New Tradeskill UI on Test

[Beggly]

I agree for the most part that this new UI will have an effect on EQ tradeskillers. I view it as a trade-off of good and bad.

1) It will make combines a lot easier but it will change the economy of combinables availability both in bazaar and as farmed drops.

2) It will allow more people to reach higher tradeskill than before however it will result in more items being available for sale in the Bazaar and on vendors which may or may not be a bad thing.

I have a couple of comments on the arguments I've been reading here.

1) Why do people think the new UI will effect botters and cheaters in general? They will always bot and cheat if they can. With or without the new UI. This will simply give the rest of us a chance by evening the playing field a bit. I don't consider this a valid argument against the UI

2) Farming and gathering materials by vendor diving and going to the Bazaar will still be necessary to do combines. Tradeskills will now require more ingame effort than point and click effort, so get over it. I would rather spend three hours killing spiders in some zone than 3 hours pointing and clicking any day.

3) Too many people will grandmaster skills, making it impossible to sell things in the bazaar for the prices I've been getting. Oh, well, to bad, so sad. I almost never sell anything i make, I give it away to guildies or newbies or whoever will give me the raw ingredients. Its not going to change things for me at all.

4) Too many people will get tradeskill trophies. That might be a legitamate concern, however, they will still be horridly hard to make and very expensive too boot, so I put this in the catagory of an , Oh, well, you can't make omlets without somebody killing snakes...

5) My grandaddy did it that way, and that ol' time religion is good enough for me. Fine. Keep doing it the old way. If I never have to spend two weeks consciously avoiding tradeskilling because of injury to my wrist and hand again, I'll take that as a trade-off for any negatives there may be.

6) Change is bad. I don't like Change. Change is bad. There is no argument or excuse for this one.

7) Part of the Dumbing Down of EQ. There is no argument for this one either, however, this is actually somewhat true. For myself, I don't care.

I don't play EQ to spend hours doing tradeskills (though I do a lot of tradeskilling...and belong to a guild that stresses tradeskilling. I'm probably the most lackadaisical of all the tradeskillers in my guild, I've been over 200 in jewelry but haven't bothered to make the push to 250 for no good reason I can think of for over four months....

Fact is, This is the only part I'm even marginally concerned over. I would prefer that they put some sort of function in for "known" recipes...maybe make tool and raw material combines common knowledge, but you have to buy templates or books for learning new things. I think this would be more creative and add a new way to develope your characters....but that is just me.

And it should only be with new characters who have no 'points' in these skills or perhaps under a skill level of 20....I would just hate to have to hunt up a bunch of books or templates to 'learn' my recipes on my tradeskillers who already have a high skill.

For those who have argued there points passionately, I appreciate your taking the time to do so. Only by airing these debates can consensus be reached...and anyone's ideas have value, even if you disagree with them.

[Brildary]

CONFUSED!

Ok, maybe I'm just misreading some of these posts regarding the UI on Test (and skilling up really quickly to be able to cash in on TS when the UI goes live). Is there a way to move characters, or money or items between servers? How can skilling up via the UI on Test translate into pp on a live server? Am I missing something here? What can you take from Test to live?

[borblefoot furtoe]

Um we are discussing the effect of what will happen when the NEW UI that is currently only on test goes to all the live servers. This has nothing to do with transfering characters. Currently I believe it is scheduled to go live with the same patch as the GOD expansion. The skilling up quickly part is in reference to once it goes live to all servers

I keep seeing the argument that removing the physical mouse moving and clicking is not the big block in tradeskills but that component aquistion is. This is only true of the High end POP items.

For your everyday normal skillup route type stuff anyone with a modest sized bank account can buy teh vast majority of the skill up items in the bazaar or off of vendors.

And I am sorry to say but even farming your own components while boring and a little time consuming reallly is not all that difficult.

Boring and time consuming does not equate to difficult. That is the erroneous assumption many people are making. The most difficult part of GM ing a tradeskill is the actual physical mouse movement and number of clicks you need to make.


