New Tanaan Crafting Mastery - Good or Bad?

[Dunthor Warsmith]

The concept of JCM-like skills, and potentially restricting a character to a single "JCM'd" field, brings up an old question of mine: Is New Tanaan Crafting Mastery a good thing?

NTCM is the PoP AA ability which allows you to take an additional main tradeskill over 200 for each level bought (there are 6 levels, allowing you to ultimately 250 in all the 7 main tradeskills). Prior to this, a character could go to 250 in only one tradeskill, and others were stuck at 200. This essentially allowed characters to "specialize" in one tradeskill, with the extra 50 skill points giving them a significant advantage in success rates on many recipes. This effected personal productivity, ability to do work for others, and the ability to compete in the marketplace.

Was this removal of "specialization" a good thing? People had already been getting around the limitation by having multiple characters (often mules) each specialize in different tradeskills, restoring their personal generalization, but that's different - it doesn't help with No Drop-related (component or product) combines, and it increases the hassle (although the shared bank slots have mitigated much of that).

Learn history to understand the future - what did people think of the specialization of the past?

Not sure if literally making this a poll is appropriate or not - opinion-filled posts are more useful in general understanding, but ultimately it is a black&white point, which the poll function forces

[Sanna]

I like to do it all, or at least as much as I think my (in)sanity will allow. On one hand, I see the idea of 'specialization = a good thing', but .... I would have no idea which skill I would want to take to 250 with Tink, if I could only do one. Granted, being a chanter, I would feel obligated to do JC, but... I love baking... and it's fun to brew and get drunk and go swimming.... and Piffy needs arrows, and I have better int stat atm, so I make her her arrows.... and... yeah. There's so much to do, and I want to do it all. So, to me, the ability to 250 more than one skill = a good thing.

-- Sanna

[Tudani]

It's both good and bad I think. There was a lot more individuality back before NTCM. There was a lot less of the rush to skill up, because people wanted to wait to decide which skill they wanted to specialize, and wanted to still be able to do combines for friends if needed. But, on the flip side, I can do all my tradeskills on one character, and it's much easier to not have to get friends to do subcombines. There's a lot more self sufficiency, but...part of the point of the game is to have to rely on others, to have to make friends and talk to people to progress.

[Sylphan]

I actually have 1750, but still voted it's a bad thing.

For one thing, tradeskillers used to level slowly. It's a shame when tradeskillers need to be high-level with lots of AA.

Also, it reduced the need for tradeskillers to cooperate or interact.

The flip side of interaction is it also elimited the ability of tradeskillers to specialize. There used to be a certain added value to a wood elf who chose smithing instead of tailoring or an enchanter who chose smithing instead of jewelcraft, now that's gone. Imagine how 'skill mastery' AAs would destroy character classes if everyone could get all abilites (CH, FD, Mez, Ensnare, Rez, Evac) just by buying the AAs. The whole notion of specialized classes would be tossed out when everyone had all the same abilities! Well, that's what happened to tradeskills.

[KyrosKrane]

What if the tradeskill masteries were implemented as a quest? You do tasks X, Y, and Z, and you gain the appropriate ability. This wouldn't require AA's and thus high level characters. Whether you could only gain one such ability or more is still under debate elsewhere.

[Serenya]

I am sorry that they implemented it, personally. It has a negative impact on those who focused on tradeskills over levels, as someone who chose to level first tradeskill later actually comes out ahead. It also has divided the community in an odd way, though perhaps it's simply my perspective. When I started tradeskills, I quite purposefully chose different skills for different avatars based in large measure on roleplaying. I may well end up with most skills at the 250 level on different characters, but there seems to be a perception now in the tradeskill community that that isn't 'good enough' or that you're not a REAL tradeskiller if you didn't do them all with one character.

[Nairn Niteraven]

I think it's a bad thing personally, but an inevitable evolution of the game. I liked it when competition was limited on the tougher tradeskills and it really meant something to GM it.

