alchemy rant

[sownow]

I would give Kudos if there werent so many removals and nerfs of the few useful potions.

I like the new system believe it or not and would love to see it expanded but at this point Alchemy is at a net loss from where it was ... and I thought the point was to make it better.

[kagrobb]

dead skill for me now as well... too much time invested in learning the old system, say 6 years !!

[Verdandi]

Have you /feedbacked and explained which potions were removed that you used and why those that were changed are now useless? Maybe we can get them adjusted to work better for you again.

Although we're still expecting a LOT more to come in yet that aren't reported, so it may be too soon to say something has been removed.

[Rawckett]

Give details, this is a lame primal scream

[Doomspark Deathfire]

Actually, it's a good scream. It's just not helpful towards resolving the issue.

I haven't touched the new alchemy yet, I admit. Coming back to the game after a year off has hit me with a learning curve on everything, not just tradeskills.

[Dutchy]

I'm dissapointed with the "new alchemy" system as well. Only looked up the 3 potions I actually produce and use in large quantity so far. I used to keep the 10doses in stock for my guild in the guildbank but with the changes made it's just not worth it anymore.

Gate Potion: price upped from 70pp-ish each to 145pp-ish each.
Okay 70pp a piece with the reselling "exploit" was cheap, but now that the price has doubled my production of these will most likely end. In the old days these used to be an amazing time saver, but the PoK stones, nexus spires, magus, mage summoned gate item, gate necklace quest, AA gate for every class, the return home button, etc. etc., that have been added to the game in the meanwhile these are much less usefull then they used to be.

Sow Potion: level restricted now.
Instead of being able to create 10x 10dose blood of the wolf for the guildbank and be done with it, I would now have to create all the 10 different varieties in reasonably large quantities to cover all members. This will eat too much space. (same problem with ds-potions)

Kilva's Skin of Flame (DS-Potion): Old potions duration went from 20ish minutes to 8minutes and 12 seconds, and the new ones also have a short duration.
I expected old potions to still work as before, so was surprised to find out the duration had been so drastically lowered. I normally went through 4 shots an hour, and now Im using 12 per hour (when they hit 3mins I always refresh m). I'm very lazy by nature and having to consume another potion every 5 minutes just cancels my use for it. (warrior tells the group: "holding pulls... gotta rebuff myself again") and it was my favorite potion too *snif snif.* (come to think of it, the new high version also requires mob drops. making it even harder to produce than the better old ones as well)

Alchemy just became a dead skill for me as well, the ds-potion nerf being my main reason

[kagrobb]

making everyday use potions requiring mob drops is a complete and utter nitwit way of doing things for this skill.

Smithing, bowmaking, tailoring, augments, spells ect ect all give an item that is lasting where using a potion is only good for 8 min now and requires hours of farming to do so.

I have done many timesinks in my history for EQ sssra coa tavci sleepers dain rings ect but I will be a halflings uncle if I am going to invest 3 min on something that is going to last 1 min. (you get the point)

Only thing alchemy is good for me now is making gate regents for the pok neck.

Re-re-refix alchemy and stop "bending over" the players aka. the paying customers every time somone gets the idea of "fixing" the problem by total revamp of a system to match Mr._Just_got_hired/promoted_need_to_impress_boss_programer_099 "visions" of what they would like the system to look like.

Total revamp of a working system sends a very clouded messege to your subscription base saying we want to let you know we are working on the problems but instead of zone times, instance crashes, and event scripts. (like hivequeen emp just to name a couple). I want a consistant product (game) and instead of reworking the entire thing every 6 months to the point of unplayability.

~A very unsatisfied coustomer~

[Grolyn]

Try making Interplanar Brain Blaster. Takes a LOT of time farming just for kirin horn (hour or 2 in some cases or about 5k in bazaar) And what do I get? one sip, one second is all I get.

But you don't hear me complaining about the time sink on this powerful alcoholic drink that causes useless FD (doesn't clear aggro).

Tradeskill is not really meant to be easy or quick, there's lots of time sinking involved (Shadowscream anyone?) or money sinking (jewelcraft especially)

Another one is Misty Thicket Picnic, it takes lots of room for the subcombines, lots of subcombines, and a bit of farming (brownie part, egg, and fruit) to make just 1 combine of MTP. And unless someone does force feeding regularly MTP won't last long especially on Vah Shir race.

[kagrobb]

Try making Interplanar Brain Blaster. Takes a LOT of time farming just for kirin horn (hour or 2 in some cases or about 5k in bazaar) And what do I get? one sip, one second is all I get.

