As more and more players approach level 50, concerns amongst the community have grown regarding the viability of moddable gear in the face of clearly superior end-game drops. Perhaps to help curb some of this concern Emmanuel Lusinchi took to the forums to share some information about upcoming changes to end-game gear.
Emmanuel LusinchiThe current situation with end game gear and item modifications isn’t final and, in fact, many community members like yourself have correctly guessed at what our plans to correct the current design are.
Since this is a fairly important issue to many players, let me disclose more details about what is currently in the work regarding purple items and mods:
- All partially moddable purple items will be made fully moddable again, allowing the removal of the armoring, hilt and barrel.
- The set bonus of end gear purples (PVP and PVE) will be transferable to custom items.
- Some item modifications will be restricted to a certain item type. For example, some item modifications will only fit on helmets, while other will only fit on chests, etc.
As usual, the caveats about unfinished work apply, but this should give you and the community a very good idea of our intentions. We are serious about making custom gear an entirely valid alternative to end game gear and we support the players’ ability to customize their appearance all the way to (and including) end game.
While obviously none of these changes are set in stone, they are a good first step towards putting to rest the concerns of many of the players who are invested in the modding system.
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Posted 1/11/2012 2:25:08 AMThis sounds extremely nice from a customization-perspective (and also gets rid of the "I have 3 items of the set but cannot wear it until I get a fourth as it is not worth to break the set-bonus of the set from last raid-tier" problem).
Another problem arises though. This makes synthweaving extremely powerful (no other craft crafts for so many slots). Also doesn't this implicitly enable armour-crafters like synthweavers to craft ANY mods for armour by crafting epic armour, then removing the mods? Where is the exclusiveness for example for artificers to craft enhancements if synthweavers can create an epic robe and then take the enhancement from there? (ok, the artificer-method will probably need less mats, on the other hand the synthweaver-method would generate a complete SET of mods).
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Posted 1/11/2012 10:14:23 AMhow about the cost of removing those mods from the epic armor, the cost of removing each one would surely be higher than buying them from the articifer etc.
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Posted 1/12/2012 6:55:32 AMThe cost for removing would be only credits. I was told in the meanwhile though that crafted epics come without inserted mods. The question is of course how they handle this with the again-existing armoring (which would be the source of stats of the crafted epic). But well, I guess we have to see how they handle this.
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Posted 1/10/2012 1:37:33 PMLikely they will add a new check for these mods. Normal every day mods would likely not change, but mods from tier gear and pvp gear might have a new "requries chest piece" or "requires leg piece" so that you can ONLY remove it from that piece and put it into a corresponding one.
At least that is what I would do, and I'm a game designer for a major publisher, so I'm sure if I thought of it so have they, in some form or another. :D
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Posted 1/10/2012 6:54:08 PMAgreed. They wanted to make sure people didn't just farm stuff, so they make restrictions, but people were obviously not very happy with the looks or the fact that once gear actually matters, you can't make your own look.
So they decided to go with the already planned method, and modify it in what I consider a very sensible way. Importance should be placed on the fact that a limited period of time with 'clone army' syndrome is better than the alternative (first boss looting).
Charming... yes? http://imgur.com/r6WrI
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Posted 1/10/2012 10:44:03 AMI noticed most of the end-game equipment in the PTR Database is listed as being fully customizable. Anyone else feel this is an indicator that this change might be pushed live as part of the 1.1 patch?
EDIT I just realized all current end-game items in the DH database are listed as being fully customizable. I guess the DB may just be listing items in error.
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Posted 1/10/2012 9:52:18 AMNow really all we need is a bigger proliferation of moddable gear. Honestly in my travels, I really only come across oranges given from heroics for my class. Let's say I want to wear a Bounty Hunter's armor on my Sith Warrior? Remarkably hard to find on the GTN on my server.
However though, I appluad the direction BW is taking this in, actually listening to the community and putting it back into the game. I only hope it isn't in some kind of gimped form. I.e. losing a set bonus for extracting mods, etc.
I also hope Match to Chest comes back, but that seems more like wishful thinking now than anything.
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Posted 1/10/2012 11:02:16 AMI'm afraid that's because your server people are ignorant.
Many, many Imperial-class (say, BH/SW-only heavy) schematics drop from Republic missions and Republic-class schematics drop from Imperial missions. This is *supposed* to get people to put them up cross-faction on the Nar Shaddaa GTN, but instead you see pages and pages of the wrong-faction stuff cluttering up the fleet/capitol versions.
It may be worth it, for Armormechs and Synthweavers collecting good orange patterns, to use alts and/or friends for smuggling stuff across factions via the Nar Shaddaa terminals. That's rather involved, though.
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Posted 1/10/2012 10:10:32 AMActually the social gears do have nice variance (I think the set on Quesh did look like a bounty hunter armor). The only problem is that they are only light armor, so tank classes doesn't really can make use of them. (I don't know how much medium armored characters give up if they wear light armor).
Maybe the solution would be that the social gear doesn't have a fixed armor type, but every class use them as their favored armor (the same piece is light armor for a clothie and heavy for a BH or trooper).
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Posted 1/10/2012 11:33:40 PMWell they have said numerous times in the past that if you wanted to be the person raiding in the sand people outfit or slave bikini outfit that you could do it, it would just take alot more work, so they are intended to be viable for raiding. Its just a bit unfair that they're only viable for people that wear light armor. I believe they said they will be doing something about this though.
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Posted 1/10/2012 4:23:57 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 1/10/2012 9:04:26 AMThe Voss Mystic set will once again be supreme ^_^
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Posted 1/10/2012 8:52:43 AMFuck yes i cant wait, finally a game where i can look how i want to look! which is good, because i have a very set look i want for my jedi toons >.>
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Posted 1/10/2012 8:49:52 AMI have a bad feeling about this. ^^
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Posted 1/10/2012 8:56:50 AMIt'll probably just be boot armourings, head armourings, etc. - the whole reason that they made pueple armourings built in was to stop people just grinding boots (or other easy to get items) and using the mods from those in chests.