Crew Skills and Crafting “crits” in Star Wars The Old Republic MMO
Something I have been wondering about for quite some time is the level of item one can expect to craft after a “crafting crit” takes place during item creation. Will the created item be on par with raid loot drops, PVP drops, or other drops or rewards from missions?
Read on!
With this interview by Lethality at Ask a Jedi from Pax East we can get some information to speculate on this topic further.
Props to him for the great interview indeed.
Ask A Jedi: Is there anything that you’d like to talk about that no one every asks you?
James Ohlen: Well, because we started promoting the game being story-based, there has been a lot of fear in the community that we’re not going to be a real MMO. That has never been the case. Our design vision has always been a massively multiplayer game with BioWare type storytelling on top of it. But we’re never going to sacrifice the basics of an MMO.
I tell this message over and over again, but it seems like I need to get it out more. We’re building an MMO. It feels more like a big wide-open MMO than a lot of the MMOs that have been released that people weren’t worried about! It blows my mind! If you play our game, you’d know that we have wide open spaces, we spent a lot of effort on social systems in the game. We have Warzones, raids, Flashpoints. We have so much… and we’ve innovated on some of them, and some of them are a little more standard, but we tried to innovate wherever we can, especially to fit the fiction of Star Wars.
For example crafting is going to I think really impress people because it uses your companion characters and allows you to send them on missions and craft your items for you. And plus the fact that you can get “critical hits” on crafting items so you can actually craft an item that is as good as you can get in a raid.
I love the sound of that. It puts my mind at ease to know that I and others, will have the ability as a crafter to produce top tier gear in game. This is important to me and a lot of other people who really get into this style of game play. Crafting has become a way of MMORPG life for a big majority of people that play these style of games today.
From the above quote, it sounds like that you will only produce items that are as good as the top items from raids or PVP style top tier drops if you achieve a “critical hit” (or as I like to call them crits) when crafting. I am not sure if this is the only way in which a crafter can create items that are best of the best, but it would seem so at this point.
Knowing myself as I do, I imagine that I will be looking for those ways to help me achieve this elusive “crit” in the crafting process. From what I have seen so far from the answers given from developer interviews and the developer tracker responses on the official forums I can see some basic ways coming into play to achieve a crit.
One obvious factor that might play into achieving a crit might be the quality of the resource gathered to start with. Will the raw materials and mechanical parts we gather from missions and gathering in general, have a quality level to them of some sort? I do not know the answer to this question from the information that is out there now, but I hope that it is the case.
Maybe it could be from the way the resource is processed or refined before use? Possibly then it could be assigned, at that time a quality level like “exceptional” “pristine” or etc. Something like this could increase the behind the scenes modifier at the time of creation of an item when using this type of resource to allow for a higher crit percentage allowance.
Perhaps another way that the crit percentage might be increased would be through the companion mechanic. We know from past developer interaction that the specific companion that you choose to create an item, and their loyalty to you through the in game story arcs will boost the chance that a particular crafting effort will result in a crit. It seems fair to assume at this point that is still true, so that could be another way to increase the modifier.
Another way that I have seen in the past in other games is the use of a mechanic like a “elite crafting station” that is either in a hard to reach place or at the bottom of a dungeon at the end of a quest or raid style encounter or possibly in an enemy faction area etc. Many ways can be dreamed up to ensure that the station is hard to reach or inaccessible to only the most dedicated of crafters. The use of this crafting station could grant the craftsman big bonuses to the crit chance modifier, or possibly allow the use of special recipes that are only able to be made at that place.
I do not know if something like that is going to be included in SWTOR, but I really hope they have taken the extra effort to make special situations like these for people that enjoy this style of play. Who knows, we may even get lucky enough to see situations where the “story” could be far reaching enough and deep enough to present the crafter with quests and story options that would revolve around their crew skills usage.
*dreams a bit, that Bioware is listening….*
What other ways do you hope that we might have to increase the crit chance multiplier when crafting in SWTOR?
What other factors could you see coming into play with this mechanic?
As always I would welcome your comments and your thoughts on the articles I write about crew skills in SWTOR. I look forward to the discussions, thanks for reading!
🙂
12 Responses to “Crew Skills and Crafting “crits” in Star Wars The Old Republic MMO”
Another way that crits could be achieved would be by the crafting tools themselves. Not sure if we will have them in Swtor, but if we do I imagine some modifier could be applied via that, similar to Lotro.
