New expansion crew skills

[LilSaihah]

While there's certainly room for improvement in the crafting feature of MMOs, to think that either company 'don't give two shits' is ignorant. Whether you like it or not, Blizzard designs professions that are accessible and easily understood by a wide range of audiences. In such a wide audience, you don't put overly complicated, niche features onto a traditional MMO system. It would be moronic.

Heroic raiding is an incredibly complicated aspect of the game which appeals to a very tight niche. Should Blizzard continue to make that?

I mean, really, it's nice and fluffy to say that Blizzard really cares about crafting skills. But look at what they do, not what they say, and all they've done, mechanically, is add additional skill returns to certain crafted items in the last two expansions. Since release, the only other things they've done are require you to be in a certain location to craft certain things, and... Well, discoveries and glyph research are nice, but is it okay that the three crowning achievements of WoW crafting "getting more than 1 point from more expensive items", "once-per-day RNG" and "stand here and make some CLOTH goddurnit"?

Also, SWTOR tried to at least innovate the method for accomplishing a similar system. If they didn't care about it, they could have easily made an exact copy and not changed it at all. They realized it fit well with their companion system and probably created them in tandem.

Crew skills and the crew management system is probably one of the best aspects of SWTOR, but that doesn't speak anything of how you exactly play the game of advancing your crewskills. You can either advance vertically by making stuff and watching your numbers go up, or advance diagonally by reverse-engineering equipment to create superior versions, the second of which is a very good but somewhat flawed spin on the crafting system. They could, for all crewskills, simply remove the vertical advancement and create chains using the RE system(with maybe some kinder RNG) and it wouldn't do any damage. I'd probably love it, actually. All you'd have to do would be remove the arbitrary stat rewards for maxing out your profession of choice so that these professions aren't oversaturated by necessity, and you'd have an optional, enjoyable game system.

The problem is that SWTOR's professions were designed by people who didn't understand how to make MMOs. That much is evident by how little the professions still don't matter. Your claims about wow's professions being useless just shows you have pretty flawed views of the game. Could they add tiered crafting items for PvE that help provide some gear that stays current? Yes, but they normally do that from Raids already.

Bioware's ineptitude aside, I didn't say they were useless. I said they weren't interesting. They have a use in that they provide you with statistical bonuses, with materials you can sell in an economy and items you can produce by refining those items. They're not interesting because advancement is a banal checklist, and development is identical to the same methods by which you get every other piece of gear in the game

What does needing to buy gems, food and elixirs, enchants and the various hodgepodge of profession-specific enchants add to the game, other than arbitrary fees for equipping a new item or showing up to the raid for the night? What does requiring(and don't pretend it's anything other than a requirement for any player who's even slightly serious about their performance) players to level their crafting to 575 do for them, other than cost them gold? What does dropped crafting patterns add to the game that simply dropping the completed item from the raid trash in question would take away?

It's like you want crafting systems to be able to do everything for you so that you don't have to step foot in a dungeon or raid...which is obviously a ridiculous desire.

it's almost like my avatar isn't of a game in which you can get gear of the highest quality by crafting, a game in which the content you involve yourself in isn't because of a gear treadmill, but because you have a conscious desire to play through that content

if i wanted to do raids, i'd do them. i DID do them for three years before i got bored and put them to the side. maybe i WANT TO DO crafting, because i can feel there's a game in there somewhere just waiting to be let out.

[notorious98]

Personally, I think it's silly when tauntauns drop sniper rifles or a giant mech drops a lightsaber. I've always felt that gear should be obtained through crafting and the mats for blue + quality gear through killing bosses or BAM or w/e the game has. Also, I've always liked it when different crafters had to work together to achieve something like some old school engineering recipes in wow.
IE: Artifice recipe, [Mace Windus VibroCane] 8 thorium bars (common mat made by armormech or armstech), 3 pristine cortosis weave (rare archaeology find), plasma stabilization isotope (made by biochem from boss drop), purified or corrupted black core (crafted by artifice from boss drop), color crystal level 50+ (crafted by artifice, common)

Something like that where you need something from the primary prof, secondary prof of primary, and then at least 2 other professions involved to make an epic. Only 1 other profession for a blue, and you can create greens on your own.

edit: boss drops would obv be BOP, you would need all 3 crafters present to create my ex, the result would go to whoever was selected at the recipient. You can have a 4th person who is inactive in crafting but a recipient. That, or each prof has its own set of tiers for each class. /shrug. there's a lot of ways to do it.

I like that idea.

[Deleted]

Personally, I think it's silly when tauntauns drop sniper rifles or a giant mech drops a lightsaber. I've always felt that gear should be obtained through crafting and the mats for blue + quality gear through killing bosses or BAM or w/e the game has. Also, I've always liked it when different crafters had to work together to achieve something like some old school engineering recipes in wow.
IE: Artifice recipe, [Mace Windus VibroCane] 8 thorium bars (common mat made by armormech or armstech), 3 pristine cortosis weave (rare archaeology find), plasma stabilization isotope (made by biochem from boss drop), purified or corrupted black core (crafted by artifice from boss drop), color crystal level 50+ (crafted by artifice, common)

Something like that where you need something from the primary prof, secondary prof of primary, and then at least 2 other professions involved to make an epic. Only 1 other profession for a blue, and you can create greens on your own.

edit: boss drops would obv be BOP, you would need all 3 crafters present to create my ex, the result would go to whoever was selected at the recipient. You can have a 4th person who is inactive in crafting but a recipient. That, or each prof has its own set of tiers for each class. /shrug. there's a lot of ways to do it.