But you don't hear me complaining about the time sink on this powerful alcoholic drink that causes useless FD (doesn't clear aggro).

but is this the best path for you to skill up on or is it for you to make a fd drink. Sorry but if your only choice was to farm a green mob zone for a month to get 4 skill ups ( go go rng ) would you keep at it? Howabout getting mostly there and then having to relearn all the new recipies becuase of poor programing that forgot to translate old potion recipies to new recpies.

I honestly think it was a unneeded change with all the other issues in the game atm. Programing time spent on this seems to be more look what I have done and not look at what is fixed. And it was 1/2 way done not debugged and still as time consuming as before.

Lets break it down for you on a very basic level

the old system was potions stackable up to 10 and required a different bag to do the work so you ate up a bit of space when doing potions.

New system stacks up to 20 BUT requires almost all of the potions to have throwing vials made for the combines now, that is a lot of preclicking to get to the potion making and also almost 30 extra clicks per 20 potions made.

In my opinion timesink does not make for game content.


and doing mtp is the easiest trivial path to 300 baking skill 98% of the items are vendor bought and the remaining 2% are easy and cheap to get in the bazar. and with food conservation 3 aa done i eat one BB party platter every 5 hours Real time.

[Angelsyn]

I honestly think it was a unneeded change with all the other issues in the game atm. Programing time spent on this seems to be more look what I have done and not look at what is fixed. And it was 1/2 way done not debugged and still as time consuming as before.

I don't play a Shaman... at least not one who does Alchemy (I kinda retired my baby shamaness because of play-time issues)... but I do read the Alchemy forum and use some potions in game.

1) Do you have any idea how programming tasks are allocated on a project as big as EQ is? There are programmers specifically tasked to work on Quests, on Tradeskills, on zone layout and pathing, etc. Grabbing some guy who has been working on Tradeskills for the past few months and telling him "go work on the zoning times" just doesn't work. Tradeskills might not be your priority, but they are mine (for example).

2) So you have to "learn a bunch of new recipies"... so what? Thanks to this incredibly wonderful and freely offered website, you don't have to go out and discover all those recipies yourself!

3) The new potions are not worthless! The higher-end Stat Potions raise the Stat Caps! Yes, there are some problems... but a number of them are already being addressed and will be fixed during the next scheduled patch. And let's be honest... there are always things that aren't quite right every time something new comes down the line.

Anyone who expects "perfection" or even near perfection the first time is just fooling themselves.

[kagrobb]

I don't play a Shaman... at least not one who does Alchemy (I kinda retired my baby shamaness because of play-time issues)...

then stop thinking my rant applies to you

[Bobaten]

Sow Potion: level restricted now.
Instead of being able to create 10x 10dose blood of the wolf for the guildbank and be done with it, I would now have to create all the 10 different varieties in reasonably large quantities to cover all members. This will eat too much space. (same problem with ds-potions)

While the rest of the rant may be valid, the new sow potions are not level restricted (it's a common misconception because there are 5 of them). They are the best example of the new item casting level code. That is, they cast the spell at the level set on the item, not at the level of the user. So the 5 different potions range in speed from j-boots to the full speed sow as cast by a level 55 character. The important thing to note is that this casting level replaces the character level, it is not a second check. So a level 1 character using a level V potion gets sow as cast by a level 60 character.

[Dutchy]

Oops my bad, must have misread it

[Angelsyn]

then stop thinking my rant applies to you

Did you bother reading my post at all?

I'm not a programmer either, but I found your comments about programmers "wasting time" uninformed too.

[kagrobb]

Did you bother reading my post at all?

I'm not a programmer either, but I found your comments about programmers "wasting time" uninformed too.

I am a programer and "wasting time" I ment that this is something that should be towards the lower list of current problems not straight to the front over existing issues.

While I respect the work of the Dev team and the house ogre in paticular for taking on the task of a total revamp of the current system. It was and is a continuing project of a pretty decent size.

However timers on poitons, dropped items for midgrade potions. I personally do not even have that huge of an issue for top end potions needing some farming to get them done, what I do have a problem with is losing all information that was associated with my current skill level.
I feel that it is a very unneeded barrier and if it was intended to that way then it is a timesink used only to force gameplay to reaquire lost skills.
I challenge any dev team member to honestly say timesink equals game content, and then keep a straight face by saying redoing a skill on something that was already learned and then updated and have to be relearned is fair to the player and adds content.

I for one do not have the hours of free time I did three years ago, making it a dead skill for me since I cannot devote time to it like before. I made potions for AMV fights IUD potions for dsk movement and shrink potions on top of mana regen potions and many many others including the new class balancing ones, so I have always done a bit of farming for my potion work.


Once again my biggest complaint in the new system is it adds extra steps (throwing vials) and removes all pre-exsisting knowledge recipies or thier equivalant.