Yakatizma

[Dregor Thule]

Ok, I missed something. According to the front page, Maddoc has replaced Frizznik as the Tradeskill guy.. when exactly did Dan Enright stop being the guru of all things crafted?

[Lilosh]

He is working on the PS2 version of Everquest now.

-Lilosh

[Cantatus]

Hmm.. It was probably over a year ago that Yakatizma got promoted. Frizznik got promoted about two months ago and Maddoc has been in since.

[Sanna]

Ever wish you could be a fly on the wall in this guy's office? Not even for spoilers, either, I promise. I wanna see what he does all day; I am just insanely curious as to this guy's mental capabilities, if Sony thinks they only need one of him on that side to do what takes an entire site with a forum board and seriously overworked Denmother-sama and HO-sama to do on this side of the UI.


I mean, hm, how to say... in an only half-hypothetical way, what's the difference between this guy and me?

I think I need to start figuring out what the people who do what I want to do know, where they learned it, what categories of things they studied, and then I need to do that. There are days I get so afraid I got this whole college thing by the wrong side of the tail, and I'm gonna bust my butt, get out, and realize I did it all wrong....

-- Sanna

[kiztent]

Originally posted by Sanna
I mean, hm, how to say... in an only half-hypothetical way, what's the difference between this guy and me?

I'd like to hope you don't have a goatee, and you're probably cuter

Originally posted by Sanna
I think I need to start figuring out what the people who do what I want to do know, where they learned it, what categories of things they studied, and then I need to do that. There are days I get so afraid I got this whole college thing by the wrong side of the tail, and I'm gonna bust my butt, get out, and realize I did it all wrong....

Maddoc is a developer, not QA (you want to QA right)?

A developer needs to know everything about the game. Who does what and why. What's good and what's not. How you want the game to work and how you can make it that way - while still being fun for everyone. Most importantly, understanding the effects of what you do - and knowing it's not going to be what you expect. Gamemastering RPGs is the best training you could have for this sort of thing.

A simple example of this would be the May 8... event. From a smithing perspective:
Smiths complained because it was a non-trivial skill (though it was complete) but you couldn't make anything useful with it - old style cultural looks good until you look at Hate and Fear armour. Velious quested, no question. So, in order to help tradeskills, a bunch of pretty nice armour was added to the game - you may know it as BD cultural. Unfortunately, they forgot to readjust the trivials on the old fine plate for a month after the nice stuff was in game.

What did this do to smithing?
- Triggered a series of complaints from the races that didn't have cultural smithing
- Triggered a rush of powerskilling as all the uber guilds committed genocide in EK to farm padding to get the new armour, with the usual complaint about baby eating ubers not giving casual players a chance to do anything
- Took leather padding prices from 100pp a stack to 100pp each, with a corresponding rise in pelt prices and the first in a now long string of complaints about farmer and gougers
- Made all the old style smiths complain because - mostly - they couldn't take advantage of the market. As always in EQ played > all. There is no secret 'real smith' handshake to allow you to make money (although a fortune or three was made by the older smiths)

I'm not sure if this was intentional or not, but the upshot of May 8 is that tradeskills used to be for those that liked them and didn't care about profit. May 8 changed that, and the people out to make some quick plat moved in, because they could make their quick plat in tradeskills. I'm still undecided about which is best.

Aid Grimel seemed like a good idea - reward people that tradeskill AND raid, but the raiders spend lots and lots of time on EQ, so it just further trashed tradekskill markets already reeling from the solstice earring quests. When tradeskillers are casual people, the time investments seem huge. For someone that's used to raiding 6+ hours a day smithing to 250 is 2 weekends work (which I've seen).

AND as a probably unforseen side effect, Aid Grimel made it impossible to introduce a profitable recipe in the game unless it required retarded amounts of farming (like old style retarded - think Ragefire in Sol B). Why? Because there's a LOT of high play time 250 in everything people. If it's profitable and easy to make, they'll make it until the item is sold at just above cost. They are flagged for everything, they can probably solo any zone in the game, they're on for hours and hours.

If they introduced a recipie that required 10 bixie stingers, 3 enchanted velium bars and some molds that made a BoC equivalent weapon - the result would sell for 5k within a month. Never mind the fact that BoCs currently sell for 300k. Many high play time people consider their time roughly valuless. They have mandatory raids, may or may not have some AA to finish and a lot of time invested in EQ that they need to do something with.

A good developer will realize all this and how it impacts anything they introduce to the game.

Making tradeskills worthwhile for casual players while still rewarding for the ubers is a challenge. PoP, I think, actually is a good mechanism and I'm pretty happy with recent direction (except put some HP and mana on the LDoN smithed stuff - it looks positively dated as is).

