20 days of SWTOR, day 10

[virtualvoyages]

Crafting: eh, it's there.  I sort of like crafting, but I can't say I've ever played a game where I thought "Crafting is awesome!"  SW:TOR is no different.  Though I like that you send your companions off to craft for you, and I like that crafting isn't level capped.  This means that it doesn't matter that my medpac makers are by far not my highest level characters - they can supply everyone, anyway, as long as I keep them in money and their companions busy.

Other than biotech and the ever useful medpacs, I can't say as the crafting has really netted me much, though.  I thought armormech would help with the "dear god, who came up with Agent armor, and do they have the same color perception and fashion sense as the rest of us? O_o" problem, but the only orange recipe so far had the same problem. (Fortunately friends and flashpoints did net me armor that wasn't eye-stabbingly awful.*  In fact, it netted me armor I actually like.) 

Armstech is semi-useful, at least for gearing companions, but not as useful as I expected. I haven't gotten any other skills high enough to have commentary on them, really.  I imagine making color crystals will be fun, even if it doesn't prove to be useful as such.  (Though, given that there doesn't seem to be a source of crystals outside of making them - or finding them preinstalled in a weapon - artifice should be useful.)  I also expect cybertech to be fun.  I have a suspicion that my Force users will find synthweaving to be no help at all, though.



*I really do want to meet the person who came up with the medium armor for Imperials.  You leave Hutta in something that looks like Power Ranger armor and a wetsuit had babies, and it actually manages to go downhill from there.  I picked up a sand colored duster somewhere that was okay, but I don't think there were any pants anywhere that weren't either bizarre colors (pink?  really?) or appeared to involve wearing frilly underwear on the outside (or both) outside of the Hammer Station flashpoint.  (Hey, Imperial Uniform.  Nice for RP purposes, anyway.  Also non silly pants!)   And the black duster from Cademimu is spiffy.


20 Days of TOR (Redux)
Day 01 – Introduce yourself
Day 02 – Why did you decided to start a blog?
Day 03 – Your best SW:TOR playing experience Your first day playing SW:TOR
Day 04 – Your favorite SW:TOR quest or quest chain
Day 05 – Favorite item(s) in game
Day 06 – How many active characters do you have? Do you suffer from "altitis"?
Day 07 – The reason behind your blog’s name
Day 08 – Your favorite class so far, and why
Day 09 – Favorite attack or special move
Day 10 – Crafting: yay or nay? What professions, if any, do you seriously pursue?
Day 11 – Bad in-game habits and flaws
Day 12 – What's a typical TOR gaming session look like for you?
Day 13 – What do you hope Bioware will add to the game?
Day 14 – What aspect of the game upsets you the most?
Day 15 – Have you created a unique headcanon for your characters? If so, what is it?
Day 16 – Your favorite character companion
Day 17 – Your favorite in-game location
Day 18 – Your favorite outfit
Day 19 – What strange things do you keep in your bags or bank?
Day 20 – Conclude with a free day! Write about a SW:TOR topic that the previous 19 days failed to address

Comments

[loquat.myid.net]

Sending your companions to craft instead of having to sit your character at a crafting table was definitely one of the things I liked about SWTOR's gameplay. My first serious foray into crafting was in Aion, which requires you to sit at a crafting table both to craft finished items and to process your gathered materials, which could get extremely time-consuming as you crafted better items - when patch 2.0 came out and added new high-end recipes, those items took so much raw material my armorsmith had to spend 7 hours turning a giant stack of raw ore into one helm. They later slashed the material requirements for those recipes by 2/3, but still - crafting was always one of the areas of Aion that made it really clear the game was designed for a market where most people buy game-time by the hour. I mastered armorsmithing and alchemy, because I liked making my own armor and consumables, but selling consumables made me far more money than armor ever did - Aion's system of having maybe 1 in 5 crafts critically succeed* and have better stats, combined with the expense of certain rare drops that were required to craft gear, made gear crafting un-remunerative. (*SWTOR does this too, I think? But Aion takes it a step farther and makes it an integral part of weapon and jewelry crafting - you have to craft a white and crit, then use that in the green recipe and crit, then use that in the blue recipe. Luckily they realized this was far too cumbersome to use for armor when you've got 5 different armor slots to fill.)

