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Star Wars: The Old Republic: Crew Skills: Impressive, Most Impressive
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
In his latest column about Star Wars: The Old Republic, MMORPG.com Community Manager Michael Bitton takes a look at the recently detailed crew skills and crafting. As the title says, Mike is most impressed by what he's learned and has a few thoughts to share about it. Check out Mike's column then leave us your comments below.
The player and his crew uses his starship as a base of operations, as a form of player housing, a vehicle to travel from planet to planet, and to conduct a majority of the crafting features available as part of the Crew Skills system. Crew Skills are broken down into three categories: gathering, crafting, and missions, and you’ll have three slots with which to assign skills from the aforementioned categories to your crew. All three slots can be filled with three mission or gathering skills, however, you can only have one actual crafting skill assigned to your crew at a time. The different members of your crew will all have their own specialties (for example, Vette is an excellent Treasure Hunter), so some crew members will be better at different tasks.
Read more SWTOR: Crew Skills: Impressive, Most Impressive.
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Comments
I thought they had made a good choice in the crafting system aswell. I was surprised at how unique it is, and it is quite interesting. Can't wait to try it out.
"When it comes to GW2 any game is fair game"
For once I'm excited to craft.... woah felt weird just typing that.
Scary, isn't it?!
Count me in as well.
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After hearing about the crew system I was actually looking forward to hearing what Mike had to say about it. Sometimes I like to craft, but in this instance I think I'd spend much of my time utilizing the mission skills. I think this system is really a great idea, I can't wait to try it out. I'm even more interested in finding out what kind of stuff the crafters will be able to make.
I'm a half-hearted crafter by admission...I am very interested in the way SWTOR is handling it though. I like the idea of strategically plotting out work for my crew. Like a well oiled machine, my crew will define who we are in the galaxy and I am the spokesman.
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
Well it's an interesting route to take.... but in one sense it seems to reinforce the general feel I am getting of SW-TOR.... that of the game playing itself....rather then the PLAYER playing it.
I've never been much of a crafter myself....and I expect this mechanic will make crafting appeal a bit more to players who traditionaly haven't been interested.
At the same time, I imagine it's a big dissapointment for the folks who ARE traditionaly into crafting in games.... as it basicaly minimizes thier direct involvement.
It'd be kinda like telling combat oriented players.... "Don't worry about fighting...you just tell your companions/bots to go out and do that for you (off-screen)... you just worry about making gear from them..... Oh sure, you could go out and fight yourself once in awhile if you REALLY want to...but it's not actualy important that you do...as your bots can easly do that as well as you can."
I've always loved to craft, but i've never been really good at, always asking others for help.. This system, at least thinking about it, makes me feel like I have the help whenever I need it, so it's not so daunting to think about diving right in there.
Pretty much the exact same way I feel about it.
Removing the player factor is a big put off in an MMO for me.
Funny since it is very similiar to swg crafting, but with companions instead of machines and droids.
SWG had one of the best crafting systems to date. I think the majority of hardcore crafters will like this system.
"When it comes to GW2 any game is fair game"
SWG had one of the best crafting systems to date. I think the majority of hardcore crafters will like this system.
In what regard?
Similar to how driving a car is like flying a plane?
Well, think of your companions as your mineral harvesters and factories pretty much... It's the same system almost but I don't know bioware did it their own way, which seems pretty interesting. Can't see how people will find the negative in something that seems to me as a positive turn for this MMO.
"When it comes to GW2 any game is fair game"
I like crafting as an alternate play experience. In EQ2, I loved to craft in the morning while I drank coffee and woke up.
I think I may be the only one that feels "meh" about the crafting in TOR. I think it's a bit of a cop-out to say watching a bar fill is the boring part of crafting, so have your companions do it. Why not make it more interesting than watching a bar fill by making a game of it?
All this said, it is disappointing but certainly not a deal-breaker. Just not impressed.
