There I am with my plans to accomplish master combat medic, BE, and then ranger. All professions that rely somewhat on crafting, some more than others. Therefore, they require resources. But Carrying novice artisan and survey 4 takes up a critical amount of skill pts. 29 to be exact, just so I dont have to pay through the tooth for 500 units of something low quality.
Anyway, I pick up a friends account and decide to put it to use. I will have a crafting alt. who will do all the surveying and resource gathering and will support himself through resource sales and a profitable trade like armorsmith, weaponsmith, along with master merchant to keep his business as viable as possible. This alt will allow me to pursue endeavors like combinations of master combat med and BE without wasting 29 skill pts on surveying. Yes I only need novice to use the tools, but we all know that survey 4 is FAR more time efficient than novice artisan.
SO I start my new guy down the long road to master a few elite artisan professions. I gather tons of resources for a couple of weeks. And finally yesterdayI get him started on his general crafting skill boxes.
Now as I ground out med crafting xp for combat medic I found that using one tool and waiting for something to take 20-65 secs to finish was a very inefficient way to craft. So I put 5 food/chem tools in my toolbar, and as one tool was counting down its prototype-timer,I wouldstart crafting another in the next tool. If the prototype timer was fairly longI could get 3 to 4 items going by the time my first tool's timer expired,allowing it to be used again to craft the next item.
Now this logically seems like the way to get through artisan.....and onto something more worthwhile....
So I make 4 generic crafting tools and place all in seperate toolbar slots. "Hmm" I say. Making crafting tools yields the most xp, so I decide to go with practicing those.
I assemble the first one, and rather than make it,I select practice (note there is a BONUS for doing so, will be crucial point in my arguement later) and get it started. The timer on the tool reads 21 secs, so I move on to my2nd tool. No sense in making this take 8-10 times longer than necessary, I think to myself.
I assemble the next one and click practice again as the1st tool's timer reaches 6 secs. Then I proceed to the3rd tool in my labor of grind love.
Then it happens.....almost immediately afterI open the3rd tool, it boots me out and says "crafting session ended!"
So I start the tool again, meanwhile my 2nd tool is down to 11 secs already. I asemble the item, and as I am about to click on practice, IT BOOTS ME OUT AGAIN! "crafting session ended!"
Now I've caught onto something here, each time one tool's timer expires, no matter what crafting stage you are involved in another tool, you get interrupted and forced to restart that tool.
Well this can't be right cause I ran multiple tools all the way thru medic and combat medic as well as BE. So it must be my crappy -14 crafting tools, right? 4000 credits later and 4 brand new top notch crafting tools later I am still getting booted if a prototype-timer expires while I am crafting in another tool. Maybe its a generic tool thing?? So I try weapon/droid/generic tools, same results.
Ok, now I submit a ticket to report it, because no one has ever heard of this, so I must be bugged or at least the tools right? According to CSR's, this is exactly how the game is designed. WHA??
This can't be right I do it all the time with food chem tools. SoI add a comment asking for an explanation.
I am told, and this is no bull.....
"the items you are trying to craft, likely other crafting stations, was set like this by design. With the number of resources, time to create, skill required, and the amount of experience earned.....it was deemed by development to set it in this pattern to prevent players from "powerleveling" on the low end of the crafting tree with low failure rate, and high return of experience. You may want to consider crafting another item to grind your way through a crafting skill."
I MAY WANT TO CONSIDER CRAFTING ANOTHER ITEM??????
YOU GUYS MAY WANT TO --you know what--
How about not granting any weapon xp to combatantswho damage a targetas long as there is an active DoT??? People would be up in arms!!
Now I have been with this game since launch and I have seen nerfs come and go, bugs that boggle the mind how they got out of test center, and all kinds of controversial, hairbrained, and even well-thought out decisions made. But this by far takes the cake.
So what if I have no intention of being a dedicated artisan? That is my prerogative, I paid for the game, if I want to "powerlevel" my way through a worthless (in my eyes) profession then so what? I am not using 3rd party software, like soooo many others do. I am banging out the xp in the most efficient way possible. IF THIS IS SO WRONG THEN WHY IS THE PRACTICE OPTION, WITH IT'S ASSOCIATED BONUS, IN THE GAME???
If the dev's want to keep people into the artisan profession longer than they should make it more attractive.
I am truly dumbstruck by this reply to my CS Ticket