I give up

[Eleena Transient]

*sigh*

After doing tradeskills for years, being one of the first (if not the first) 250 smith on terris, I'm finally giving up. As the skill levels go up the level of masochism needed is just to much.

Why do you need to do 50-150 combines per point, just flushing time money and energy? Its not "hard", its not a challenge, its just mind numbing tedium at this point. It takes no skill to enchant xyz clay, and click combine on 4000 steins. Getting 300 smithing for making upteen million sickles is pretty weak. 300 skill no longer means "i like to smith", it means "I have more time and plat than I know what to do with".

GM DoN was a step in the right direction, hard items both skill # and gathering, with increased skill up rate.

(signature out of date fyi)

[Angelsyn]

In the famous words of Winston Churchhill...

"Never Give Up, Never Surrender."

I am clearly insane enough to not only have gotten 300 skill in Smithing & Tailoring (two of the hardest) on one character... I am working on getting 300 skill in Smithing (and later, 300 skill in Tailoring) on a second one!

Is your current issue with Pottery skill-ups? You know, there is DoN Cultural for that as well... Sure, I'd like to see the stats on the Charms a little higher... but they're still pretty good.

[Taushar]

I hear you. I am about to give up fletching all together. My last 8 points took me over 130 combines per point or more. I mean, it's well over 1000 combines over 10 different days, it's not a small sample, RNG can not be a factor here. I am beginning to believe something is wrong. I have 410 Wisdom so according to the calculations, I should have finished it off by now. I am stuck at 295 for the last 100 plus combines and from 287 to 295 took me over 1000+ combines. It's driving me nuts.

[Eleena Transient]

300 baking
296 brewing
292 fletching
286 pottery
282 jewelcraft
260 smithing
255 tailoring

I have mastery 3 for all and salvage 3, so its no real point to raising them. But its just "why" is it so tedious? Sure, I could load up the enchanter for gold, and crank out 200 more demisec champ. to cap out brewing, but why? Why waste the money and time for something of no real value that takes no real effort over just spaming a spell, and combine.

Fletching? Well I could spend 50 hours foraging for branches, then more hours foraging battle blades, to have a *chance* at getting 1 point closer.

Pottery? Oh yay, worthless steins with no sellback value. 100% moneysink

Jewelcraft? Well, this one has some semblence of challenge collecting the rarer gems. But with the abysmal skill up rate the sheer volume you need isn't worth it.

Smithing? Joy of joys, sickles. With bunches of subcombines (no skill, just tedium and the 5% fails to screw up stack sizes) and same abysmal rate. At least these you can occasionally sell for tribute.

Tailoring. The only real skill left. I've been farming PoN spiders to make Master armor, and with the skill up bonus its worth it. I just haven't had the time to invest lately.

[Maevenniia]

The thing is, Devs never intended that players would do combines in runs of 100 (or more) at a time, to skill up, we did it to ourselves, so yes, it can indeed be mind-numbing at times.

If tradeskills were fast and easy to skill up in, then they would not be worth doing, and we would not get things to make such as the Coldain Shawl, DoN cultural, OoW augments, etc

As a wizard in a book I am currently reading said "...there can be no light without the dark, no life without death..." ie: you have to take the good with the bad.

Or maybe just think like the man who was smacking his head against a brick wall answered, when asked why he was doing that

"Because it feels sooooo GOOD when I stop!"

[Phantron]

Of course tradeskill is hard. That's why it is an achievement to get to 300 or whatever magical number you strive for. But if you can't get to that number, it's usually not that bad because the tradeskill AAs and the minimum fail rate usually means there isn't as much advantage getting to 300 versus, say, 250.

Some people try to solo (insert old world mob) long after the said mob would yield any possible benefit, and it is presumably not very easy, but they do it anyway. Sometimes it's just a matter of being able to do something that makes it worthwhile. If it's not worth it to you, you can always stop. I stopped fletching around 260s, and smithing at 299 (and got 300 on a last blood combine for a guildie). The difference between 300 and 250 is actually quite minimal especially on the elevated fail rate items (GM armor for example), and shouldn't someone grind it out all the way to 300 have some advantages for doing so?

