Item Modifying and You: End-Game Gear Change

[luckton]

Reposting from Reddit regarding a recent change to end-game gear, and also educates on how the modification system works.

Ok, need to make something clear first: Artifact items is an equivalent to Epic items in other games(like WoW).

So it's pretty much all the gear you get towards and in the end-game.

In the release build, there is one change that takes away everything I loved about the Item Customization in this game, and the change is:
"- Modifiable Artifact quality items now only feature modification and enhancement slots."

Now let me explain in a newcomer terms, what that means:

Before the change, all higher quality items had Modification Slots. For example in a lightsaber you had a Hilt slot, color crystal slot, enhancement slot and Mod slot.

All the modifications came with stats, color crystal determined lightsaber color and hilt changed the quality and base stats of the item, in this case min-max damage.

You could swap around the modifications as much as you like so if you found a cooler looking lightsaber that had better hilt and color crystal but poor enhancement and mod, you could mix and match both of them to create a new lightsaber with the look and stats you want.

Now with the change introduced in this build, most of the Artifact items(purple, epic quality items) Have only 2 slots, mod slot and enhancement slot, both of them just add stats to the weapon, so you can't remove the important modification, like the hilt, and use it in the lightsaber of your choice to bring it to the same level of that epic weapon(stat-wise).

What it means is that if you go to a raid(operation) and an epic lightsaber drops, you won't be able to take the parts from it and jam in your favourite lightsaber, making it essentialy the same item stats wise but suited to your likings.

Same goes for armor slots, now if you are raiding as a bounty hunter, you will have to look like every other raiding bounty hunter or suffer from decreased stats, armor and base item damage.

I don't have a lot of experience with the item mod system, but I can wrap my head around what's being explained here, and if true, I'm not happy about this either. :(

[Der Helm]

Fuckers.

[Lantyssa]

The item mod system is one of the best things about the game.  Shame they decided it's not worth having at the end game.

[VainEldritch]

Fuck.

This is one of those developer decisions that leave me 

I mean, why?

This is one of the universally popular and lauded systems in SWTOR so I assume they have a sound reason for limiting it like this.

I say assume because I can count on one hand the number developer "feedback" replies on the beta forums and so I don't expect for one moment they they will deign to explain this to us.

 

[Jherad]

Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

Seriously, why? This and the removal of the anti-clown option are pretty big downers for me.

[Der Helm]

Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

Seriously, why? This and the removal of the anti-clown option are pretty big downers for me.

I thought THAT one was just turned off for testing reasons ?

[Jherad]

I initially thought so too, but haven't heard of it being turned back on again in latest patch notes. I'd like to be wrong.

[Paelos]

These decisions are always about hubris and never about the customer. They can't justify paying all these people to come up with art assets for their awesome new raid shit if you can just jam the stats in your level 10 lightsaber.

[tmp]

The alternative take on this subject is apparently this:

Not true as of last build at least. Weapon damage scaled with the rating of mods you placed in them. The patch notes that others are freaking about are more to do with artifact quality items being reduced to only having 2 possible mod slots making blues better than them, or something to that effect.

This is my experience with the current build as well. I actually was able to bring my original lightsaber back out of retirement because I got a few new mods. I had to replace it with a green-quality lightsaber for a while because it had better numbers without mods.

which makes it sound like you can take the mod out of the purple loot, jam them into your favourite low level gear causing the core stats scale up based on the mods being purple, and thus retain your unique snowflake appearance along with purple-level performance?

[Mrbloodworth]

Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

Seriously, why? This and the removal of the anti-clown option are pretty big downers for me.

Wait, what? It has a Appearance tab somewhere?

If the mod system is supposed to supplement not having a appearance tab, its an extremely convoluted way of going about it.

[01101010]

God damn it. I'd rather run around looking somewhat unique with a lvl 5 saber that looked bad ass and I could keep up to date with - now I will have to have the lightsaber of masters that everyone else who ran the dungeon has strapped to their hip? bah...

[Mosesandstick]

Wait, what? It has a Appearance tab somewhere?

If the mod system is supposed to supplement not having a appearance tab, its an extremely convoluted way of going about it.

The anti-clown button matched the colours of your gear to your chest piece.

[Evildrider]

Wait, what? It has a Appearance tab somewhere?

If the mod system is supposed to supplement not having a appearance tab, its an extremely convoluted way of going about it.

The anti-clown button matched the colours of your gear to your chest piece.

That is supposedly going back in, it was taken out to help find missing textures.  If you used it a couple weekends ago some of your armor would go all blurry.

[Mosesandstick]

Yeah, I think everyone's worried because it wasn't in the latest patch notes.

[Draegan]

I don't think you should worry about the mod system.  Every event that I covered, the devs spent at least 10-15 minutes talking about how if you want to dress like a sand person and mod it with all the raid mods, you would be able to do it.

I can't imagine they would go back on that.

[Evildrider]

All this seems to do is not let you take a some of the mods out of the Artifact items.  It doesn't mean you still can't get Artifact level mods in other ways and put it on your other gear.  I think it's more so that it will give some people a reason to use the higher level gear.

[Jherad]

I can't imagine they would go back on that.

 

I hope you're right.

[tmp]

All this seems to do is not let you take a some of the mods out of the Artifact items.  It doesn't mean you still can't get Artifact level mods in other ways and put it on your other gear.  I think it's more so that it will give some people a reason to use the higher level gear.

It sounds to me like the design was just simplified a little (or reversed?) from the user's point of view, so there's less modules that need to be transferred around in the first place -- rather than have explicit mod to determine the appearance and base power of the item, the appearance is defined by the item itself, and the base power is based on the quality of other module(s) that actually do get inserted?

