Gates = worst expansion ever for "traders"

[Zacatac]

Ok, I'll admit it. I'm a tradeskill junkie.

But it goes beyond simply grinding out skill ups in making things. I'm also a "trader" in bazaar for many hours a week. Far more than I actually get to play really. I can AFK-trade and get work done during times when I can't actually play.

When I do play, I often go places where items drop that I can sell. Those items, along with the tradeskill items I sell, all go into the trader for sale. I've made tons of plat over the last year or so thanks to the bazaar making it easier to sell.

When LDoN came out, I was at 1st very disappointed. All the items were not for sale it seemed, they were only bought with LDoN points! What use is having several 100k in the bank when you need LDoN points to buy what you want?

Of course it turned out later there were lots of tradeable things in LDoN from the named mobs. And the HARD LDoN drop items were quite good. Some selling for 30-40k each. So there was enough there to make it worthwhile for me and my trader to get an item every so often to sell/trade.

But now, with GoD, it seems that most everything of value is no-drop. Even the spells are no-drop. The number of good items I've seen for sale in bazaar can be counted on one hand.

And again I ask myself-- Why spend hours making things, trading and selling things for platinum when the designers are making each expansion with more and more no-drop items.

Everything I want is no-drop now days. I had to grind out 1000's of LDoN points just to buy the spells for that expansion. My next planned upgrade requires another 2500 LDoN points to do.

Meanwhile, SoE puts in Tribute systems and Casinos to suck money out of the economy.

Is it just me, or does it seem that they are deliberately trying to make it impossible for a "bazaar mage" to advance himself? I had tons of things avialable to buy in PoP (including spells). I had a small handful of things I could buy in LDoN. Now, I have nothing to buy.

[Lilosh]

And to top it off, GoD tradeskills are alarmingly bad.


Lets pause, for a moment, and think of the people who are hunting in the new zones (past Natimbi).


I'm in a guild that kills BoT Tower Bosses, PoP Tier One Bosses when we can, and is Gearing up to play in Sleeper's Tomb. We've found Qinmi to be interesting,and might be able to kill Riwwi Yard Trash, at best. Our guilds main tank has horror stories of attempting the zone-in mobs in Ferubi. To go significantly further, we'd need to be elemental , at least. Post-Time would be preferable.


Now lets look at the new tradeskilled items. There isn't one item among them that a level 65 person, of sufficient power, would use.

The basic Jewelcrafted items are obscene.
Baked items are skillup fodder, not even worth mentioning.
Fletched Arrows are worse than storebought arrows.
Tailored bags use ungodly rare blood and expensive threads to make bags not even worth mentioning.
Tinkering uses rare darkmatter to save a plat or two on MANA BATTERIES?
Smithing makes weapons that might possibly, maybe, have potential. I'm not a melee, so I don't know.
Pottery appears to have one recipe, involving a NO DROP item off of a named mob, that makes a neat charm. So quest pottery at best.
And brewing appears to be in the same boat at baking, with the addition of some 10hp/10mana drink.


Risk and Reward haven't spoken to each other in months, apparently.


-Lilosh

[Sulkano]

I swear folks wont be happy till they can make windblades or something out of 2 blocks of ore and a flask of water. Although admittedly its a bit buggy atm, I happen to think GoD is very well thought out. Just becasue we havent figured it all out yet doesnt mean anything is wrong.

[splunge]

Originally posted by Sulkano
I swear folks wont be happy till they can make windblades or something out of 2 blocks of ore and a flask of water.

We will be happy when we can make windblades out of 2 bricks of ore that are very rare drops off of full/balanced 65/150+aa group mobs or raid mobs, and the flask of water involves many hours of faction work and must be made with another tradeskill like brewing, with very high skill or required skill.

And then if we had 50% success on it we'd still be happy.

GoD tradeskills have all the risk i just mentioned and NO WOTHWHILE REWARD.

Ok, well you can sell weapons to lvl 45+ people in the bazaar... who wont be able to afford the only weapons worth making if they are priced at something that equates the risk.

EDIT, text removed by 'Mum: really, Splunge, you DO know better ... I don't care how mild the commentary is, it's still a personal attack on the devs. Settle down, m'kay?