[Eleena Transient]

The thing is, Devs never intended that players would do combines in runs of 100 (or more) at a time, to skill up, we did it to ourselves, so yes, it can indeed be mind-numbing at times.

If tradeskills were fast and easy to skill up in, then they would not be worth doing, and we would not get things to make such as the Coldain Shawl, DoN cultural, OoW augments, etc

Thats why I'd prefer to see recipes that were actually difficult to gather parts for, but with a 35-50% skill up chance. For instance, by my way of thinking making an AAAA should be at least a 50% skill up chance because of the insane amount of work, parts, farming, and subcombines to do it.

If that were the case, we wouldn't NEED to do 100+ combine runs just so that we MIGHT get a point. The skill would go up through use, by being useful.

I don't want them "Fast and easy". I want them challenging and worthwhile, vs the tedious and near worthless they are at present (speaking only of going over say 270)

Of course tradeskill is hard. That's why it is an achievement to get to 300 or whatever magical number you strive for. But if you can't get to that number, it's usually not that bad because the tradeskill AAs and the minimum fail rate usually means there isn't as much advantage getting to 300 versus, say, 250.

But, they aren't "hard" they are tedious. If it was just "hard", I would work at it to get 300 and feel I accomplished something. But there is nothing challenging or hard about making 1000 mistletoe sickles to go from 290 to 300 smithing, just run around buying stuff and doing subcombines. Thats tedium.

Research is closer, you need to find saltpeter and sulfur, thats a time investment. You need to get the parchment, which takes time and effort. And the end result is generally useful (folks still buy 65 spells). Now if making level 65 spells had a 10-15% skill up rate, I'd say it would be a challenge yet plausible tradeskill.

The AAAA (as I mentioned above) is an example of a hard recipe due to restricted parts and effort (not because it require 4000 subcombines, but that it takes effort to assemble what you need). And its a truly worthwhile end product (for another week at least, until the focus effects on them are rendered moot by level cap raise).

[Ngreth Thergn]

And I have no remorse over the AAAA.

Every time someone complains about it, it makes me a bit happier

I do have a bit of remorse over the Spell research. All I ask there is that it was one of my first, and I thought the acids were a good idea. I thought it would be fun to go through the actual process of doing it instead of the awfully dumbed down.. throw a bunch o things together, skip all the steps people actually use to make something and just magically click one button and "Poof" 3-4 hours of real work condensed to 2 seconds... but... it turns out I was wrong and people want the illogical *poof* magic tradeskills

I still plan on adding the acids to the vendors, but I can't do that until after TSS launches and I am done with the bug fix rush after its launch.

[Liwsa]

Ngreth,

No mater what you do or how you do it, you can't please everyone.

If it is 100 combines but components are easy to farm/buy to get 1 skill up folks will complain.
If it is 1 combine per skill up but takes 8 hours to find/farm/gather all components/subcombines, folks will complain.

Some folks would rather not have to farm forever or find rare components but do more combines for their skill ups. Some folks would rather hunt for rare components and get 1 skill up for every attempt. Different strokes for different folks.

The only reason that research is "Not That bad" is you can always find parchments for sale in the bazaar. IF everyone had to farm/gather their own, OH MY would you hear complaining.

You can't win.

[Grizabelle]

And I have no remorse over the AAAA.

Every time someone complains about it, it makes me a bit happier

lol, ok, let me get this straight...

People whine about doing a subcombine for research and you will now make the acids vendor tradeable.

People whine about exactly how complicated, rare the parts are or lacking in skillups an aaaa is and you smile?

{Snide stuff removed per #2 under The Rules. Grizabelle, you are free to express disagreement and frustration, but you absolutely must be civil about it. You are in Niami's living room and will not speak to her other guests that way. Criticism is fine if it is constructive. Saying people "can't be bothered" or have "masochistic jollies" is not acceptable.}

[Asolandri]

I agree with Liwsa, and I think all in all skilling up is a proper challenge. Some crafts need some help, but you are addressing those, ie pottery and research, and eventually others.