Granted, this is all just interpretation of what the other people are writing, and maybe the sky really is falling

[Lantyssa]

Yeah, I think everyone's worried because it wasn't in the latest patch notes.

Well, it's not in the new build, either...

[Ghambit]

I don't see how anyone could justify the change rationally.  It's uniformly stupid regardless of how encompassing it is, especially in a game that's grasping for straws when it comes to non-storybased content.  If anything, the crafting system needs even more buttons to push, not less.

[Sky]

I don't think you should worry about the mod system.  Every event that I covered, the devs spent at least 10-15 minutes talking about how if you want to dress like a sand person and mod it with all the raid mods, you would be able to do it.

I can't imagine they would go back on that.

those guys but they are on the foothills of Mt Molyneux.

[SnakeCharmer]

Yeah, I think everyone's worried because it wasn't in the latest patch notes.

Well, it's not in the new build, either...

Rumor has it that they are waiting until the very last minute to put it back in (since they know it works) to help catch bad/missing textures.

[Amaron]

Looks like it's time to bring out the pitchforks on the Bioware forums.

 

That said I'm not even seeing anyone happy about this change.   There isn't even a vocal minority supporting it.   It's going to come down to whether or not they ignore us.

[Pezzle]

The rational behind that slot restriction stuff is pretty terrible.

[Trippy]

It sounds to me as somebody who hasn't played the game yet that the previous system was allowing people to create unanticipated combinations (read overpowered) and they want to reduce the chances of that with artifact-level gear.

[SnakeCharmer]

It sounds to me as somebody who hasn't played the game yet that the previous system was allowing people to create unanticipated combinations (read overpowered) and they want to reduce the chances of that with artifact-level gear.

It's likely a combination of that and you could, for example, carry your L10 saber all the way to L50 and make it epic/legendary/whatever it with mods, it somewhat reduces the need to do the end game content (or buy RMT).

[01101010]

It sounds to me as somebody who hasn't played the game yet that the previous system was allowing people to create unanticipated combinations (read overpowered) and they want to reduce the chances of that with artifact-level gear.

It's likely a combination of that and you could, for example, carry your L10 saber all the way to L50 and make it epic/legendary/whatever it with mods, it somewhat reduces the need to do the end game content (or buy RMT).

But in fact, it doesn't since you need to do end game content to get the Lightsabre of Woe and then strip it for the parts to be used on old favorite. I am still sorta shocked they'd suggest doing this in the first place.

[Tyrnan]

It sounds to me as somebody who hasn't played the game yet that the previous system was allowing people to create unanticipated combinations (read overpowered) and they want to reduce the chances of that with artifact-level gear.

It's likely a combination of that and you could, for example, carry your L10 saber all the way to L50 and make it epic/legendary/whatever it with mods, it somewhat reduces the need to do the end game content (or buy RMT).

Wasn't that pretty much the point of the modification system though? Find a piece of gear you really like the look of and continue to improve it as you progress through the game? This change, as described, seems to shit all over that concept.

[Malakili]

Wasn't that pretty much the point of the modification system though? Find a piece of gear you really like the look of and continue to improve it as you progress through the game? This change, as described, seems to shit all over that concept.

We can't have people skipping their precious end game content.  Where have I seen this before? 

[Ghambit]

Reducing socketed crafting has a net negative effect on endgame content because people wont be bothered to look for the gear with the stats they want.  They'll either:
a) Just raid till they get the raid gear
b) Craft till they get their craft gear

Diminishing the ability of the two gear-types to mix just takes away from both systems.

I will say that's one thing Garriott got right with TR... you could pretty much make any type of gear you wanted with whatever stats you desired, but you had to find the gear that gave it, dismantle and assemble it w/o destroying it, customize it, and put it all back together.  The only bad part about it was grinding to get the stat you wanted, which is the only notion I could conceive Bioware using to tweak it like they say they are; they want to find a good balance between creating a crafting-grind and not making a grindy game.

Gear-whores will grind till their eyes bleed with open socketable crafting systems.  Then complain the game is grindy.   

[Ingmar]

I tried to get worked up about this but I really can't. I have to imagine it will change at least 3 more times before my guild gets its act together enough to have any of this endgame stuff be relevant.

[kildorn]

I read that first post a few times, and that patch note doesn't seem to say what the rest of the post says, so I'm not sure which to believe.

It seems to just mean that artifact quality gear won't be as heavily alterable as non artifact quality gear. But you can still rice the fuck out of your starting blaster if you so desire. Which makes no sense to me, because why would you bother restricting the artifact gear like that?

[Amaron]

I'm actually a little worried they are planning to drop the mod system partly for an appearance tab.   That wouldn't be the end of the world but full modding is a lot better to me for some reason.   

It seems to just mean that artifact quality gear won't be as heavily alterable as non artifact quality gear. But you can still rice the fuck out of your starting blaster if you so desire.

The mod you need to rice your starting blaster COMES from the artifact gear.    There's no other source of raid quality mods.   

[koro]

I'm actually a little worried they are planning to drop the mod system partly for an appearance tab.   That wouldn't be the end of the world but full modding is a lot better to me for some reason.   

It seems to just mean that artifact quality gear won't be as heavily alterable as non artifact quality gear. But you can still rice the fuck out of your starting blaster if you so desire.

The mod you need to rice your starting blaster COMES from the artifact gear.    There's no other source of raid quality mods.   

This is pretty terrible since the raid gear looks absolutely hideous.

[tmp]

This is pretty terrible since the raid gear looks absolutely hideous.

But you can just stick the raid gear mods into your good looking stuff and avoid that particular downside? Or not?