Combining multiple items may be coming

[Celestya]

I love this idea! If people are worried about players using it to power level tradeskills....make it only work on 'trivial' combines. Celestial Essences alone would be a godsend! I use waaaay too many of those pesky things in every type of tradeskill!
Save my wrist Sony!
*pleads*

[DaluinRizzo]

Originally posted by Arghargh
The main objection here appears to be that this would make power leveling trade skills too easy. There are many ways that could be prevented. Force a delay between clicks of the combine button.

That sounds like DAOC tradeskills, a delay to make the item. Actually when up at ~800 skill this delay became very annoying

[andyhre]

A thing I thinkmight be somewhat equivalent to stacked combines would be memorized recipes. I have heard this is done in the playstation version, but the idea would be that, just like you now have spell lists that you can set up once and save for reloading later, you could put stuff into a container and memorize the set up. So it would not mean you could make 20 minotaurs in one fell swoop, but once you did it once, you could hot key it and automatically grab stuff out of inventory and slap it into the container for a second combine, etc.

That seems like a way to keep control over the recipe while easing, somewhat, the pain of repeated combines.

[Rorgg]

Originally posted by DaluinRizzo
That sounds like DAOC tradeskills, a delay to make the item. Actually when up at ~800 skill this delay became very annoying

This is true, but that was because of the huge increase in click times as you skilled up. On a skill-100 item it took a second or two, on a skill-900 item (about as far as I got, armorcrafing) it was ... now my memory's fading, but I'm thinking 90 to 120 seconds.

What would be nice is to make a click timer that's about how long it takes to click the items into the container, so say about one second per item in the combine. This way, you're still rewarded for putting your TIME in, but without the heartbreak of carpal trader's syndrome.

[Slippyblade]

Hmmm. I would love this inclusion in the game. I would, however, think that if an item was made from stacked components that it shouldn't count toward skill up. Maybe a check on an items trivial. If an item is not trivial, it can't be stack combined. That would result in requiring old methods of massive clicks to skill up, yet allow those who have gained the skill huge time breaks in making items.

[Renjah]

If this goes live I wont be the first to try it hmm 20 Bds, 20 celestial essence, and 20 jars of Acid...
<click>
<POOF!>

[Nihixul]

Here's a quick thought: One click=one chance at a skill-up. That would still force players to "put in their time" to get the skill, but save them from the tedium of making stacks and stacks of items that are incredibly trivial.

If they were thinking of implementing something like *that*, I would feel a lot better. Then again, as the mod said, this is all speculation.

I might start making my own CVT again....

[Gwynna]

Edit: deleted by self

[andyhre]

Slight hijack

Another "recipe" I'd like to have pre-programmed, along the lines of the spell lists, would be a wardrobe. Other than my solstice earring, and maybe my leggings, I think there is no other overlap b/c my fighting clothes and my skilling clothes.

I timed it this mroning and with some lag it took my 9 minutes to change gear for tradeskilling. Having a Wisdom Suit and Combat Suit memorized and clickable at the bank sure would be nice.

[Eleena Transient]

Nihixul, I think you are thinking the same way I am.

I'll give an example.

Open the brew barrel, put 1 stack of Gnomish Spirits, 1 stack of Dwarven Alem 1 stack of Elven Wine, 1 stack of Mead, 1 stack of casks.

Click combine.

The barrel refreshes with 19 of each item in it. A skill check is made. If success your cursor has 4 bottles, 1 Faydwer Shaker. If fail, your cursor has 4 bottles, 1 cask. A skill up check is made if under 188.

You then drop the bottles and cask/shaker on the auto inventory thing, and click combine again (as you can't combine with anything on cursor).

This way you don't have to hold Shift, click ale, drop ale, click mead, drop mead, click wine... for every combine, just per 20..

Further example:
Open tailoring kit. Put 1 stack of 3 silk threads, 1 stack of 4 silk threads, 1 stack ofo 2 silk threads.