Boss drops is the last effing thing we need. Crew Skills should be an alternative means to acquire stuff, not a scenario with raiding reward stuff directly and indirectly by dropping mats otherwise unobtainable to create stuff via crew skills, and crew skills themselves worthless without raiding.

Make it expensive, make it time consuming, make - as you suggested - several profs have to work together. Don't however reinforce the idea in a handful of morons' heads that raiding is the chosen gameplay method for MMOs and anything else is inferior.

[RoninaThorstone]

raiding is the chosen gameplay method for MMOs and anything else is inferior.

But... It is in swtor. It's modeled after WoW/EQ/Rift ect where raiding is how you get the BIS gear with PvP as a side game. I mean, think about what happens when a PvE trinket is BIS for pvp, pvpers get told to suck it up and raid and the dev teams never do a thing. The second the pvp trinkets are BIS the dev team is like, "OH MAN. SORRY PVE BROS. WE DONT WANNA MAKE YOU PVP FOR BIS GEAR BROS. WE WILL GET ON THAT."

The developers themselves believe that. I, like you, wish it weren't the case but lets not pretend it isn't.

[notorious98]

*snip*

Actually, this whole thing started because you said that you "ignore" your professions at max. Now you're turning it into a different argument altogether. And for what? To seem right? First, you were wrong then. Now that's out of the way, your particular way of crafting is obviously only enjoyed by the niche that Kitty was talking about. How do we know this? Because GW2's crafting system and lateral gear treadmill isn't enough to keep people playing it regularly. How about we attach mini-games to it as well? You know, click your mouse at exactly the right time to create a particular potion. There are very few ways to create an "interesting" crafting profession. To be honest, the way you've suggested doesn't interest me in the slightest. In fact, MOST forms of crafting don't interest me in the slightest. It's usually something you use to make money in-game. It's just a tool, not a form of gameplay.

---------- Post added 2013-02-25 at 10:02 AM ----------

But... It is in swtor. It's modeled after WoW/EQ/Rift ect where raiding is how you get the BIS gear with PvP as a side game. I mean, think about what happens when a PvE trinket is BIS for pvp, pvpers get told to suck it up and raid and the dev teams never do a thing. The second the pvp trinkets are BIS the dev team is like, "OH MAN. SORRY PVE BROS. WE DONT WANNA MAKE YOU PVP FOR BIS GEAR BROS. WE WILL GET ON THAT."

The developers themselves believe that. I, like you, wish it weren't the case but lets not pretend it isn't.

How about change the boss drops to BoE, but still need that particular type of crafter to do something to it to make it useable? We know that BW has chosen to make Ops the way to obtain BiS (despite telling us it wouldn't be that way), but there are ways around forcing people to run them in this particular way of crafting we're discussing.

[RoninaThorstone]

How about change the boss drops to BoE, but still need that particular type of crafter to do something to it to make it useable? We know that BW has chosen to make Ops the way to obtain BiS (despite telling us it wouldn't be that way), but there are ways around forcing people to run them in this particular way of crafting we're discussing.

Helm/chest/legs/glove ect tokens that can be fixed/turned in through several forms of endgame? sure. I would love to see something like that.

That said, bioware seems to have issues making one form of end game, let alone many lol. /shrug.

If they would adjust their design philosophy away from eq/wow/rift it would be good for them. There's too much competition for them to thrive with that type of game with their development pace.

[Kelimbror]

I'm not sure if I'd enjoy crafting it it had a mini game component. I've read some talks about Wildstar looking to spice up crafting, potentially with something like that. I understand exactly where it comes from. If there were some form of skill involved, then you could actually take pride in being a high level crafter, which isn't necessarily bad. I'm just not sure if it fits into games that try to appeal to larger groups.

Make crafting too difficult and people won't do it. Make the rewards too good for a higher skill and people think your game is unfair. We can't segregate every portion of the game into elite and hardcore vs. noobs and casuals. It wouldn't have a very positive effect on the players.

So that's how one side of me feels. The other side thinks it would be very interesting to be able to attain the same gear levels from not stepping one foot inside of instanced or group content. If crafting involved a lot of specific farming, maybe some difficult solo quests, and in a comparable amount of time you could make great gear for yourself. Sweet. I would maybe be more excited to play a game like that just because I can be a hermit and increase my character power.

Then you have to look at whether everything is BoP, or you can sell it, making other people's efforts void...everything is a complicated issue in MMOs which is why we don't see a lot of innovation tbh. It's not for lack of trying or lack of effort, but it's like reinventing the wheel. Everything tried is either a wheel of a different color or not even a functional wheel anymore.