Alternate characters and crafting.

[Orsino]

You're just not understanding the point. I know my companions craft for me. I know I can send them on missions. I know I can send them gathering. I also know that these services all cost credits to do. My problem is there is currently nothing to stop me having 5 x 50 characters who all have 3 companions out gathering or crafting for them while I'm logged into another character or while I'm logged out. This would cause inflation of materials and if they used slicing, it would cause a devaluation of credits due to there being so many of them floating around.

You can have up to 3 companions per character out on gathering missions simultaneously, on as many characters as you have. So using your above example, if you had 5 accounts with 50 characters on each, you could have up to 750 companions farming resources simultaneously. Note that these numbers are completly ludicrous and only for the sake of an example. However, with the cost of gathering missions constantly going up as your skill improves, the materials you receive will not make up for that cost, and much less translate into a profit. This feature primarily exists to speed up the leveling of your skills and/or allow you to focus on crafting without the traditional boredom of running around in circles clicking resource nodes.

[Deleted]

You're just not understanding the point. I know my companions craft for me. I know I can send them on missions. I know I can send them gathering. I also know that these services all cost credits to do. My problem is there is currently nothing to stop me having 5 x 50 characters who all have 3 companions out gathering or crafting for them while I'm logged into another character or while I'm logged out. This would cause inflation of materials and if they used slicing, it would cause a devaluation of credits due to there being so many of them floating around.

I'm pretty sure when you're logged out any gathering mission queue is stopped. Your companions can only gather while you're online.

[Orsino]

Companions will continue progress on their gathering/crafting missions even while you're offline.

[Deleted]

Companions will continue progress on their gathering/crafting missions even while you're offline.

Wow, that seems... A little open to abuse.

I guess if the costs are prohibitive as people have been saying then it might not be exploited by gold farmers and the like.

[GarGar]

Wow, that seems... A little open to abuse.

I guess if the costs are prohibitive as people have been saying then it might not be exploited by gold farmers and the like.

Yes, professions (even companion gathering) will be expensive, but another thing Bioware has said about professions is that they can't be powerleveled. Some high level items may take upwards of a day to craft. Leveling professions on one character will be arduous enough. It'll be doable, and hardcore players that want to level them on multiple characters will have an advantage, just like in any other game, but it still won't be easy.

[Orsino]

Wow, that seems... A little open to abuse.

I guess if the costs are prohibitive as people have been saying then it might not be exploited by gold farmers and the like.

And they are! I'd gladly link to the aforementioned post on the official forums if they were up, but Bioware has said that this feature is designed to ease the grind a little bit while adding an additional means of controling inflation. It certainly isn't designed as a tool to get wealthier faster. I'm merely using my experience from the beta to confirm that they most certainly have achieved their announced goal. Without going into specifics, if one were to use that feature on cooldown they'd be flat broke by the end of the day.

[Traces]

Wow, that seems... A little open to abuse.

I'm glad some other people at least see the issue and I wasn't just being paranoid about this.

TORFTW makes a great point on the previous page about the cost perhaps of materials (if we exclude Slicing for a moment) isn't worth the cost of sending your characters. I guess this is something we will have to wait and see how everything pans out at launch

[tripleh]

Items most certainly become soulbound in a way similar to WoW. Some when acquired, others when equiped. And yes, there are repair bills as well. The main difference regarding the latter is that gear takes a fairly long while to break and typically while leveling you'll simply end up replacing each piece of gear before its durability is used up. The fact that death does not incur durability damage (or any penalty whatsoever for all that matters) contributes to making this system fairly transparent, only taking away a small portion of your income every couple days.

Got a link ? Cause hearing that you can hand down old gear.