Borblefoot Furtoe
Storm Warden
Resolution
Firiona Vie server

[Desirsar]

A proposition!

A bit late for suggesting this to SOE, but an idea I just had in re-reading the thread...

For all those who argue that the most difficult part of tradeskills are the mouse clicks, why not make the moving of items the delay instead of the actual combine? If that sentence confused you, let me explain... You click combine with a recipe selected - every three seconds, an item is taken from your inventory and put into the container. 3 seconds after the last one, the items are combined, and the process repeats. Now the automation takes as long as actual clicking, but still reduces repetitive stress injury, and the old mode allows you to go faster if you can click that fast. Everyone wins! But, like I said, it's too late now to suggest this.

[Brildary]

Test v. Live

Ok,got it Borblefoot. I did think that Test was definately seperate and that nothing you did on it could ever apply to your regular live server...I just kept seeing posts that seemed to imply there was a crossover of somekind. It didn't seem right to me, but I didn't really know...now I do. Thanks.

[eniamn]

desisar? you do realize i plan to use this on picnics? that is over a minute for three combines at picncis. that would make the ui pretty useless to me. i can always click faster than 3 seconds now. i could probably do 2-3 item combines totally and hit my autoinventory key in 3 seconds quite often.

renjah? you can get to 248 store bought brewing not 250. small point and not important. you can only get to 191 on store bought baking. not near 250 at all. explain please. you confuseded me. i don't consider bazaar store bought.

[Timper Tantrum]

The most difficult part of GM ing a tradeskill is the actual physical mouse movement and number of clicks you need to make.

There is nothing difficult about this, you could train a freaking moneky to do it. It is simply mindless repetitiveness, nothing more nothing less.

Which makes tradeskills frankly no fun.

The new UI will bring the fun in creating things back to the tradeskillz.

Personally I dont care what it does to the "market" because I do TS for fun not profit, and if it can bring down already ridiculous prices then Im happy for the people who will more readily be able to afford things that the greedy price gouges charge now

[Balkin]

It breaks down real easy...

<----- on this side, we have the glass is half full people.

-----> on that side, we have the glass is half empty people.

And right in the middle are the fence sitters. Where I usually am. heh

The new UI has good and bad points.

I'm already 250 in Baking and Brewing on two different characters, and over 200 in Blacksmithing on a third character.

Will it make sub combines easier. Yes! Will it still be time consuming, YES!!! With the combine delay, it will take just as long as it does now. Or longer depending on how fast you can click!

Will it make final product combines easier... YES! WHEN you finally get it to within the 50 points range, or whatever they end up choosing. What about stuff trivial above 250? When does that become available? MTP's are trivial closer to 300. When will people be able to use the new UI to make those? How about Constitutionals? Also trivial in the 300 range...

Mino's brew would become available at 198 (if it stays 50 points above your skill). So you'd have some skill points where you'd have to do it the old fashioned way eh? *shrug*

As I say, good and bad. There will be an instant increase in the price of bazaar raw materials... As if I care! The prices are so insane, I can't afford them now! I gather my own ingredients! If yer going to buy your stuff in the bazaar, you have more PP than you need. Please pass some this way... K?

I don't see this ruining the market for any trade that requires drops/foraged items. Smithing, Tailoring, etc etc etc... It might have an effect on JC or Brewing, or Fletching (to an extent) but hey, ya can't have everything.

There will be a huge upheaval in the first few weeks, but it will settle back down to close to what we have now. Or so would be my opinion eh? I say it's going to be a good thing over all, with some MINOR bad points.

I guess my glass is half full today.