Great article!
oh yes the tools we use!
I completely forgot something like that but you are right that would be a great way to sneak in another modifier to add to the crit chance multiplier.
Thanks for commenting!
In SWG you could use “Skill Tapes” attached to the cloths you were wearing and it would increase the effectiveness of your crafting. These tapes were coveted items, ranging in quality, and sold for a ton to crafters. Let’s hope they implement something like this in SWTOR! I plan on playing the “crafting game” a lot…
I am glad to hear that you are very interested in the crew skills! I guess that kinda fits though as you guys are doing such a great job setting up one of the best looking DB sites out there currently at R2DB.com. Great work that you are doing there for sure and thanks. 🙂
I cannot believe that I do not remember those items that you speak of. I did play SWG for a couple of years and I do not recall this item. I feel like I should remember them. Was that pre NGE or after that these items were popular?
I liked some of your ideas and im intrigued to get you thought on the post I made here SWTORCrafter. I think we touch upon some of the same things
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=307270
some very good thoughts in that thread.
I have to go to bed right now but will comment further about it later after I have had a chance to get some sleep. 🙂
Thanks for commenting!
Thank you Sir.
I never knew this site existed until RockJaw mentioned you so happy to find a fellow Crafting enthusiast.
I am glad to hear your thoughts on this subject for sure! It is so nice to have another in the group that actually cares about something like crafting like I do.
Thanks for reading 🙂
Good article. I have been in a crafting Player Association ever since SWG (2001). Our guild is still together and longing for more crafting news out of Bioware. We appreciate the content you provide. I like most of your points, and I can’t wait to see what is in Rammi’s thread. I just wanted to throw it out there that I am not a great fan of the “elite crafting station”. It is to dependant on other game play elements such as raiding. I hope TOR thinks of something better so that a great crafter is not forced into other play styles. I did not like the way WoW did crafting, and elite crafting stations seem a lot like WoW.
@CyrusRex wow, I am excited to hear that there are player ran organizations that focus around crafting that have been around that long and are still going! Props to you on that for sure, I will be sure to check out your link and read what you guys have to say on that.
I understand there are some who don’t like the idea of elite crafting stations, and I can totally understand why given your example.
Me I am just all about options, whether I use them or not, or whether I like them or not, I want the ability to have different things to do each time I log in. I want many options and i hope and pray that Bioware will provide those of us that enjoy the crafting game with many, many options in what we can do in game.
I honestly think they will blow our socks off with crew skills and crafting and am excited to see it develop!
Thanks for reading!
@Swtorcrafter thanks. Some of us have been talking about crafting and this article in particular. One fear that was discussed is the idea of crafting crits really flying in the face of a swg like system. It rewards luck over skill and material prep. One member, whom I am paraphrasing here, especially dislikes the luck factor if it is the only way to compete with raid items. Combatants are every crafters main customer, if your gear is only likely to be suitable a percentage of the time that is a load of crap.
I wonder if a serious crafter could do something to increase his chance to crit, bit by bit; eventually getting their crit rate to 100%. Perhaps the crafting game is the journey to max this stat. Perhaps the phased completion of a large crafter quest arc granting % crit increase to crew skills per segment completed? Perhaps the acquisition of crafter loot for your crew with stats like crafting crit +10%. The developers hinted that parts of the mission system may be a great combo choice for crafters, perhaps there is an artifact out there that is an extra crit + 10% component required to make an ordinary blaster extraordinary. And we already know perfectly managing companion relations helps them craft faster, what if it also increase their chance to crit %.
In my mind A combination of all of the above creates a more complex system for the hardcore crafter. It creates more hurtles, and more time invested in order to separate the crafting men form the boys. Devs have stated that there will be something in the system to make serious crafters stand out. I hope it is something we have more control over rather than just the luck factor.
I honestly do hope they go deeper than just “luck” determining when a crit happens. I really hope they allow us to stack the deck and add to our crit chance percentage. through certain higher grade materials, companions, crafting tools, etc.
I want to be able to stack the percentage to where I can crit at least 1 out of 4 times when attempting too. Any less than that and it is going to be frustrating.
I hope they at least give me the ability to up my crit percentage to about 40%-50% of the time when trying too. Not so easy that everyone can do it at will, but still hard enough that you have to know what you are doing when stacking up the bonuses.