RANT: LORE items in the skillup path

[Drexxell]

I've come across this issue twice now, and it continues to bother me.

Why are there LORE items on very clear skill-up paths in some tradeskills? In Tinkering it was my 236-242 climb on Collapsed Toolkits. In Tailoring it was my 158-162 climb doing Folded Bearskin Potion Bags.

Granted, neither of these is the ONLY way to go through these levels, but they are commonly done!

I'm the sort of tradeskiller who hoardes supplies then does a mass set of combines. So making 1 LORE item, putting it on my mule, hoping to sell it, then going back a few days later and doing this again for say, a few dozen combines, just wasn't in the gameplan for me. So what were my other options?

Option #2 was the "make-and-destroy" path, which also irritates me to no end. What a waste!

Option #3 was the "make-and-vendor-sell" path, which is 1cp for each Toolkit and I'm not sure how low for the bags. Not even worth the time
it would take to hit "sell"!

I finally decided to take option #4, the "charitable" road and give these away as I made them. I did my skillups on both of these items in PoK, using /ooc to set up an actual line of people standing next to me, waiting to receive a free box or bag. I'm sure I ate into what market there was for these items by just giving them away for free, but I couldn't stand that SoE had put a LORE item so obviously in my skillup path, leaving me no real choice.

The very existence of LORE items in the game, in general, I find highly questionable. I can see where they were trying to generate an artificial way to keep people from farming super items and selling them off, but isn't that what NODROP was for? But to label these items LORE when they are just "ok" items (useful, but not game altering if I had two of them!) makes no sense to me. And when they lie directly on a well-used skillup path, that's unnecessary and rude. (Better words elude me at the moment).

/rant off

Drexxell
Wayfarers of Veeshan

[Ngreth Thergn]

what if these were not intended to be in the skillup path by the designers?

We jsut happen to want to use them for that. That does not mean it was their intent....

[Akishka]

I guess I'm an odd breed of tradeskiller, I HATE doing massive runs of combines. I really enjoyed the bearskin potion bag as a skill up route because it made something productive (not many other skill up choices at that point that will sell for a profit) and it fit with my style so well. It was a ready made reason not to try to push myself to make 200 of the dang things at once. Sure it was slower than sitting down and maxing out tailoring in a week but I always enjoyed my tradeskilling and really couldn't care less if I didn't win any races.

So if it was a deliberate choice by the designers, I think I'd have to say thank you

[Drexxell]

what if these were not intended to be in the skillup path by the designers?

We jsut happen to want to use them for that. That does not mean it was their intent....

Then...if we players have deduced the easiest path to farm, cheapest path to skillup and are using it...AND if this is a different path than the designers intended.....doesn't this say something fairly negative about how well the designers understand what they have designed? Not trying to SOE bash, but seriously...from 236 to 242, even in a post OOW post DoN world, there is NO better option (by FAR) than Collapsed Toolkits. If anyone wants to argue that the designers didn't intend this as a skillup path, I'd gladly listen to reasonable arguments on it.

But seriously, what possibly harm could come from me owning two of these? Or 100 of them? Since the summoned toolkit is LORE itself, and the Collapsed Toolkit gives no stat bonuses, having 100 on me at a time has no impact on the game!

Drexxell
Wayfarers of Veeshan

[Neebat]

But seriously, what possibly harm could come from me owning two of these? Or 100 of them? Since the summoned toolkit is LORE itself, and the Collapsed Toolkit gives no stat bonuses, having 100 on me at a time has no impact on the game!

Option 1: Sony makes collapsed containers non-lore. With that plan you can make 10 or 20 at a time and get 10-20 times as many skillups in a session. So you can fill your bank and mules with these and try to sell them in bazaar. Of course, with 25 other people powering through tinkering, the market will be just as flooded as geerloks, so you'll be selling them for 1/50 of what you do today, or just destroying them anyway.

Option 2: Sony adds an improved skill up chance and leaves them lore. With that plan you can make the same number you do today and skill up more. The price in bazaar isn't affected because any one mule still only has 1 in stock. I've heard from some folks here on the forums that they powered through tinkering on those collapsed containers, watching the "DUPLICATE LORE ITEM" message eat the results. If all you want is the skill ups, you still get em, but you won't flood the market.

