Did the pre "On Alert" crafting system need an overhaul? You betcha! Does gutting everything out of the crafting system, filling it with fluff and sand then sticking it on a shelf fix it? Ah, no.

Before, the biggest problem with crafting in Champions Online was that the items that you could craft were grossly subpar and, of course, power replacers which were almost totally useless. The best thing about crafting was the "custom" craft pieces, which actually allowed players to create crafted items that were tailored to their needs, albeit woefully underpowered vs even world drop items. How you skilled up your crafting worked very well. In every sense, it was a full and robust crafting system, but, yes, the items were suck and a bit random. There weren't enough opportunities to create custom pieces.

Now, the biggest problem with crafting in Champions Online is that there IS NO CRAFTING. No, this is crap. I don't care who you are. Is the new mod system good? You betcha! Is the new mod system a worthy replacement for the old crafting system? Not even remotely, no. There's not even any sense to how mods are used and who can and can't use them.

Perfect crafting system in Champions Online should look like this.

- Three types of crafting: Arms, Mysticism, and Science.

- Four craftable items: Primary Upgrades, Secondary Upgrades, Modifiers, and Miscellaneous

- Craftable items have stats available dependent on field of crafting (Arms, Mysticism, or Science). Characters can craft items that have options to have 1 or 2 stats on secondary upgrades and 2 to 3 stats on primary upgrades, with and without option to have mod.

- Beginner items of a crafting tier allow only basic preformed upgrades and devices.

- Advanced items of a crafting tier are all customizable, with player able to build customized pieces with level appropriate bonuses for their field of crafting. Advanced pieces would have major stat bonus access of all major stats associated with the field of crafting.

Anyhow, yes. I'm disappointed... again...

Apparently we were so stupid we needed the crafting system dumbed down for us. This is basically what the splash screens tell us, and quite frankly I find it insulting.

The crafting system's different items, such as in Alien Metabolism especially, offered a sense of depth and flavour to the gameworld. As did having the variety of missions. Now we've taken away or severely curtaled both of these, in favour of putting an obvious cash-in. And you know what? I don't mind you guys making money, Cryptic, I really don't, it's in my best interests if you do - but making bland tasteless wallpaper paste of your game systems is not the way to do that. You may find some short-term gains as people spend money to see the new content and try to maximise on it, but I imagine 6-12 months down the road this is going to hurt you significantly.

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Personally, I think if they just added the mod system to the existing crafting system, it would have been fine. Maybe tweak the item stats as well, but really these weren't mutually exclusive systems. Yet instead of working with what they had, they took the (IMO shortsighted) option of redoing things. I can't call it the lazy option - it obviously took a lot of time, effort, and production to do. But I can call it a foolish option - it detracts from the flavour and immersion of the game, was not neccesary in the first place, and added nothing significant that couldn't've been achieved with editing what you already had.

Yeah the system that's replaced crafting isn't really a crafting system at all. I love the Alerts and other things about the update, but the lack of crafting in the game now has somewhat cheapened it for me, made the virtual world less of a virtual world (and it was already only tenuously a virtual world before).

There's no sense of an alternative to combat anymore.

Plus I also miss all the funny flavour text and stuff.

I do kind of like the slotting system in and of itself, it's logical and easy to understand; but it's not a crafting system like the old one was.

The new system also seems a bit rushed.

I look at it like Socketing from Diablo II.

Mods are Gems. You can combine a certain number of Mods to create a more powerful Mod (lower quality Gems combined to create higher quality Gems). Finally, you can Modify gear with those Mods (socketing Gems into armor and weapons).

Is it simple? Very much so! But it's a little more readily accessible to folks who are new to the concept. It actually reminds me a bit of City of Heroes Enhancement system as well...

Yes. It's a great system. It does what it aims to do pretty well. It is accessible and easy to understand.

But it's not crafting. It does not contain even the idea of making things, only upgrading things that you find.

Ironically, Diablo 2 now has more crafting than Champions: http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp...teditems.shtml

Well, I'll gladly keep this over the crapfest that was the old crafting system.

I don't really see crafting as being useful at all in champs...after all, WHY should I farm for mats to make something that I can just BUY with recognition, off of the AH, or simply find? Gear is too easy to get to make crafting worthwhile.

There never was an alternative to combat, because you needed to grind to get the components etc. But you're right gurugeorge, the flavour text etc is a loss to the game. With it the flavour of the world came out some and it made the world seem that much more fleshed out. Without it, and with the other changes, CO has become just another sterile, safe, and ultimately pointless-feeling MMO.

Kardokis: Just about any game has more crafting than CO now, because CO has none.

Working as intended..

Geez everyone keeps trying to "fix" this game.. it's perfect and above your petty claims that they did something you didn't like.

If you don't like it, quit..

The problem is that some people have difficulty with just letting go...

I mean, you say you've quit, yet here you are...

Perhaps a support group is in order...