I’ve been checking out Patch 1.3 on the public test server (PTS), focusing my time on the crew skills changes to synthweaving. And I will get to a post on that topic later in the week. But first, I wanted to share some of my recent experiences regarding interacting with PTS folks around crafting.
My Time is Worthless, Your Money is Precious
So far, I think I’ve crafted about 30 augmentation kits on the PTS for folks to try out. To do so, I’ve stood around on the fleet, chatting with players about the patch, for several hours as I’ve made crafted pieces to reverse engineer, then made augmentation kits. I am keeping 4 of my companions busy on making the crafted items, and sending the 5th out on Underworld Trading missions in the hopes of scoring some of the new synthweaving patterns added to the game.
I logged in to the PTS this time around to find that I had 20k in credits and not very many crafting materials, due to the huge number of custom pieces I made and sold on the cheap during the last patch’s testing phase. Thus, to have enough cash to list anything of value in the GTN, I had to make and sell some custom gear. I was nearing the end of my possible Kit creation when I got a tell from a reader of this blog who gallantly gifted me with 5 stacks each of the crystals and the artifact fragments. And thus, I was able to crank out a ton more augments which I put up on the GTN for 250k a pop, selling them as fast as I could list them.
And at some point, the grumbling started in General chat, along the lines of “You’re a jerk for selling those kits for 250k. You should be selling them for 100k max. You are greedy.” One of my fellow crafters jumped in and noted that we have to spend 4+ minutes crafting each of our 10 items that we have to RE in order to make each kit. And that further, the materials for making those crafted items sell for 1-3k a piece on live servers, making your base cost for materials anywhere from 40-120k depending upon your server economy. To which our heckler replied “Go farm the mats.”
Uh, excuse me? I need to go and farm materials to make items so they can be cheaper for you mister general chat big mouth? Because my play time is worth less than your precious bank balance? Are you serious? You might think that I was being trolled. But I wasn’t. Because this isn’t the only time that I have had folks consider my time, which I’ve spent crafting or improving patterns or spending tons of credits on missions to obtain schematics to be worthless. (NOTE: see also this same issue, years ago, in WoW.)
Why did I “need to make that much cash anyway”, as one person asked with a side of snark? Because almost nothing on the PTS is free in case you hadn’t noticed. In my case specifically, I want to try out the new custom patterns. Which has meant spending over 50k on executing missions so far (plus another 250k on buying mission discoveries). And buying a schematic on the PTS for 50k. And buying a ton of companion gifts to improve my affection to increase the chance of crits. (The copy of me from pre 1.2 didn’t have her toons very far along in that area, unlike current me.) And so on. And so far? I have exactly two of the new crafted schematics to show for all my efforts. T-W-O.
The great thing about MMOs is they provide a variety of things for each player to do that meets their individual definitions of fun. I love to discover and collect new patterns, and feel a sense of accomplishment when a ton of peeps are running around my servers wearing gear with the made by Anexxia label. And I like that I can support my characters through crafting instead of doing dailies because repeating quests for multiple days is not my preferred way to make cash. Not even if a vanity pet is on offer.
Now, I can understand it is annoying to see people buying my augment kits and reselling them for 750k or even 1.25 mil credits on the GTN. But if you make it a practice to harass players such as myself, who are there making items for you to try out and who genuinely love seeing all the new crafting changes on offer on the PTS so we can plan accordingly, then don’t come crying to me when crafters stop selling the items they make– or worse yet– stop even putting in the time on the PTS crafting items for you to try out. You’re welcome.
/end rant.