Thoughts on Mods, Cybertech and Endgame

BioWare published a lot of information about their thoughts on the mod system on the forums yesterday (available here), which really got me thinking about how this will all play out once the majority of the player base is in endgame content. Here's my thoughts about it, and how this will affect Cybertech in particular.

The most important part of the post, to me, is where they discussed how they're handling raid gear from being ravaged for the mods in them. They state that they don't want people farming the same boss for mods, but don't want to prevent people from having the look they want. They state:

So, instead of letting that happen, we prevented the Armoring, Hilt and Barrel from being extracted, but we also made sure of dropping purple Armoring mods of equivalent power as Operation loot. This means that players going the mod route can still take their favorite orange armor and make it as good as a operation purple armor (with some temporary caveats).

This sounds great to me, and I'm sure most people will agree. I like looking a certain way, and a system like this will let me do what I want. Fantastic!

Only one catch. Crafting crew skills seem to be becoming more and more worthless by the day (and the game isn't even out!), and this may be a fatal blow to any notion of Cybertech being a profitable profession.

As it stands now, at endgame, Hilts, Barrels and Armoring are going to be pretty pointless to craft. Sure, you could craft some starter lvl50 mods of this type and eek out a living, but people will quickly figure out where the action is, and this market will never mature. Other mods, like, enhancements and, uh, mods, might thrive a bit better, but I think they're going to suffer a similar fate, especially if any gear at all in raid content has removable "secondary" mods.

What this means to Cybertechs is that the mod market will never be as lucrative as, say, the WoW Jewelcrafting or Enchanting market, simply because there will be alternative ways to get mods, and likely better mods at that. I really hope BioWare understands that they're neutering crafting skills by doing things like this, and decides to put schematic drops in raids (which don't require many/any raid materials to craft), as this would likely be the only way Cybertechs would be able to make money going forward.

If Cybertechs do get left out in the cold though, the mods they can craft will only be desirable for leveling, which won't be a very lucrative market after a while. This stands to be about as profitable as the "gear" crafting professions like Armstech and Synthweaving, which will largely be making gear for cosmetic purposes and to gear up alts.

All that being said, Cybertech, even in this form, is still an excellent crew skill choice. It still is the only profession with craftable mounts, and the grenades will likely be a key PvP skill, and likely have some great rotation-filler utility in PvE as well. I also have faith that BioWare will realize that crafting skills, aside from Biochem, will quickly become obsolete if they don't do anything to keep them fresh and exciting, and I'm sure we'll see some interesting schematics added to them over time.

Crew skills aside, I'm very excited about how mods are going to work, and I really look forward to finding that one special set of gear that I love the looks of, and gear it up to the teeth. I just hope we don't see legions of dudes playing female characters in the metal slave bikini, although I fear that's inevitable.