My first reaction is we need option 1 and we need it as soon as possible. I actually started to post saying I support this completely and recommending you take it to Sony's boards where they'll actually respond. But then I look at the price I get for geerloks and realize why Sony made these lore in the first place. You're absolutely right that there's no in-character or game-balance reason these have to be lore, but there's a real benefit to the game economy. As a tinker, I'm better off because I can sell these at a profit.

Call me selfish, but I'm better off making inconvenient but valuable items.

[Ilona]

Personally, I have always been very grateful that these items were LORE. In fact, my skilling up has been done exclusively on items that have actually been SOLD... if they hadn't been lore, skilling up would have been faster, but also a lot more expensive.

Of course, from here on out it's deemed to be terribly expensive!

[Ngreth Thergn]

Then...if we players have deduced the easiest path to farm, cheapest path to skillup and are using it...AND if this is a different path than the designers intended.....doesn't this say something fairly negative about how well the designers understand what they have designed? Not trying to SOE bash, but seriously...from 236 to 242, even in a post OOW post DoN world, there is NO better option (by FAR) than Collapsed Toolkits. If anyone wants to argue that the designers didn't intend this as a skillup path, I'd gladly listen to reasonable arguments on it.

But seriously, what possibly harm could come from me owning two of these? Or 100 of them? Since the summoned toolkit is LORE itself, and the Collapsed Toolkit gives no stat bonuses, having 100 on me at a time has no impact on the game!

Drexxell
Wayfarers of Veeshan

But see...

sometimes they have to design for the intent of the item itself... NOT how it will affect your tradeskill path.

Their intent is that you only have one of these items. Yes, we can disagree with their reasoning for it. But nontehless, it is there intent.

Then they decided the trivial based on the usefullness of the item. This trivial happens to be in the range of good for skilling up in the range you mentioned. It does not mean that they HAD to consider how it would be used in skilling up. They wanted to consider how usefull it is, and assign a certain "dificulty" of making the item by placing it at a certain trivial.

Would you have prefered they just made it 236 so it was not "in the range" for use in skillups? Or happy that they happened to make it something that can be used in skillups?

[Drexxell]

My preference is to remove LORE from the item altogether actually. Why they intended us to have but one collapsed container at a time is probably just speculation. If it's so the market isn't flooded (like Geerloks) then fine, but since it is so clearly in a skillup path, I interpret their intent as "we intend for you to destroy a heck of a lot of these things". That's just wasteful.

If only they had built in a system to break items, ala "fishing poles", then we wouldn't have gluts of inventory, since you'd occasionally have to replace that Geerlok for example.

Seems I have a lot of bad to say about how the whole system works...I'm skilling up, but am really beginning to wonder why. What possible items are there at the top of a tradeskill that will STILL be selling when I have the time and energy to get there? If nothing breaks, and lots of tradeskillers beat me to 300, then I don't have much to offer the market by the time I get there (and the market doesn't have much to offer me either).

rant rant rant. Wasn't there something about hunting and questing in this game once upon a time? I seem to recall.....



Drexxell
Wayfarers of Veeshan

[Neebat]

What possible items are there at the top of a tradeskill that will STILL be selling when I have the time and energy to get there?

I don't really know about the top, but I know there's some things in the middle that sell.

* minimizers
* necrotic divining devices
* stalking probes
* collapsibles
* geerloks

Those all make modest profits for me in any given week, in proportion to how much of a nuisance they are to make. If they were easier to make, more folks would sweep in, and I'd make less money on each one.

If on the other hand, you're looking for huge profits, you'll need an exclusive market. The only time I've seen that is temporarilly when new recipes are released. I don't see huge profit opportunities in tinkering, but you might want to look into smithing.

There are useful expendables in EQ, but a lot of stuff is permanent. Sony balances the vast majority of people who want items to be permenent and resellable with the tradeskillers who want to sell a new item. We fair surprisingly well considering the relative quantity of us.

