Leveling the Playing Field for Crafters and Cartel

I want to craft again. Right now, nobody wants to buy my stuff. Quite frankly, the stuff I can craft kinda sucks too.

I’m tired of being stuck with republic-skinned clothes no matter what I make
Item sets that are identical to each other. Seriously! If you don’t believe me, check out the Republic Trooper and Hardened Plastifold sets or the Jedi Sage and Consular Adept sets.
The shoes and gloves don’t match.
Companions can’t wear republic-restricted or empire-restricted orange items. This is because the items are (dumbly) restricted to specific classes. For example medium armor is restricted to sentinel or smuggler and Doc, being neither of those things, cannot wear the badass sunglasses.

Let’s compare now to the cartel market, shall we?

Full matching sets
Adaptive gear, not class-restricted.
Appearance the same across faction
ALL THE FASHION IS FUCKING COOL LOOKING

It’s no contest. This cartel market bullshit is interfering with my enjoyment of fashion. And no, I don’t want this whole thing to be solved by new recipes… on the cartel market, or purchasable with cartel rep, or as random crap in cartel packs because, seriously, fuck the cartel market.

We need to level the playing field, and fast. So, behold, my totally awesome list of Things Bioware Should Do To Keep Me Happy Because I Am Important.

1. Crafted Orange Adaptive armor. Why the hell not? Everyone’s wearing inappropriate-looking items anyway. If you wanted people to stick to looking like what their class is, don’t make bikinis.

2. Imperial and Republic recipes usable by both factions (and companions!). I want to wear the imp-only recipes. I want to wear the imp-skin of the recipes available to both sides. Why? See above re: ridiculous bikinis.

3. Matching Sets. OK, guys, seriously, why things named the same don’t match the same is just beyond me. But, for the love of Pete, don’t start changing the skins of existing items. Just rename them or something and add in the matching stuff. Because changing the skins of things without notice is not a good idea, as you well learned.

4. More recipes. The cartel market is starting to have the monopoly on cool shit.

It should be accessible to casual players (not a stupidly long grind, not BOP drops in nightmare mode). The current random proc on UT missions is pretty annoying, but not the worst.
Embargoed cartel items should become craftable, and the recipes should be obtainable from the vendor for credits instead of the current system where the items themselves are obtainable for credits. After all, the cartel market isn’t making money off those items anymore. Why not filter the credit sink through the crafters?
It would be SUPER FUN if we could reverse engineer green drops in the world to learn the orange version. It would create a market for these low-level items to help people leveling up make credits – and encourage low-level F2P players to purchase access to the GTN. But, I know, the world would EXPLODE if we retroactively applied anything cool.
P.S. Fuck the cartel market.

OK, that is all for now. Carry on.

Comments

Leveling the Playing Field for Crafters and Cartel — 10 Comments

Belanos on March 14, 2013 at 11:10 am said:

I’ve got to agree with you about the Cartel Market (and especially the damn reputations to go with it) gutting everything the armor crafters stood for. I was using them to gear alts – then Inheritance and Birthright gear became very easy to acquire.

Of course, they’re all ugly. My BH has a clam on his head thanks to that.

Cartel Market blows. Crafting is lame. Definitely need crafted Adaptive Armor.

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- Njessi on March 14, 2013 at 11:22 am said:
  
  There is absolutely no reason to do anything other than biochem now. So sad. However, I went to all the trouble of collecting the recipes and I’m not about to drop my armor/synth skills.
  
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- ScottishGuard on March 14, 2013 at 11:31 am said:
  
  Crafting is lame? Think yer at the wrong rodeo, pardner.
  
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depizan on March 14, 2013 at 12:56 pm said:

Agreed, very much. Hell, there’s now stuff on the Cartel Market that lets people dress as opposite faction. At least, I assume it doesn’t mutate if you buy it… They surely wouldn’t make that mistake, would they?

I don’t craft for money, but just trying to craft stuff for my own characters can be really annoying. I wanted my trooper and his companions to match, but, since I prefer the lighter looking armor (like the Republic Trooper set) I ended up having to find multiple recipes because the first ones I found, only he could wear. *headdesk* As you ask, why did they restrict some items to specific classes? Also, if items are Empire or Republic only, then the preview should still show what they will actually look like, not a pretend version that doesn’t exist if you preview them on your crafter (who happens to be other faction). That’s just annoying.

And I must admit I would rather buy things from other players than from the cartel market. It just feels…righter. But I’ve had to resort to the cartel market at times because I cannot find anything reasonable looking anywhere else. (Oddly enough, all of those times have involved saving companions from horrible clothing.)

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- Njessi on March 14, 2013 at 5:08 pm said:
  
  I have saved my companions from horrible clothing by using social gear, minus bikinis.
  
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  - depizan on March 15, 2013 at 1:36 pm said:
    
    Ah yes, social gear. Some of it is very nice. (We’ll just pretend the bikinis are some sort of terrible mass hallucination.) Unfortunately, that requires me to interact with other people in circumstances where my abilities or lack there of could have a negative effect on them. That’s way too much stress in my fun.
    
    On rare occasions, I’ll be social in game, but those occasions are rare. (I’ll buff people, I’ll answer questions in chat – if I’ve got my chat window open, but grouping with people is mostly out. It’s that fear of ruining other people’s fun. *sigh* And, yes, I know it’s probably ridiculous. Also, MMOs, I’m doing them wrong.)
    
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Green Armadillo on March 16, 2013 at 7:03 am said:

These are good ideas. It’s a sad byproduct of the cash store model (not in any way unique to SWTOR) that implementing them would cause BIoware to lose a lucrative revenue stream – how much have you personally spent on Cartel market outfits that Bioware would not have gotten if they’d given you the schematics in game?

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- Njessi on March 16, 2013 at 7:31 am said:
  
  Because the cartel outfits are SO pricey (3 months of stipend, or $15), I’ve only bought 3 jackets for 150 cc each and the rest are items from cartel pack items sold on the GTN. Granted, someone else had to pay cartel coins for these cartel boxes at the front end. I do get excited when new cartel items come out, because it is new fashion, but my excitement is tempered by lack of fashion in other ways. I’m EXTREMELY happy with the new rep-gear, especially the cool-looking tron armor – all achievable without cartel purchases. Having said that, it’s more extremely cool fashion that is not in the hands of crafters.
  
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- depizan on March 17, 2013 at 10:30 am said:
  
  Might as well chime in here, I suppose. I’ve spent cartel coins on cartel outfits, but I’m a subscriber, so… I haven’t spend any real life money (that I wouldn’t have already been spending on the game) on cartel outfits.
  
  I don’t think letting people craft and wear opposite faction gear (or some of it), making outfits that are supposed to match _actually_ match, and such would spell doomsday for the cartel market. Besides, as far as I can tell, it mostly seems to be cartel vehicles everyone’s buying. (Wants vehicle sabotage kit so I can _find_ the mailboxes and GTN terminals. Oy, people, stop parking on them!)
  
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Targeter on March 18, 2013 at 10:05 am said:

Sometimes we forget that crafters who makes armors (Synth, Armormech) are getting some serious surprise buttseckz because of the Cartel Market. You’re right … the CM gear looks totally friggin’ bad-arse. It all matches and flows together. I wish they’d do something for you crafters … something like …

Open up a “Crafter’s Hall” where you can make arms and armor that’s customizable and sellable directly to the community for credits … or cartel coins in a unique and player-driven UI frame!

Make crafting super lucrative and blammo! you get your crafting community back. Of course, the chances of this happening are next-to-none, but still …

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