[KyrosKrane]

Fair points, Kiztent. Here's one (possible) solution I've been mulling over (and I think I've mentioned this before).

Create combines that cannot be attempted if you are over a particular skill level, or over a particular playing level.

So, you might create a new Armor of the Meek that can only be attempted if your smithing skill is below 200, or if your level is under 50, or something along those lines.

It makes it much harder for the ubers to take over that market; they'd have to create a new alt and skill it up to just the required level (or level it, as the cast may be).

This is just the seed of an idea, of course; I haven't yet thought it through. Any comments?

[Kilyn]

I think that is a great idea KyrosKrane, needs some further building, but IMO would actually help.

[Tinile]

On the downside, what if you, a 250 tradeskiller decided you wanted to make this new armor for your new twinkie? Why should you be prohibited from making this piece of armor/equipment? Being "too good" to make an item doesn't seem realistic at all. In RL, if I am a gourmet chef, I don't think I would forget how to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, unless I was a snob as well.

I think adding more LORE items in tradeskilling would help the market more then skill restrictions. And yes, I tinker collapsibles and do know how much a pain LORE skilling is. With LORE tags, it would slow down the casuals and the ubers would destroy the items as they power skilled which would not kill the bazaar market on these items.

[kiztent]

Originally posted by Tinile
On the downside, what if you, a 250 tradeskiller decided you wanted to make this new armor for your new twinkie? Why should you be prohibited from making this piece of armor/equipment?

Game balance.

Originally posted by Tinile
Being "too good" to make an item doesn't seem realistic at all. In RL, if I am a gourmet chef, I don't think I would forget how to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, unless I was a snob as well.

TLC. There's absolutely no logical reason that will o wisps will recognize that you are high enough level and stop dropping GLSes, but on FV they do.

If it helps tradeskillers skilling up, I'd be in favor.

and Kyros, I suggested skill capped combines at the first panel as a way to make tradeskills more fun : D

[Maddoc-the-Wayfarer]

I'd like to hope you don't have a goatee, and you're probably cuter.

Nothing wrong with goatees!

--Maddoc

[Sanna]

except that i'm a chick, and NOT A DWARF.

hm. so, the best thing to do 'right now' would be to try as many different gaming systems and learn how they work? not like i have time, but that's not the point. ^_^


-- Sanna
anyone wanna pay me to write? in theory, i can do that right now. (Sanna's Minor Sarcasm spell fizzles.)

[eniamn]

Originally posted by kiztent
TLC. There's absolutely no logical reason that will o wisps will recognize that you are high enough level and stop dropping GLSes, but on FV they do.

try jaggedpine. lv 40 some wisps i think. they supposedly always drop a gls or other stone.

[Lilosh]

Originally posted by Sanna
(Sanna's Minor Sarcasm spell fizzles.)

Next time you Ding, come see me.

I can teach you the secret of Ancient: Sarcastic Remark
I think we can all agree that I discovered that spell. :-)

And Maddoc, I still know that you're a gnome. :-)

!!!!111

-Lilosh

[kiztent]

Originally posted by Maddoc-the-Wayfarer
Nothing wrong with goatees!

Had one since 93, but I don't think it would work for Sanna.

Originally posted by sanna-with-no-goatee
hm. so, the best thing to do 'right now' would be to try as many different gaming systems and learn how they work? not like i have time, but that's not the point. ^_^

Not just how they work, but how they can be abused. Abuse is more important. I mean of gaming systems

Play RPGs a lot, see how people interact with the system.

[Sanna]

any suggestions?

the BF rps with his friends a lot, but for some reason the pen-and-paper version seem... 'silly' isn't the right word. Un-rule-governed? Easily manipulable if the player is smarter than then GM. Thus, it seems to me, that the GM has to do the entire amount of processing that a server would. But maybe i'm just seeing something backwardsish.

He suggested ... now let me see if I can remember... Dragon Lance and Forgotten (Forbidden?) Realms. And then FF11 came up in the conversation a bit later, can't remember now if that was attached to this idea or if he just said it was something he wanted to try.

/GU Comics has made me want to go try out DAoC, just to see what he's talking about ("Toast put hood ON! Toast take hood OFF!"). And if I could keep from getting carsick (same problem I had first week with EQ) I'd make the BF let me play Morrowind. Not an MMORPG but strikes me as in the genre? Maybe sort of?

Suddenly I feel small and un/dereducated again. I hate that feeling. >_<

-- Sanna
never got that feeling till I got to college. probably spoiled. darn intelligence.