New Tradeskill UI on Test

[Daikoku Ashikaga]

What I see this as is the end to the level 46 soloist, "I GM'd Fletching, I not going to XP, I am not going to do anything but fletch and sell stuff" Stuff being of marginal quality, or that is (In the case of arrows) disposable) What I see it doing is opening up more quests, more things like planer bows and armor, I hope they balance the ability to farm the items a bit better, but this again is sony. The buy stuff combine and sell it days will be done.

However there is still the, and what is likely to be the growth market, is on the combine for a fee side. Hordes of even the ubers that could afford to PS to 1750 will never do this, even with the new interface, they do not want to spend the time doing so, they want a bow for their twink. "Here is some junk I got in a XP group and some other junk I got in the bazaar, make it for me"

Dai

[Mumboh]

I think that is key on how to slow down macroers.

I don't understand that at all. The point of writing a macro is so you can set up a character, fire up the macro, and go to bed. You can only hold so many things in your inventory. You'd have to add a delay on the order of a minute between clicks to make it so a macro'er couldn't empty all his backpacks overnight. All a macro'er has to do is adjust the delay in his macro on the final click.

In fact, I don't see why the macro'ers would bother with the new UI at all. They can already do their dirty deed with the existing interface. The new UI buys nothing. It would just make them write their macros over from scratch. Oh, I suppose it is easier to write a new macro for the new UI than the old way, so it might make the entry level for new macro'ers a little lower. However, the delay has nothing to do with that. That's trivial to program around.

The tradeskill market is already dead.

Cayleu, I'm curious how long you've been doing tradeskills. In the 3.5 years I've been doing them, the market has been dead any number of times. The market has always come from the dead before. Why do you think this time is any different?

And if the markets are truly dead and stay dead, what difference does it make everyone takes up tradeskills?

In any case, if the market is dead, I wonder why would anyone take up tradeskills, no matter how easy it is? You'd have to be pretty dumb to sink 10s of kpp into something that will never make the money back, when you could buy what you're looking to make for a fraction of the cost.

It is boom markets that bring in new tradeskillers. We won't see an influx of new GMs until the market picks up, except for the people working on 1750 (IMO, they're the main reason why the market is glutted with GMs at the moment).

One other thing I've been wondering about: since I started tradeskilling, we have had the following improvements, all of which have made getting to GM easier:

- tradeskills in full screen
- having more than 1 bag open
- CTRL-click for singles
- SHIFT-click for stacks
- the bazaar (the biggest of them all, IMO)

Does anyone who is a GM today believe that these improvements have trivialized or cheaped their accomplishment in making GM? If not, why do you believe one more will? As far as I can see from the content of the posts and the names I recognize, the longer you've been doing tradeskills, the more you like the new UI. The old timers know how much easier it is today, and they know that making tradeskills easier has been a good thing.

[eniamn]

minor thing.

fish rolls to 135. i did this but someone later told me to do fish fillets? with jug of sauces and fish to 88. its cheaper for the penny pinchers and with the new ui would let you start the combines much sooner than 75.

if it stacks it should be in the can learn at least. mtps as definetly made by the stack. other quest items that are commonly sold (esp. potc items) should be in the can learn as well. the biggest thing this does for me is help with picnics and after i get brewing to 200 the old way mhbs. (look at sig for brewing. need 14 points till the +50 kicks in)

just my thoughts. otherwise i am loving it. jewelry skillup items will prolly be as easy to do the old way with only 2 items. the shear amount of clicks this will save me on mtps has earned you a warm place in eni's heart forever sir brenlo. /bow /thank /applaud

[Delph]

What I learned playing around with the new Tradeskill UI was that Deluxe Toolboxes in the bank (used as storage) would open in the old, default way, showing 2 columns and 5 rows of item slots. Deluxe Toolboxes actually carried by my little Gnome for Tinkering opened up the new UI window. This should allow players to not worry so much about the new UI window and having to switch to the old view with the Experiment button in order to store things in the bank using tradeskill containers.

Edit: I've also read, but not verified, that you can Ctrl-Right Click a tradeskill container to completely bypass the new window and immediately open it the 'old-fashioned' way.

[Elyssanda]

I am assuming by "making things", you have absolutely no intention of trying to sell it. After the change, why in the world would you want to bother making anything?

OK.. While I read this site semi-religiously, and have been watching this particular thread with avid interest. I swore I wouldn't get into the debate. I'm not. However, I do want to address this particular comment.

Before the change: I make stuff for myself, guildees and friends. Not to sell to them, to help. TO make things is an enjoyment for me. After the change.: I will still continue to make things for myself friends and guildees.