Eep! I have to disagree with Ngreth. LORE seems to exist almost exclusively for its impact on the economy. A few items have LORE because a pair would be over powered. The LORE tag on collapsed containers have nothing to do with how they're used. If it did, then geerloks and all 2-hand weapons would have it.

[Drexxell]

I don't really know about the top, but I know there's some things in the middle that sell.

* minimizers
* necrotic divining devices

Well now, it's like every time I think I'm done ranting, I have a new one ....

/sarcasm on
Um, THANKS to the developers for putting the ONLY vendor who makes these (and a few other) nice items possible, completely impossible for a solo gnome to get to even at 55th level.
/sarcasm off

What was the point of this? Punish casual tradeskilling players who don't level up enough? If the argument is, again, "not to flood the market", couldn't it have been done in a way that STILL allowed everyone of any level FAIR ACCESS to the components? What is this "high tradeskilling is reserved for high levels" attitude (that is now at the Nth degree with DoN, by the way).

I'm fairly certain that in medieval times the world's greatest soldier and the worlds greatest blacksmith were two totally different people with two totally different and unrelated skill sets.

Wow, am I spun up...silly me...calm...3 deep breaths...

Drexxell
Wayfarers of Veeshan

[Neebat]

/sarcasm on
Um, THANKS to the developers for putting the ONLY vendor who makes these (and a few other) nice items possible, completely impossible for a solo gnome to get to even at 55th level.
/sarcasm off

I don't think my gnome has ever met Nitram. I always get those from that other type of vendor... a player. Steel casings and vials of gas are tradable. I once had a level 70 monk bring me back hordes of these in exchange for making him a couple toys. Usually though, I get them from a rogue with SoS. Hiring an SoS rogue isn't a level-restricted ability. You don't even have to be 46+.

I hadn't thought of it, but my ranger has been to Nitram at least twice in the last week. I wonder how fast I'd sell out if I filled up a bazaar mule with these things at 100% mark up?

Challenges create the market. It's up to you to overcome the challenges and enter the market. Destroy the challenges and the market is gone.

[Drexxell]

Challenges create the market. It's up to you to overcome the challenges and enter the market. Destroy the challenges and the market is gone.

hehe..."said the Capitalist to the Socialist". Sorry, I want an even playing field

[splunge]

what if these were not intended to be in the skillup path by the designers?

Looks to me that they fell on their faces on that one...

Lore tags on most things that have them.. make no reasonable sense ever. Epics, gear drops from gods... yeah, lore makes sense. But toolboxes?

If they didnt want certain items to be made en-masse, then they shouldnt have made the items so easy to get, they should have made more skill-up paths... niche market... found on vendors... blah blah blah dead horse boogity boogity shoo.

Why am i even bothering? I dont even PLAY this game any more.. Im not even supposed to BE here today!
...

[Wyvernwill]

Actually, lore makes no sense at all if you think of it from a what it sounded to mean when I started, being "unique" items.

Problem is... when you are in a room, and four other people all have your unique item... not very unique then eh? If two seperate characters can have the same lore item, why can't one character have two? :P

[Ngreth Thergn]

Eep! I have to disagree with Ngreth. LORE seems to exist almost exclusively for its impact on the economy. A few items have LORE because a pair would be over powered. The LORE tag on collapsed containers have nothing to do with how they're used. If it did, then geerloks and all 2-hand weapons would have it.

I said nothing about the economy

I just said they must have had a reason for it to be LORE.

I have no idea what that reason is... but they must have had a reason, and I *expect* (but do not know for sure) that it had nothing to do with where it fit in the skillup path.

I was just commenting that the fact that it fits in the skillup path, and it lore, was not likely to be in their decision making. If anything there was a decision that it was to be lore, then maybe... when they asigned trivials it was not a "formula" of item usefullness but "there is a hole here, lets place it here" and no consideration was made of its LORE nature. It is also posible that there was a "formula" of some sort to decide the trivial, and it just happened to fit into that "sweet spot" and again, LORE was not even considered. I jsut doubt they said "ok, this item is LORE lets make it an intergral part of the skillup path jsut to screw with peoples minds."