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SWG crafting NOW compared to THEN?
Wieli
Member UncommonPosts: 6
Hey all!
I used to be a hardcore SWG player during 2003-beginning of 2006 then i stopped playing it and never went back.
I was completly in love with the crafting system that SWG had and i have failed to find anything similar to that, (havent been looking insanly hard tho. But the thing that i liked with it was the recourse stats and depending on what recourses you had you would get a better/worse weapon/armor.
If you had some krayt tissue you weapon would most likely get better then the avarage weapon.
Since i havent found anything that is similar to this. That the better stuff you put in it the better the outcome would be (i also want to use the item in some way, like the weapon) so i was planning to take a look at SWG again.
So i wanna know whats the diffrence in the crafting in SWG now compared to how it was? How does recourses effect for example weapons? can you stuill put in diffrent CA/AA´s in gear/weapons? Is there still something similar to "krayt tissue" to enhance the gear etc?
Comments
If you look at the left hand side of the forum pages there is an alphabetized index of individual game forums (and you'll find a forum there for SWG). That would have been a better place to ask this question. But don't sweat it.
However sorry I can't answer you. But I was a little curious about this myself.
And welcome to mmorpg.com.
I believe crafting is basically completely fucked, now.
i'd like to say your wrong.. but.. reality won't let me..
they took a complex system and simplified it, and then tried to 'tweek' it a bit.. but.. crafting no longer provides worthwhile gear except at the very highest level of ability.. which means it isnt worth the effort.. so yes.. your description is probably the most apt.
The best weapons and armor are now drops from dungeons. Bio engineer is shattered so no more crafting support class. Chef is dumbed down but its sorta the same. Droid engineer has new stuff but the quality of your resources and experimentation/assembly does not matter, just drag n drop like your typical mmo. Architecture is dead; all the best deeds are vet rewards or drops. Tailoring is about the same. Shipwright is the only crafting prof left that still feels like old school swg imo.
I went back to SWG recently and didn't last very long. Crafting is simply not necessary like it was back in the good old days. There is no item decay anymore and all the best gear is from drops from mobs. Yeah you can still craft things but the whole market is suffering from hyper inflation as expected when there is a loot driven economy.
The sad fact is it has gone from a vibrant player driven economy where the crafting class was an intergral part of the virtual world to a WOW style loot system where the crafters just simply are not needed. Yeah there are still crafters out there but it pales in comparison to how it was.
That all sucks, really. Of all the MMORPGs I have tried, old school SWG had the deepest, most varied crafting system that I have ever seen. And the crafting at all levels of play were critical to gameplay and the game's economy.
But it's gone. All gone for years now.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
Haven't played the game for about a year but last I played you need a crafter if you want the best gear. Weapons are dropped only half as good as they can be and need to be deconstructed into a schematic for a crafter to make it far greater.
Gear wise its all crafting unless you're a jedi. Crafters are needed to make 35's and Primus Layerd Armor. It is a very crafter dependent game but for a new crafter it is extremely difficult. Prices are threw the roof especially for some resources needed for top notch armor layers.
The "best gear" isn't really dropped by mobs. It only becomes the best gear once that item is deconstructed and crafted by a crafter. Gear is really the wrong term, I don't know any decent Armor that drops from mobs. Only weapons. You can get gear from PvP/Heroic's (Armor and weapons) but even that has to be re-crafted to be decent.
Its pretty different from the old days but its certainly not fucked up or bad.
This
Happens when you try to WoWify an indepth MMORPG in a vain attempt to draw more subscribers.
Reason why I probably never will buy an SOE MMORPG again, ever.
My gaming blog
Another poster in a different thread hit on it perfectly: in current SWG there are really 3 separate economies: Loot, TCG, and crafted.
In the old days, the crafting economy was 90% or more of the game. And much of the loot economy was for things like crafting enhancers, so that also supposrted crafting. Loot items to go in armor, loot items to go in weapons. Etc. Loot was a distant, distant second to crafting and the TCG was not yet a twinkle of greed in Smed's eye.
Fast forward to today:
Now, crafting is a distant third to both loot and TCG items. Go look at any of the trade forums for the truth of this. No decay, changes in game systems, entire classes of crafted items being removed from the game (and the classes that crafted them), crafting is in the worst shape it has ever been. Sure, people might need a crafted gun and crafter armor, but with no decay they need it once. And then never again. Even pets don't decay now.
I "gave away" my crafting acct years ago, and could play any time I want, for free, and I dont. And I was a HUGE crafter. I was the guy that would sit there for an hour trying to get that extra .02% on some subcomponent to make a better finished item.
Crafting in the current game, is a pale, bloodless, shallow, shell of what it once was. But then that is no surprise, since the rest of the game is that as well.
There aren't enough players to genuinely support a player driven economy. There aren't enough crafters to provide the type of selection and market that we saw 'back in the day'.
If I were a new player and I wanted to buy an item (crafted), but I couldn't find the item in any vendor (player controlled)... then I would be frustrated and pissed off. I would want an alternative way to obtain top quality items.
If I enjoy combat, pvp/pve and that portion of the game, I dont' want to have to wait for a crafter to help me out. Especially not if I can obtain the items doing what I enjoy most.... playing the game (dungeons/pvp).
I hate the fact that you can buy items online.... but in the same sense, if I can't find a group of players to run dungeons, then that's my alternative.
I do miss the days when I could go from town to town and search through vendors.... vendors full of items. Houses so incredibly decorated and items of amazing quality. I haven't seen that in SWG in years.
I left SWG when the NGE was introduced, but I returned about 3 weeks ago. And like the OP, what I loved most about SWG back in the day was the crafting (I was Master Armorsmith). A friend of mine (former Master Droid Engineer) has returned too.
I have to say I don't agree with a lot of the above replies.
Maybe I haven't been back long enough to really know what's going on, but I am enjoying crafting as much as I ever did, and I am already selling stuff from my vendor. Sure, it's not like the old days where I'd sell 200 items a day, but It's ticking over and I'm making money. So is my friend.
I'm also making money from selling resources, which suggests that there are other players out there who are crafting a lot and grinding new crafting professions too. I have made friends with some great people from the crafting community too.
The economy is not as lively as it was, of course, due to there being far fewer players. But we are having a great time and have no interntion of leaving.
As for the complexity, the system is identical to what it was pre-NGE, it's just as complex and challenging.
I suggest you give it a try ...
No different then this version they still insist on calling Starwars.
Soon a real deal (Starwars) game will emerge. Then it'll be like comparing Harvard to kindergarten.
Not even if they paid me.
But thanks anyway.
The reason there aren't enough players is because they killed the player driven economy. Also, if the crafted items were the best available AND decayed you'd have them at cheaper prices and the market would flourish.
The "instant gratification" crowd that they tried to pander to didn't like the idea of having their items decaying to the point of non-use. So the changes they made ruined the economy, resulting in the massive inflation you have now. Inflation is always going to happen, but their changes made it worse.
IMO, crafting post-NGE is really boring, it's too easy to reach hardcap whereas pre-NGE it was quite difficult resulting in varied quality items which created market competition, one craft with decent resources created a 3.1 53-190 damage Republic Blaster vs one with different decent resources created a 2.9 76-235 damage Republic Blaster. Same thing with armor and Shipwright chassis and components. Now it's a matter of price, it's a 10,000 credit capped Republic Blaster vs a 15,000 credit capped Republic Blaster.