So when I first tried crafting in Rift, I was delighted to see that even the high-end recipes rarely needed more than half a dozen gatherables, and there was no such thing as a crafting crit. So now I've got 4/6 professions mastered - alchemy, weapons, jewelry, and light armor - and heavy armor in the works on an alt. Sadly, the crafted armor in Rift suffers from the same problem you found in SWTOR - far too many ugly armor designs. It's so bad I've sometimes wondered if someone in the art department is just trolling us all. My favorite offenders are the sets that make you look like you forgot your top - males are barechested and females are in bras, but both have huge bulky skirt-things that start just under the ribcage and go to mid-thigh or lower. There are multiple armor sets that do this. And don't get me started on the ugliness of virtually all helmets, and the way shoulder armor looks like it was added in at the last minute so most shoulder pieces just sort of hover over your shoulders with no real relation to the chest pieces they supposedly match.

Anyway...

I'm really looking forward to trying the crafting in The Secret World. Supposedly it's as simple as "if you disassemble a shotgun, you can then make shotguns out of any suitable material you can get your hands on" but the getting of materials will probably have some complications.

[virtualvoyages]

I believe they're still tweaking crafting in SW:TOR in the hopes of making it more useful - improve the chances of crits and recipe learning and the like. It doesn't seem too bad, since you send companions off to do it, but I know people are unhappy that it isn't money making. (Frankly I think a few awesome looking crafted armor sets and weapons (of the upgradable variety) would fix that, but they've got a very different idea of what armor should look like than I do.)

The weird thing about the armor is that some classes look right pretty much from the get go, while others have to track down the few pieces of armor that look good. I don't get it. Sith look Sithy - and there's a variety of Sithy looks one can go for. The Jedi look Jedi-like, but that's very boring, so people are less happy about that (even if it is class appropriate). Troopers look like troopers. Smugglers get decent looking stuff. Bounty Hunters mostly just suffer from mismatched armor syndrome unless they get their hands on sets. But Agents have to go out of their way (and do group content) to get gear that looks good. I think the gear designer just hates Agents.

[loquat.myid.net]

Sounds like they don't know what Agents should look like. Which is kinda understandable - with all the other classes, you can point to a movie character who embodies that class, and base gear off their costumes. This falls down a bit for Smugglers, since Han Solo mostly just wears the same shirt + vest outfit in the movies, and anyhow when you make a living smuggling you don't really want to be wearing a recognizable uniform, at least not where any customs officials can see you. But Agents have no real basis in the movies, and like Smugglers they generally wouldn't want to be recognizable. From what I've seen of Agent armor, it looks like an odd combo of Trooper and the heroes' outfits from The Matrix, so I guess Bioware just kinda punted on that one.

Incidentally, does SWTOR have armor dye? All 3 MMOs I've seriously played had it, at varying levels - Warhammer (a) had lots of colors and (b) apparently instructed their armor designers to make sure everything would look decent dyed, Aion succeeded at (b) but had fewer colors available, and Rift succeeds at (a) but forgot about (b), resulting in loads of armor sets where white or light colored dye produces medium gray, and some where a major part of the armor is unaffected by dye.

[virtualvoyages]

I could understand covert-ops looking gear, I could understand "what would James Bond wear in a galaxy far far away," and I'm cool with the dusters (I guess those are Matrix inspired), but I kid you not, I actually had pink pants for a while.

Though I suppose a lot of what I hate is probably meant to be covert-ops looking. I guess. :\ (I just have no explanation for the various horrid types of pants.)

No armor dye, sadly. Though they are reintroducing the "match armor to chest piece colors" option, which will be a boon to Bounty Hunters and others who mainly suffer from "Gah! I don't match!"