Click combine.

kit refreshes with stacks of 2, 3, 1 silk threads, and a Silk Cord on your cursor. Put cord in inventory, hit combine.

kit refreshes with stacks of 1, 2, 0 silk threads, and a Silk Cord on your cursor. Put cord in inventory, hit combine.

kit refreshes with 1 silk thread, and a Silk Bandage on your cursor. Even though you had 3 total threads, it saw it as "2 stacks" so did the "2 stack" combine, the bandage.


From a coding perspective, this is easy enough. When a recipe is checked, simply decrement any stackable item by 1. Doesn't matter how many are in the stack, just as long as you have the right 'stacks' (be it stacks of 1, 3, or 20). The code already checks for stacked items (since we get the warning).

[Panamah]

Originally posted by Arghargh
The main objection here appears to be that this would make power leveling trade skills too easy.

How exactly can you powerlevel a tradeskill? I can understand powerleveling a character for experience, but not a tradeskill. Currently the difficulty in most tradeskills is acquiring the components, the combines is really the easy, though incredibly monotonous and painful part.

Anyway, I would argue it's currently too tedious and difficult on the tendons with the current method.

[Furyrpied]

Quote:

Also keep in mind, SOE needs to keep EQ appealing to the players. Given that most people don't do tradeskills, it may well be in SOE's best interest to make them more appealing to the rest of the player base. If more people do tradeskills, then that is more time they'll spend playing EQ, and paying SOE. If this yields a net increase in playing time, then SOE wins.

Quote:

IF Sony really wanted to make trade skills more appealing to the rest of the player base, there should be something worth making at the appropriate level. For example, the vale studded masks are trivial at 115(ish my memory is fading sorry) but the item made, you can't even give them away to newbies, just not worth it. So we make items en mass to only end up selling to merchants at a sever loss, or destroying the item. Even the high end items are fairly useless considering what is used to make them, the expense compared to what the final item is (i'm mostly talking about smithing here). You all hear about *risk vs. reward* i'm looking at cost vs. reward.

/rant off

Okay... I can totally agree with the idea behind making this work on *Trivial* items. Maybe make it only work on items that you shouldn't fail in? or if you are making them in stacks, no chance for skill ups... ... hmm.... now that i think about it, the no skill ups route would be just fine by me.

[eniamn]

Originally posted by Panamah
How exactly can you powerlevel a tradeskill? I can understand powerleveling a character for experience, but not a tradeskill. Currently the difficulty in most tradeskills is acquiring the components, the combines is really the easy, though incredibly monotonous and painful part.

Anyway, I would argue it's currently too tedious and difficult on the tendons with the current method.

/agree
except for jewelry and brewing with maybe baking on mtp and for the uber rich smithing with cutting sickles what is the timesink for the tradeskill. getting out there and farming pp and the bazaar or the item directly. jc you could do this with and brewing would be really quick and you would get more of those gms. these are about the two most common gms anyway because of the time involved in getting the items in the others. with smithing you still have molds and hammers to add it just wont require you to keep sticking in sheets of metal/rings and water/tempers. with pottery you still have to fire everything individually and blocks of clay dont stack. i think this will remove some of the clicking but most ppl still wont do tradeskills with this added. the price on heady's and celestial esscence may go down but ppl will still by it so that they dont have to click any more than absolutely neccessary.

[Demonspawn]

/rant on

To anyone, and I do mean ANYONE that is complaing that this will make gaining tradeskills too easy, I have one question to ask:

Do you use ctrl-click to select just one item when doing tradeskills?

[arnalh]

yes, after spending so much time combining mino hero brew to GM brewing i don't want to see people placing stacks of component inside the brew barrel and get a skill point for each...
the check for each item for the success and only 1 check on the whole stack for skillup should be a great way to implement this feature without giving everyone the oportunity to GM a skill (let s say brewing) in 4 hours...