[Lilosh]

EDIT: Quote removed ... it does NOT need to be your new sig on these forums, m'kay? Really, you do know better. ~Mum


This needs to be my new sig.


-Lilosh

[Sulkano]

And what reward, exactly, are you looking for? Geez.

[Zacatac]

I'm looking to get the same thing I got in PoP.

Old world, Kunark, Velious, Luclin, LoY, PoP all had tons of items that can be traded or sold (or even MQ'd).

Even though PoP was considered a "raid expansion" at the time, you still found hundreds of items, spells, and ornate patterns for sale.

LDoN had items too, but many of the things offered were only buyable with LDoN points. Which means you MUST grind out these points in order to take advantage of the expansion and buy the spells.

Now GoD is the same way so far. You MUST grind your way through to see anything of value. So you must be a high level player and with high level guild to even see an item you might want, because nothing is tradeable.

At least LDoN has some good tradeable items, GoD has about 2-4 things I've seen, TOTAL.

Lately I've been using my money to help guildmates buy level 65 spells that they cannot get on their own. Seems like a good thing to do, considering I have nothing else to buy . . .

And like Lilosh, my guild does BoT towers, Grummus, MB, TT. We have very little chance of progressing through GoD.

[Itzena]

Originally posted by Sulkano
And what reward, exactly, are you looking for? Geez.

How about something better than the Paineel SK newbie sword?

RvR for the majority of GoD tradeskill items is massively, massively out of whack.


(And that's not going into the problems with the expansion content itself, which is an entirely different kettle of fish).

[Niami DenMother]

Okies, folks, I can empathize with being upset about the RVR for tradeskills for this expansion, BUT LAY OFF THE DEV BASHING, NO MATTER HOW MILD!!!!

PERIOD. END OF DISCUSSION. KEEP YOUR OPINIONS OF WHAT SHOULD BE DONE TO VARIOUS INDIVIDUALS TO YOURSELF. IT IS UNAMUSING WHEN FOLKS WHO DON'T READ THE RULES DO THAT SORT OF STUFF AND IT'S WELL BEYOND UNAMUSING WHEN FOLKS WHO REALLY, TRULY DO KNOW BETTER DECIDE THEY'RE ABOVE THE RULES.

[borblefoot furtoe]

I play on FV so the whole no drop thing doesn't apply. But GOD is nowhere near as difficult as people are making it out to be. Challenging you bet.


I have found the most difficult thing about GOD is convincing people you don't need to be Time/ele geared to do anything. When I finally do they are pleasantly surprised that while challening its not the ghoulish nightmare they were lead to believe.

If you don't have skill GOD is a death sentence for you. If you do have skill you have to be on your toes at all times but its doable.


Borlbefoot Furtoe
Storm Warden
Resolution
Firiona Vie Server

[Lilosh]

Originally posted by Niami DenMother
Okies, folks, I can empathize with being upset about the RVR for tradeskills for this expansion, BUT LAY OFF THE DEV BASHING, NO MATTER HOW MILD!!!!

PERIOD. END OF DISCUSSION. KEEP YOUR OPINIONS OF WHAT SHOULD BE DONE TO VARIOUS INDIVIDUALS TO YOURSELF. IT IS UNAMUSING WHEN FOLKS WHO DON'T READ THE RULES DO THAT SORT OF STUFF AND IT'S WELL BEYOND UNAMUSING WHEN FOLKS WHO REALLY, TRULY DO KNOW BETTER DECIDE THEY'RE ABOVE THE RULES.

Apologies. You're right, I should know better.




-Lilosh

[Fian]

There is one item I like making from GD

Gold Nihilite earrings. Gold costs 10pp, and nihilite I am now buying for around 100pp. The earrings are worth approximately 500pp compared to similar items.

To be honest, I am not sure I wanted to post this, as I am the only one on my server who makes them, and now I may have price competition, but I figured this might encourage some people.

[Quichon]

I find some of the baking stuff from GoD to be quite useful. The beer-battered Cragbeast recipies all have +7 wis, since I use wis for tradeskilling (It's better than my int anyways) It's a good thing for me.