[Lilosh]

Wow, I thought I'd be the only one who was going to vote "Bad".

I was very opposed to the fact that it required AA, and made tradeskills into a 50+ game.

I'm also sad that it opened up the way to the Aid-Grimel syndrome, where bored Raiders blaze 1-250 on all tradeskills, bottoming out the markets as they proceed. :-(


Which isn't to say I won't use the NTCM. Just that tradeskilling in general might have been better off without it. The devs gave us what some tradeskillers asked for,so I guess we can't blame them.

-Lilosh

[Moraganth]

I don't think the skill itself, or rather, the ability to 250 all the skills, was a bad idea.. i DO think it was horribly implemented, and altered the entire part of the game in a negative way.

[Binkin]

there seems to be a perception now in the tradeskill community that that isn't 'good enough' or that you're not a REAL tradeskiller if you didn't do them all with one character.

Ding. I think Serenya hit it on the head. The "1750 Club" thing just feeds right into that, too.

[Kahmon]

I think that the the way NTCM was introduced was fine, but the way That the Aid Grimel Quest was implemented was poor. AG brought too many people who "hate" tradeskills and made them into tradeskillers while at the same time alienating those who actually enjoyed doing tradeskills.

[Jarak_akn]

Inspite of the fact that my main is an enchanter who has just gained the ability to get aa's (Yes I am still that low) I definatly think that all masteries should be open to all.

Hell I think that there should be AA's and or Quests to open Tinkering, poison making and Alchemy up to non Gnome rogue / shamen. (I would not make it easy, say 1750 club plus a quest opens the AA :-)

Trade skills should be open for all. Sure some classes will have advantages (enchanter enchanting, Some with tracking, hell some farm better) but I fail to understand why some caracters are incapable of learning some skills.

I guess as with all things you can think of a RP reason for everything but how valid are they ?

Jarak.

[borblefoot furtoe]

I think it was one of the best things to happen to tradeskills. But I play on FV where we are only allowed one character per account so this was a huge improvement for me. Overall I think it was good as I have almost gm'd tailoring. If it was not for the new tanaan mastery I would basically be done with tradeskills.

As it is now I have lots more tradeskilling left to do.


Borblefoot Furtoe
Storm Warden
Resolution
Firiona Vie Server

[Koru]

For me personally good. It's this whole problem with having unmaxed skills, or worse, skills I can't improve any higher. If I can't improve them it's like I'm trapped. If I maxed them it would mean I've reached all my goals and have nothing left to do. So long as I'm incomplete I can keep moving towards something better. So I'm happy for NTCM, it keeps me fixed on a very long term goal that actually is attainable. Even after I have 200 begging there's still that pesky tailoring to take care of, y'know?

For the game in general. It's hard to say. Probably did hurt some, but no, I think if it hadn't been for the extreme rewards there wouldn't have been nearly as much of an interest in tradeskills and much more balance in general. I dunno, it's complicated but I think maybe the problem wasn't that New Taanan let people GM more trades but that that bloody earring gave such a great reward to what is in general a very rich subset of players for GMing all the trades, that not doing the trades became a penalty because then they couldn't get the earring. I don't think there would have been as many people GMing all trades if it hadn't been for the earring, because lets be honest, some of the trades are a royal pain in the you-know-where and only hardcore tradeskillers were insane enough to do them when there was only one per character. The moment the rewards for doing them, not just the earring but also items, became good enough it was inevitable that more people would start to do them. People gravitate towards the rewards. The bigger the reward, the greater it's gravitational pull.

Now I'm speaking generally and not just about EQ or this aspect of it. Players have this way of sometimes looking at what should be a reward and instead seeing not getting the reward as being a penalty rather than having it be a reward. It may sound kind of stupid but it's the player perception that starts the whole thing, and unfortunately there's no known method of patching player's perception. Once the damage is done it's also rather hard to remove it.