[eniamn]

i dont see it having an effect on fletching except maybe for cams and arrows. won't be a gm difference if you go the bow route though. 2 item combine. depends on how hard it is to tinker your own cams i would imagine.

jc i don't see much affect. it takes the same amount of pp to gm it and 2 item combines are pretty weak.

brewing it will make minos much easier. might help with grobb's or tea but they take subcombines as well i beleive. no ui will speed up the spawn rate on mushrooms for kaladims.

tailoring will be happy because i will use it to make heady's and wu's armors. no instant gm will this make however.

smithing hurray you can combine chain and plate armors faster. won't help you farm ss or velium or forage/make drop ldon tempers. might make sickles sub-combines easier.

pottery i don't pay much attention too. just not as exciting to me as the others. sorry to all the gm pot smokers.

baking thank you god. picnics subcombines will not be much reduced. most are 2 item combines. the picnics themselves will not take 3 hours to make now though. hope to get time down to 2 hours for a 200 run. wish me luck. if prices fall a bit i can deal. its paid for a lot of gear already. i use it to feed my guild mostly. i actually rarely eat picnics. lol.

it might do something i don't see but sub combines will still be there. my wrist just won't hurt so much and stupid mouse problems won't upset me so.

[Desirsar]

<----- on this side, we have the glass is half full people.

-----> on that side, we have the glass is half empty people.

Half full my butt.. it's so full it's only being held in the glass by surface tension. (It'd be overflowing if they added many new TS items that are actually usable by players, preferably below trivials of 250...)

I did like being able to make some items for profit - but by the time I made much, dozens of other people would start selling the same stuff and drive the price down so I barely broke even. There are already too many tradeskillers, the new UI will do nothing to that. As such, there are all plusses and no minuses here.

[Renjah]

I dont think the UI will have any long term affects. While I have most of my trade skills at 250 or very close I do plan on using the UI to make some sickles to get smithing up. If the new UI wasn't going in place I would still make the sickles but it will allow me to do them a bit quicker. So for me the UI will help, but it isnt getting me something I wouldn't be doing anyway.

Some see the glass half full, others half empty. Me? I want to know who drank half my water!!!

[wurtin]

Hello all.

I'm not a hardcore skiller by any stretch. I have dabbled in pottery, brewing, and baking, but only attained skill levels in the 130 range (enough to do up to the 4th shawl) or so. Just recently, I decide to forray into JC. At first I was going to wait for the new UI, but then I decided against it. Lack of patience on my part I guess.

My skill in JC is now 220 and am hoping to get to 250 and trophy in the next week or so. My reason to get JC wasn't to compete in the market, but twink some alts, maybe do some combines for my guild, etc. and above all get the trophy. It's an accomplishment. And just having to throw a crapload of raw materials into a window and have 20 skillups fly by, seems to trivialize the effort. Currently each and every point earned, is earned. And when you get 2 or God forbid 3 skillups in a row when you're 200+ is a very enjoyable feeling.

From what I've read in this thread and other things I've heard, I don't think the new UI should allow skillups until it becomes effectively trivial with the mod item. It still would save a lot of sub combines in some of the other skills. As it is, to get to 220 in JC it has taken a matter of hours (probably 8 - 10). Now JC may be the easiest because of material availability and ease of receipies, but I would venture with the new UI you would be able to go from 0 - 250 in JC in under an hour. Does this seem right to anyone? If you can do skillups, I will at least do brewing too and probably baking. Not for profit, but for myself and my guild.

As for those that have a RSI. Please be smart and don't sit in front of the computer and do skillups for hours on end. This is a choice you are making to potentially further injure yourself. You will still be helped by all of the tedious sub-combines that are already trivial getting the benefit from the UI. Do 1/2 hour of skillups and then go off and do something else to give your wrists a break.

I think the affect will be that demand for your items goes down. There will be some that will want to sell, but I think a lot will just want to do it for themselves and their guild. They will see that it is not the holy grail of money making they thought it was.

[Aliethiya]

Originally posted by Renjah
Baking and Brewing can be taken to 250ish on store bought items.

Baking can be taken to 250 on a store bought combine? When did this happen?

(I guess you could do it to 242 on holy cake . . . Or wait, no, you can't, 'cause it requires brownie parts.)


As far as I know, brewing and smithing are the only tradeskills that can be taken to 250 purely storebought.

[Taedirk]

Originally posted by Aliethiya
As far as I know, brewing and smithing are the only tradeskills that can be taken to 250 purely storebought.