I started playing EQ Jan 1, 2003. I joined a guild a week later (RL friend was in the guild) I was waaaay to little to be able to do ANYTHING with them. SO.. I started baking. I made stat foods to help them at anytime. I made foods that were massively above my level, as well as those which turned out to be trivial to me. Yes, I made MTPs and HMPS when my skill was under 100. did I succeed alot? NO.. but the absolute RUSH when I did? priceless.
Yes I still bake things below my skill level. most of my toons are foragers, I save everything. People in our guild are now in the habit of looking at their loots and going "Oh tradeskill tag, save for Ely" and they do. Baker mule gets filled up about once every 2 weeks or less. then I spend a day baking everything. I GIVE it to guildees first, then ANYONE who happens to be wandering in newb zones under level 20.

Yes I have GM'd baking, and almost Brewing (mainly haven't because working smithing), Smithing is coming along nicely. JC? 15, but i will do it someday. I will GM all tradeskills with or without the interface.
Why do it? I do it because that's the type of person I am. in RL I am a soap & toiletries maker, quilter, baker. I do it because I enjoy it. I like knowing if I want to MAKE something I can.

[Daikoku Ashikaga]

Ok, to clarify this for me.

Sowus the ogre shammy of a cleric in guild is nearing 51, some time soon I will likely either farm or buy 2 tae ew blood vials, grab a couple of scale tempers and make a shield, if I get lucky I have 2, if looking about I do not see anyone actually needing one I might sell it to recoup blood costs.

I do not just make something to sell.

Dai

[OutcastAssassin]

In another thread, I asked, "What's the most profitable tradeskill?" I believe the first (or second, not sure) response was, "Do tradeskills for fun, not profit." If the "worst of our fears" are true, and prices plummet as a result of this new UI, this will weed out many of the people who tradeskills for profit. If you honestly LOVE tradeskills, this will not effect you in any other way, except making your passion a little less profitable than before.

My thoughts:

This is a money sink. Along with this new UI going live on regular servers, the casino is coming back too. With people spending lots of cash on the casino AND tradeskills, this will probly not hurt our economy at all. Sure, more people will be selling MTPs and HMPs, but, the prices will still be good, as there will be less plat in the economy. When the casino gets old, and they realize they dont really get that much, THEN expect prices to plummet. Just my thoughts, say whatever.

[Noni DeeCups]

I do trade skills because I love them and I also make things to sell because I can.

I did not start doing trade skills to sell stuff.

There is a difference.

[Turlo Lomon]

I reviewed all of this, and it took me some time, so bear with me. I don't think this was covered.

Recently, the new discipline system for melee types requires you to purchase a book, and turn it in for the skill. I would like to see this for the new UI on tradeskills.

Start all recipe lists as blank. Nadda. Nothing. Purchasing Baking 101 (Hot Pie!), turn it in to a chef (heck, the vender itself would work), and the recipes contained in that book would be added to your list.

Also, include the experiment recipes as well. I like the way that seems to be working.

Now, how do we get some of the recipes that were added on test? Easy, add another book... or a scroll. It doesn't even have to be readable. Just "mysterious baking recipe" or some such. Turn it into the appropriate baker, and get the message "You learn how to make Broder's Preztels" or some such.

Random thoughts at least.

Oh, someone mentioned that they can see 250 GMs trying to fill in the last few spots of their cookbook. I would be one of them! It sounds like fun!


I've held of development of some of my story window mods, waiting to see how this will look. The information may no longer be needed.

I can't wait for it to go live.

[Teaamillie]

Mumboh I wasn't terribly clear, my apologies. My point was based on the highlighted post. Many have had concerns regarding the new UI making it easier for macroers to do their deeds. Based on that one quote, that you can't combine with an item on your cursor, the macroers probably can't use the new UI to repititive over and over while AFK.

Additionally I did point out in my post that 1) people will always find their way to exploit a system so this is no permanent fix and 2) there is still the old fashioned way.

I realize this will always be an ever present issue within EQ. I'm not terribly happy with it and I'm glad the roadblock was put in. It's important to me that Sony acknowledged the outrage of that problem.

[nykor]

wrong

macroers probably can't use the new UI to repititive over and over while AFK.

Absolutely 100% wrong. This UI is a macro'ers dream.

[Seedling]

(Note, I skipped from page 3 to page 7 of this thread...)

About macroing tradeskills:
1. this is only profitable as long as there are recipes that generate profit.
2. when macroing you can ignore backpack space. We all know the stories of zombies /warp'ing all over PoK, selling and buying as they go.
3. didn't SOE announce something along the lines of that they added code that could detect profitable vendorbought recipes?

I think SOE is taking a good look at other MMORPGs, especially FF XI, and applies it to EQ, but with an EQ twist. In FF XI you can only synthesize every few seconds, even if it's a non-existant or skill-capped one.