Did not think would see a crafting more interesting than Fallen Earth, but looks like this could well be the one, mind you SWG when first came out, liked the fact that not all weapons was same. all depended on the raw mats stats
They said themselves that it will not have the depth of SWG's crafting system. As a hardcore crafter, I'm sure I can speak for most of us when I point out that any system that can only claim "some of the best items" will come from crafting and any system with loot drops is automatically not that attractive. I still plan to play the game, and I plan to craft, but I don't expect it to be much more rewarding than WoW crafting.
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Lest we forget, nothing happens until players themselves initiate it. If you do nothing, your crew will do nothing. It's not like hitting the activate button and waiting for your crafting skills to build while cranking out items. That would be factories and harvesters from SWG. But wait...we are talking about a system that gives you the illusion of having a automated system but in reality it just makes it more immersive. I find no fault in that.
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
I don't know. I think the crafting in FF14 was boring. This is more like an swg style crafting. So , it's something I can deal with... Send my companions out to do the work, much like I would drop a harvester, or a factory in swg.. let them do the work for me..
Nothing is more annoying than games like aion or wow or any of those crafting systems where you have to scour the landscape looking for the resources you want...
I guess you will always have somebody trying to point out negativity where none exists, but w/e.. I hope people like you do not get your way, because you would be ruining what appears to be an epic system.
"When it comes to GW2 any game is fair game"
I kind of go both ways on that one. I think the best crafting system I've ever seen was Vanguards crafting system, however I thought that the "mini-game" portion of it was extremely tough to get used to, and the grind was even worse. Crafting 2 pairs of gloves for a crafting quest, not so bad. Crafting 6 swords, a little lengthy in the crafting department, especially with all the things that could go wrong during crafting. It was fun and detailed and enjoyable - in the short term. In the long term it was boring, repetitive and exhausting. I'm hoping this system will be more of a cool medium where its simple to get into, but it takes dedication to master.
I think it is going to be fun doing crafting in this game. Looks good.
The crafting system sounds good... I am sure people will come in here "OH Noes tor looks to be showing some promise, better get in there and stir up some negativity"., and probably after praising GW2 or something ( a game which has no faults)
But whatever, can't do much about it.
"When it comes to GW2 any game is fair game"
I like the look of this crafting system
And this is why I give props to BW for basing their crew skill system on a timer and not a quantity based method. Plus your crew member can only have 1 crafting skill (say blasters). So if there is a need for 24hour blasters, then it will be up to the players to find more people that craft blasters to meet the demand and not some guy from a huge guild that cranks out blasters all day long just to monopolize the economy.
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
In swg most of my good weapons came from a drop that in turn had to be crafted.... So what is your point?
Of course they don't have the depth of swg, but I said it was similiar to the game.. I can bet this system will be better than wow, aion, ff14 and several other systems that we have seen around. May not be as deep as an swg system, but this does look interesting, and something that could be very enjoyable and more than rewarding.
"When it comes to GW2 any game is fair game"
Still apples to oranges when compared to SWG.
In SWG you still had to personally scout out resource points, place your harvestor/s on said resource points -- which shifted every 3 to 9 days, and then make sure they were maintained with credits and power to keep them running, as well as clearing the hopper out as harvestors would stop if they ran out of room to store minerals. In otherwords, collecting resources was still significantly more involved and required regular intervention to ensure that things were going smoothly. So sure, if you completely neglect the fact that automated harvesting still required a good bit of planning, traveling, and interaction, then the gathering systems are essentially the same thing.
Then there's crafting... in that while yes you could setup factories to mass produce certain items, you still had to personally craft a prototype to be able to create the schematic for the factory to base it's production on. Even then, most of the best items were still individually crafted in their final product, and not factory crafted. Similar to gathering, there was a lot of planning required in acquiring and then choosing the proper resources to use in each item being made, regardless of if it was made individually by the player, or beign run as a schematic in a factory. So again, if you remove all of the planning, travelling (for resources), and interaction of the player required to properly craft, the crafting systems are essentially the same thing.
I guess it fits with their whole iconic heroes attempt, but bleh. I'm tired of being the hero of the universe and when everyone is a hero, is anyone really all that heroic?