Unless I'm forgetting something, getting from 248 to 250 takes a jewelcrafted part for the champagne. If you count some type of subcombine that can be made from merchant parts, everything but tailoring and baking could be done to 250, although there are better ways.

Baking: MTP takes forages for eggs and veggies
Brewing: Mino Brew to 248, Champagne to 250
Fletching: Arrows to 202, Dark/Shadewood bows to 250
Jewelcraft: 250+ from Plat + Jade and up
Pottery: Ceramic Bands and Steins (Mana vials though)
Smithing: /pity the person going from ornate chain to Sickles
Tailoring: ...bwahahahaha...

[Tanise]

) The interface trivializes skill gains. All you have to do is buy 10 packs worth of items and hit a mouse button several hundred times. You don't even have to look at the screen, you can watch a movie and just repeat the motion blindly. Trade skills should require more active involvement to raise. Without effort, the reward is meaningless; it's like getting to level 65 by just pressing the left mouse button 1,000,000 times while you watch TV -- /yawn.

Yes because combining JumJum salad, 2 pieces of jumjum cake, marmalade sandwich, Royal mints, mature cheese, a picnic basket, and jumjum spiced beer is so interesting that I'm on the edge of my chair.

I did 17 stacks of those last night for -1- skill up. I gotta tell ya I was so excited I'm gonna go to Disney World today.

I just can't find endless clicking Exciting. I'm sorry but it's just not gonna happen. As a general rule while Skilling I feel like the equilvilent of banging my head againist a concrete wall then. Though I must admit last night after 17 stacks I wanted to bang someone at sony's head againist a wall.

I'm not flaming you but it sounds more to me like you don't like the idea of someone having it easier then you. It's a basic human reaction to change in many people but you should really sit back and rethink it. How can you find endless clicking a remote effort.

Right now the effort is attempting to skill while contorting yourself into different positions as to not give yourself carpal tunnel as well as make up excuses for why you are still skilling and cannot go exp. And as a warrior, part of my effort is in gettin my int up high enough to be worth doing TS. I can't Ts while raiding because with my normal gear on my int is too low to bother.

I started Tradeskills during the original EQ. I wanted to make some cured silk armor for one of my regular groupmates. Started getting on early so I work on them then stayling later after groups so I could work on them. Then I was skipping the group because I really wanted to make this armor and skill ups just weren't coming. Next thing I knew the group had passed me up by far and I still couldn't make the gear for him. Not that it mattered because he'd already earned more then enough cash to buy the gear. Back then 1 in 1000 cats actually dropped the MQ pelt needed for progression.

Then I moved onto smithing, Hey I'll make banded for myself. I sunk around 1k and about 40 hours into smithing. 1k was an insane amount of cash back then. Finally gave up at skill 86 and just bought the stuff. I created an enc to be able to make jewelry for my char. My char wasn't bringing in pp fast enough to progress her JC so I started smithing to make cash. In 3 hours and 150pp she hit skill 90. That's when I pretty much gave up on Sony's "tradeskills" as just being a way to screw it's players.

I remember just about everything the one poster listed with the exception that when I started you could fullscreen (8x6 i think was the max) and I never combined anything but a bag of food once though I had a friend who combined his Jboots and a ranger friend who combined one of his epics. I was actually mad as hell when they made non TS stuff non combinable and raised the weight of the bags.

I remember moving the little slider to get just 1 of an item and picking up an item to "swap" it with a stack so you could easily pick up the stack. Or sitting at the bank Tradeskilling so you could have more then 2 bags open.

If this interface is gonna make the sheer hell that tradeskilling can be for some classes more power to it, it's about time they did this.

As far as macro'rs, they can loot a corpse from the other side of the zone, I'm quite sure they will find a way around this. So what if a macro'r makes max skill easily. They're just gonna start pounding out Ele armor? I've spent the past 3 months farming water to make TS gear for myself and the friends that come with and the stupidly rare drop rate of some of the items (slime and gills) will make it pointless. If anything the inferace seems to put normal players on level ground with macro'rs.