One thing I like about the FF crafts, is that you gain partial skill ups. When you do any skill that's not trivial/maxed yet, you get a chance on a 0.1-0.3 skill up(succes/fail). (Maybe even higher exists, but I only saw a 0.4 once, with my Archery(0) on a Twinkling Treant)

Another thing I like is the critical synthesis Rarely you get more of the item then normal (ie 8 bags of arrowheads instead of 6, or 2 pieces of lumber instead of 1) or a better item (+1 versions of weapons and armor. Weapons have more DMG and less delay or new proc, armor has more DEF and resist changes)

[Smile D Monk]

1-15 patch on test

Thought I’d drop by and mention 2 things real quick.
First, they put in a button on the containers that lets you do a CTRL right click to open them in the new UI, so if you use them as bags left clicking on them opens them as normal. For all those that thought opening up the many deluxe tool kits used as bank containers was becoming a serious pain in the kiester, they listened and fixed it.

Second, last night after the patch to make this work, they broke the world containers (not collapsible or purchased, just world containers). You can use them as normal, but can’t get them to open in the new UI.

Likely they’ll soon figure out what got pooched and fix it (likely dropping the server AGAIN minutes before raid time), but I think the CTRL click option is pretty **** nice.

[Kaysha Soulsinger]

Re: 1-15 patch on test

Originally posted by Smile D Monk
... so if you use them as bags left clicking on them opens them as normal

I assume you mean right clicking? Left clicking picks the bags up now. Or would we be stuck with our bags in their current spots?

(likely dropping the server AGAIN minutes before raid time)

That's Test for you ... but serious, it's better that they drop it BEFORE the raid than DURING the raid

[Tudani]

I finally got around to logging onto test last night to check this out. I had a level 5 enchanter with 0 in all skills and a bunch of pelts/silks/meats etc from when I had hunted with her before. I skilled up to 17 tailoring and 5 baking with what I had. A couple of things that I noticed:

It seemed to take me longer to do my combines and skillups with the new system, though the reduction of wrist pain was great, and well worth it. The combines are just as tedious in some ways, though not as painful. There's a bit much sit around and do nothing time but I think it's decently ballanced against the old system; more time less pain vs less time more pain. Most of us can whip out a combine of even MHB's in less than 3 seconds, so I don't think that the time needs to be changed. Though maybe making it take longer for combines that need more slots, and less time for combines that need less slots? Maybe on the order of 4 seconds for a 9 or 10 item combine and 1.5 seconds or so for a 2 item combine? Something that would still leave the old system as faster in almost all cases would be ideal I think.

The recipe list was a bit of a pita to use, as it would display very few items and I constantly would get the "your search returned to many hits" or whatever it was. The color coding on the recipe list however was very very nice. Searching by "color" would be another nice feature that I think I would find useful for doing skillups.

It would be lovely to have a button that poped up a list of "what can I make with items I have on me atm." To make finding the recipe you're trying to skill on or use a bit easier. This would only work if you didn't forget any of the items you needed such as patterns though. As an alternative it would be nice to let me search for combines by item. Such as put in silk swatch and it pops out all the raw silk, cured silk, wu's, blessed silk of tunare etc combines.

If I, for instance, ran out of patterns part way through combining because I had forgotten to buy enough and bought more with the container open I would have to either close and reopen the container or switch to a different recipe and back in order to be able to combine with the new system. The lack of automatically updating when you put new things into your inventory is potentially very annoying, especially if like me you tend to forget items in the bank etc.

The autoinventory and ctrl right click buttons were nice. Especially the control right click makes it easy to continue using your bags as normal bags (I would see it more as an option for the option window though). The auto-inventory button (located directly under the combine button) is nice to have, however, on combines that involve a lot of sucesses I think that the button there will lead us back to the wrist pain issue. I would much rather have an option of auto-auto-inventory, auto-destroy, nothing, that on a sucess would either automatically drop the sucess into your inventory, automatically destroy it, or do what it currently does. Or if the auto destroy is a CS nightmare (which it probably would be) just put in the auto-auto-inventory/nothing functionallity.

And my biggest complaint about the new system is that the Tradeskill window is very bulky. Though I'm sure we'll have a few nice UI mods out fairly soon after the new system goes live. Currently the window takes up about 1/4 or a bit more of my screen (though I'm not playing at great resolution), and I am much more the fan of the slimmed down with no wasted blank space look.

Things that I haven't yet checked that have occured to me since logging off (if anybody has checked these I'd love to hear about it since I rarely get time to log into test):

Will the Tradeskill window also take items out of your bank to combine, or must you have them in your inventory?

Will the Tradeskill window also take items that are equiped (such as greater light stones) or must you have them in a general inventory slot or bag?

If you have other items in your tradeskill container can you do combines that don't involve those items? Also can you even use the new UI with items already in your tradeskill container?

That's about it. I was excited about this before I tried it out and even more excited since. Not having to try to figure out what item I happened to forget in the bank alone is going to be great.