I'm still trying to forage all the stinking taleosian wheat to turn in to the lady so I can figure out how to make stuff with it. I'm figuring making bread with taleosian wheat flour instead of regular and see what can be done with that, but I have only racial skill of 50 in foraging (Iksar) so the odds of getting some is rediculously obscene.

Okay, so some of the stuff leaves much to be desired. Fine. I'll bet there's a bunch more we haven't discovered yet.

[Delores Mulva]

I don't mind the lack of drop items, even though I love twinking my alts. There's a ton of usable No Drop gear for people that do the various activities, and the drop items are generally very nice (FT 1 neck, 10 ATK neck, etc.) If I wanted drop items for sale, there's a ton of other places I could go and farm them in game, and there's a ton of gear out there for the Bazaar mage to pursue. What does bug me, though, are these three things:

(1) Tradeskill component rarity versus usefulness. Many of the items are touted as skill-up items, but the components for them drop in such small quantities as to negate using them as a viable skill-up path. The items have been balanced almost randomly, with no thought to risk versus reward.

Examples: the Teas would be a good product if the component dropped more often, and if the actual drink was of longer than Drink duration. The regular nihilite jewelry is fair twink gear, especially considering the lack of rec/req levels on it, but the shimmering nihilite jewelry is awful for the difficulty of obtaining shimmering nihilite. Most of the smithed weapons and tailored weapons are abysmal, period, although the top end smithed items are dead-on with regards to risk/reward.

(2) The tradeskills appear incomplete. This annoys me more than the rarity versus usefulness issue. Refined Ancient Taelosian Clay, Taelosian Wheat Flour, the filtered regular and Highland Sludge, Muramite blood distillate - all lack tradeskill tags and, thus, recipes. Why have a quest that lets people get better at refining these items if they don't DO anything, especially if you can also refine them by handing them to an NPC? This screams "unfinished content".

Look at Quichon - he wants to experiment with the wheat flour. He's like many tradeskillers - they'll sit down and play with stuff until they find a recipe. How do you think he'll feel once he realizes "hey, no tradeskill tag, no recipes, drat"?

(3) The regular spells being No Drop. I'll understand when we get to the last zone and the new Ancient spells are No Drop, but having the regular spells be No Drop is a real pain in the arse, especially when combined with their rarity. I'm adventuring in Uqua, but I still lack spells from the sewers and Vxed/Tipt and have no chance of obtaining them where I'm adventuring now. To get them, I need to go and slum in what is now old content for me. In PoP, spectrals still dropped in tier four planes and ethereals still dropped in tier three planes. In LDoN, even doing the hardest raid earned one points towards low-end LDoN spells. Why is GoD requiring me to do "stupid farm tricks" to get my spells? (Stupid farm tricks = starting an instance, zoning a ranger in to check for nameds, if no nameds then leave the instance and get another.)

One thing I do like: the tinkered mana batteries. As a cleric I burn through mana batteries going anywhere in this expansion, so being able to get them cheaper with my tinkering alt is a plus!

Delores Mulva
Lotus Cult
Quellious

[Quichon]

Look at Quichon - he wants to experiment with the wheat flour. He's like many tradeskillers - they'll sit down and play with stuff until they find a recipe. How do you think he'll feel once he realizes "hey, no tradeskill tag, no recipes, drat"?

Considering I stuck around for BOTH Brodder's Revenge AND Lewena's Drink... quite some time I'd immagine.

My issue is that the wheat is apparently a rare forage in Natimbi. I'm a monk. I can't forage. Well... that's not exactly true, I'm an Iksar monk so I have a racial skill of forage of 50 and can access the rare tables. Problem is I fail most of the time because 50 skill ain't all that much. Add to that I forage on all available tables, and you got pretty much small odds of me finding any of this wheat, assuming I survive long enough. Natimbi is REAL difficult to live in, with DB con mobs chewing on me in ways I haven't experienced since I got too close to Kelethin back when I was lvl 20 or so, and you can't forage while FD (Although you CAN fish while FD )

Yet I will persevere. I will find out what use it has, even if I have to drive myself (and everyone around me) mad in the process!

Anyways, off to Natimbi. I've got a really obnoxious recipie to find.