I do however like the idea of a high skillup probability on a few recipes that are mind bogglingly hard to make. Examples are the BB sandwich and the AAAA. I actually like that they are so difficult, but I think that 50% even a 100% chance to skillup would be appropriate. I mean you had to learn something in all those subcombines somewhere. =)

[Maevenniia]

I LOVE the new Spell Research, acids and all!

Putting the acids on vendors (at a higher price than we can make them ourselves) will satisfy both camps, I think.

[Eleena Transient]

I like the spell research as well, like I said I feel its very close to what I think tradeskills should be. Its an investment of time (the subs), effort (gathering the salt, sulf, and parch), and skill (deducing what inks go with what materials to create the product). Give it a nice skill up mod to balance it out and its perfect.

Likewise I like the complexity of the AAAA, give it a big skill up mod and its perfect. Also the truly great bows in PoR are wonderful things, requiring not just branches and cams, but laminates etc. Give those a 25% skill up rate and suddenly its worth the time to gather horse hooves and favor of druzzil. It seems things now are either "make for profit" or "make for skill". Trying to level off the "make for profit" items is an exercise in futility, because to be profitable they need to be hard, and if they are hard you just aren't going to be able to make 50-100 of them per skill point. So to make leveling possible you have fluff items (pottery steins, smithing sickles, fletching basic bows), easy to make but nearly no in game value.


I guess I just mourn the days of when the tradeskills meant something. Doing Koada'Dal plate during velious (I wore a full suit of it my first raid into HoT in ToV) was nice, needed a range of materials (essence from najena, morning dew, enchanted mithril, imbued emeralds, farmed materials for leatherh padding) to create gear that was valuable. And I went from 242 to 250 making them, roughly 20-25 pieces per point. Same with the velium cultural down the road (adding blue diamond dust and farmed velium to the mix).

Now you see John Doe with 300 in all 7 tradeskills and never made anything that anybody would use (except maybe misty picnics ). And the only reason he has the 300's is he ran out of aa's so bought the mastery and had no use for plat.

[Canyar]

I would like to add my support to Eleena on her view of tradeskills, a lot of it really is mind-numbingly boring. Where I disagree with her is on Spell Research. The concept of spell research is very good. The need to farm saltpeter / crystalized sulfur has really taken the fun out of research for me.

The dependence on 2 zones, one of which is practically perma-camped by high end raiders for the their AAAA components is disappointing.

The labourious nature of making the acids should not be penalised by having to farm the components. I think SoE should have looked at Celestial Essence as the model for the Oil of Vitriol. Like celestial essence, this would have created a secondary market in the bazaar for low level characters to be able to make some pp through vendor purchases and doing the subcombines. It would also substantially reduce the dependence on the amount of saltpeter needed.

[Ngreth Thergn]

You are of course not welcome to call me names

But you are welcome to disagree.

The POINT of the AAAA was to be Difficult, slow, annoying, and not easy.
It was MEANT to have many combines
It was MEANT to have some rare parts
It was MEANT to take many trips to the ore vendor
It was MEANT to be something that people DON'T want to keep doing over and over again.

It sounds like it is doing exactly what it was meant to do. The complains confirm that it is doing what is was intended to do. I guess you can call it masochist, but that is getting "personal" and "emotional" about it. It is meant to be a royal Pain in the Rump to create. Every complaint confirms that I did my job correctly in that.

As for Skillup bonuses. it is still something I am willing to consider... It is just something I have not had time to look at with the mad rush to get Serpent's Spine out. As it is... I can't justify giving the bonus to all of the AAAA sub-combines, and the final product is only 252... so not sure how much good giving it a bonus would be. I don't want to make the skillup bonuses on the AAAA so high that it becomes the preferred method for skillups. If all the sub combines have skillup bonuses I am afraid it would become that. So I have to balance it against that.

Which of the AAAA sub-combines have the most difficult to acquire parts?

(and I am not ignoring the mentioned bows... I already know what I want to do there... it is the AAAA I am still questioning)