTOR so far.

Apparently they go with the WOW model of top tier crafting being very tightly linked to operations / raiding.

Now, operations might or might not be more casual friendly compared to a game like WOW but this still bothers me:

They've stated that the best pve gear (the "10% better at pve than the top tier pvp gear") drops from / is rewarded by doing operations. Next to that, the best crafted gear (which is a tier below that and used by those who start doing high level pve content), also requires you to be participating in operations or buy the components and recipe's off the AH (for probably very steep prices and from operation crafters who are already saturated in their needs which doesn't happen so very often).

So as things are now:

- raiding = best pve gear drops and rewards

- raiding = best components and recipe's for crafters to make the second best gear

Personally I'm fine with raiders having access to the best pve gear: effort and reward and all that. But I like to see an equal effort - reward balance for top tier crafting without being forced to be part of raids: crafting is essentially a solo-esque alternative gameplay style, along with storylines, exploring and the likes, and there are tons of people who like just doing stuff like that, even if it is terribly hard or maybe even requiring small groups rather than being forced to participate in gameplay aspects which you don't like so much.

In my eyes raiding should be ONE source of the best components and recipe's, but not the only one; there should be hard, open world, solo or small group alternatives for every crafting need.

Anyway, this kind of distribution annoyed me in WOW and it will probably annoy me in Swtor.

What's your thoughts on this?

p.s. maybe I'm rushing to conclusions and missed out on some info, please correct me if I'm wrong in my depiction here.

2 things.

If the item is BOP (bind on pickup) than im ok with it being on par with the best dropped stuff.

If the item is BOE it should be 1 tier below you should not be able to buy the best gear just because someone can craft it and sell it.

let's think about it.

crafting-only should make good gear.

raidng-only should make good gear.

but crafting WITH some materials that only come from raids? that should make the best gear.

right? 2 things coming together shoul make things greater than the individual parts.

Originally posted by Robokapp

let's think about it.

 

crafting-only should make good gear.

raidng-only should make good gear.

but crafting WITH some materials that only come from raids? that should make the best gear.

 

 

right? 2 things coming together shoul make things greater than the individual parts.

I'm fine with that but the source of those crafting materials and recipe's shouldn't be ALSO mainly raids.

So raiders needing non-raiding crafters and non-raiding crafters needing raiders would be fine in my eyes.

Originally posted by Markn1

2 things.

 

If the item is BOP (bind on pickup) than im ok with it being on par with the best dropped stuff.

If the item is BOE it should be 1 tier below you should not be able to buy the best gear just because someone can craft it and sell it.

I'm really sick of bind on pickup. How about a game that has stuff that doesn't bind to you at all.

Originally posted by Xondar123

Originally posted by Markn1

2 things.

 

If the item is BOP (bind on pickup) than im ok with it being on par with the best dropped stuff.

If the item is BOE it should be 1 tier below you should not be able to buy the best gear just because someone can craft it and sell it.

I'm really sick of bind on pickup. How about a game that has stuff that doesn't bind to you at all.

 eve online has no concept of 'binding'. but pve isnt instnaced. unless you count jump gates but again you can bring as many people as you want so...

Originally posted by Robokapp

let's think about it.

 

crafting-only should make good gear.

raidng-only should make good gear.

but crafting WITH some materials that only come from raids? that should make the best gear.

 

 

right? 2 things coming together shoul make things greater than the individual parts.

Post of the day no doubt give him the trophy.

Not a huge fan of crafting per se, bit im a bigger fan of 'hating' on raids, so anything other then moronic 11 year old design philosophy to dole out the best rewards is better then raiding.

Preferably no final product gear drops from any mob, operations or otherwise.

Crafting should be more about designing stuff and less about grinding and raiding for components.

Making people make secondary gear kinda takes away the point of crafting and makes the economy rather strange.

MMOs needs to get rid of the grind in crafting and start make it more fun. After all is it one of the few options to killing stuff. I don't mind though that crafting could include some weird parts, like go to mount Doom to melt your metal in the fire of the volcano or having certain stuff that require you to craft it in moonlight or such, that just add to the flavor.

    Personally it seems appropriate that with Operations being the "hardest" content that drops from them should be the best, whether it is gear or crafting components.  What doesn't make sense is to say that you are okay with Operations awarding the best gear, but no okay with them awarding the best components.  Seems a double standard to me.  Don't get me wrong, I understand that you want crafting to be able to make the best stuff possible without the need for Operations, but the best stuff from the hardest content is only appropriate for all areas of the game.

    I do have to admit that I like some of Loke666's indeas (above) on crafting to add a little spice too.

In my opinion, crafting dependent on raiding defeats the purpose of crafting entirely.

It seems like many developers are looking for additional reasons to encourage more players to raid in classic MMO game models as it’s seen as the predominant end game activity to keep you involved and subscribed at the high end. I am not surprised they’d tie crafting needs into raiding as it’s boring in most games on its own merits. This adds some action to the process. It also gives you something to do with others, including a reason to go, rather than playing it like a single player RPG.

But like so many, I am a bit weary of classic raiding from games like EQ2 and WoW to a point where I wish there were more alternatives. 

This still looks like another scenario (potentially) where crafting will be more useful for future alts rather than the character you grind out the skill with depending on quest rewards. I mean if they are good enough why waste time hunting materials and making the goods when you could be rapidly out leveling the item in question and at the high end the best stuff is found anyway…
 

Originally posted by ActionMMORPG

In my opinion, crafting dependent on raiding defeats the purpose of crafting entirely.

Crafting materials locked in high-end instances that require a dedicated group hours to work through is where my happy-crafting time expires.

Can I send my companion to the raids so I can get on with the crafting please?

Originally posted by Teilo

Originally posted by ActionMMORPG

In my opinion, crafting dependent on raiding defeats the purpose of crafting entirely.

Crafting materials locked in high-end instances that require a dedicated group hours to work through is where my happy-crafting time expires.

Can I send my companion to the raids so I can get on with the crafting please?

No but, you could join a guild to feed you the mats or you could hire a guild to get mats for you, but I don't think TOR is really going to be that type of game from the ground up so there's little point tbh.

Crafters should have their own end game, something thats not a raid but requires a lot of skill and or hard work to obtain, note hardwork should not equate to endless hours of boring grind like fishing or killing the same mob for hours to get a 0.0001% drop.

A few suggestions would be like the 1 and only Hunter Epic quest in wow, wow missed the ball by not taking this concept further, I think crafters need something like this.

Like to get scale of uberness, you have to go out find, track down, and then knock out some uber beast, then chip off part of its scale before it wakes up and noms you.

First i see this driving the prices up on crafted equipment to ridiculous levels. Second doesn't this ideal take away from the companion crew skill of gathering and the rewards garnered from that?

Wouldn't that be a nice mechanic for your companions to be more useful? If you don't want to raid yourself, send them into the raid instance after your guild cleared it to aquire the material.

Every killed boss opens up more harvesting options. Each harvesting run takes, let's say 6 hours, during which your companions are obviously occupied and unavailable to you. After those 6 hours they'll return with a cache of materials.

You'll have to balance sending them to harvest and using them for crafting. You can use the instance from your guild or maybe even "buy access" to the instance of another guild.