an idea...

[kesyn]

Hi everyone,

I just got done trying to leave some feedback to the Developers over at sony by using thier eqlive website but once i sign in my user name and password and type out my message and click submit i dont get anything but a blank screen so i have no idea if it even went thru or not. anyways i thought i'd just paste it here and see what you guys think and if anyone knows how to get something thru the{blockade} i mean eqlive boards maybe they could bump em this.

here it is:

Hello,
I have been trade skilling alot lately and have an idea that if implemented would most likely make hundreads of thousands of your Trade skillers Happier and healthier.

It involves this... currently when you use a trade skill container such as a forge, Pottery wheel etc etc you must put in a quantity of 1 of each ingredient unstacked....ie; ctrl click on item and drag it to the forge... if you have ever grandmastered ANY of the tradeskills you know that this adds up to hundreads of thousands of mouse clicks and very sore wrists.

Why must it be this way? It seems to me that the game could be designed so that the forge or whatever container type could have a pull down window and drop down a list of items that could be made in it.
Then you select the item and click combine and the game would automatically subtract the items from your inventory. This would save people so many mouse clicks/movements and would alleviate alot of the wrist strain and other associated things like carpel tunnel syndrome( however it is spelled) that is associated with such a thing.

It would seem to me that you as a game company would like to make things such as tradeskilling more enjoyable and alot less irritating / hazardous to it's players.

now ive thought of the Argument (roleplaying wise) you might have against it.. such as players need to discover the item/item names/ recipes by themselves ... is it not possible to possible add a refrence file to your char name(eq folder) so that the only time you would get a new item added to your container types would be after the first succesful combine? Kind of like your UI options are saved in your eqfolder.

example... Smith x starts tradeskilling. he opens the forge, on the forge menu is a pull down window. Because he has never succesfully combined anything in it there is nothing to be selected... now smith x decides its time to make a metal ring. smith x puts in the required components into the forge and upon his succesful or unsuccesful attempt the item "metal ring" is now an option under the pull down window.

Two days later when smith x comes back to attempt another metal ring there is no need for him to place the ingredients into the forge he simply collects the needed ingredients from the vendors/mobs and goes to the appropriate container type.. selects his metal ring item from the pull down menu and whallla the ingredients are automatically taken from his inventory. Now that he has selected make metal ring On his cursor or in an enpty slot in his bag = a metal ring.

If he is missing an ingredient then he gets a message saying he cant combine these items in this type of container or hes missing an ingredient.. whatever you get the point.

This would make tradeskilling so much more enjoyable for people and im sure doctors around the world would agree that the less mouse clicking a person has to do the better.

Anyways my 2 cents and i really hope that this idea is at least channeled to the people that could make it happen if at all possible as i am sure that either this or something simmilar to it would be in everyones best interest.

Thank you for your time

{edit - changed a word to remove the implicaction on Sony-Bashing. ~Lothay}

[xaanru]

Not really interested in that

Well, this isn't the first "make tradeskills easier" post I have seen on EQtraders boards. However, I think you will find that some of us PREFER that tradeskills remain hard, and grumble every time we see a nerf of tradeskill difficulty. The reasoning is this I took up smithing, because there were, at the time, NO human grandmaster smiths on my server. So far, two people have gotten there first. I can live with that. I know they worked hard to get there. However, if tradeskills became easier, there would be more people mastering and GMing the skills, prices for finished goods would drop even lower than they are now, raw materials that are dropped or foraged would become ridiculously expensive (as if they aren't bad enough now).

Also, any dropped items of similar, or lesser quality would become immediately devalued.

The TOP end items made by tradeskillers, would become so common that it would be hard to sell them at cost.

WHY would I possibly support that kind of change????

[kesyn]

I understand your concern but IMO this wouldnt make it any easier to grandmaster a skill just alot less tedious.. you would still have to go out and farm / gather all of your ingredients and in a case like smithing that includes hundreads of hours of farming. you woulod still have to get all your imbues done.. something like this would simply take away the need to click/drag so many **** times.
Could that be a bad thing? i have grandmastered smithing and i would be all for this on my server. Anyways to each his own i guess.

[Raolinx]

Now this is one of the best make tradeskills easier ideas I have seen. I like the Idea. Will SoE ever emplement it? Probally Not

[Khanjal]

Good idea.

I've heard something similar too this before, but I belive it would be the best way to make tradeskills easier without making it too easy. It would be much easier to just keep clicking what item you want to make, but then you still have to go gather everything and even learn the item the first time you make it.

One thing you'll have to remember is Sony has been surprising us a lot latley I would have never thought EQ could be mimimized again, but here they are doing it. The compass IMHO was a real great idea too, and even some of the new UI modules, like the MP3 player.

I'd say the sky is the limit with Sony now just give them time to impliment it, if they plan to.

[Cigarskunk]

On the arguement that this would make tradeskills too easy - yes and no.

Yes, in that tradeskills which are mainly merchant based now become the tradeskills which everyone and thier mom GM overnight (especially the macro folks). For example, why are there so few GM brewers (putting aside the small incentive to do so) - mino hero brew - making that stuff is obscene - this technique would make it trivial for the most part.

No, for the tradeskills which have had glass ceilings now put on them such as smithing and fletching, or which are difficult because of the need to farm peices such as tailoring and baking.

[Cidarenyae]

However, I think you will find that some of us PREFER that tradeskills remain hard, and grumble every time we see a nerf of tradeskill difficulty.

However, if tradeskills became easier, there would be more people mastering and GMing the skills, prices for finished goods would drop even lower than they are now, raw materials that are dropped or foraged would become ridiculously expensive (as if they aren't bad enough now).

I have to completely agree. Making them easier to do would trivialize it imho. It's a lot of hard work, but very rewarding to have a high skill and be able to make some nice items. I'm not saying it's a bad idea, I just agree that sometimes making things easier will, in the long run, make it much worse. :?

[Carmaris]

To the people that say it would make things to easy, that you had to do it the hard so should everyone else...bah. You remind me of people I've worked with in the past..."We didn't have a procedures manual to learn from, why should we create one now to help the new people?" "I was never sent to training, why should anyone be sent now?" etc. Sour grapes, is what I see it as. Probably a bit of fear of competition as well.

This is actually a good idea. As hard core tradeskillers, we all know the dangers of physical damage that the current method carries. And yes, you'd like to be able to trust in people's common sense to know when to say enough and step away from the computer...but we also know that "I've only got another 20 combines to do...I want to get another 3 skillups...I just want to get this over with!"

This method would speed up skill ups and combines a bit...but no so much that it should be a problem. However, it would definitely cut back on the problems that could be caused by repetitive motions and/or poor ergonomics. It's not macroing...it's not taking advantage of new recipes like the original paths for Ethereal Curing Agents & Tempers, etc.

Again, I like the idea.

[Pootle]

This seems like a GREAT idea to me, even tho i support the 'tradeskills should be Hard to make them unique' side of the argument.

I do have a few concerns from a game design point of view.

I think the full dropdown list is a great idea, and it could work like a spell where the components were regents of the spell. This way it would 'take' a regent from a stack in your backpack. I am not sure how this would then tie in to the RNG when it rolled to check on success/skillup etc.

The part where it only shows the items that you have previously made.... I can almost guarantee that this will never happen. To Do this every tradeskiller on the server will have to have a flag attached to it for every 'learnt' tradeskill item... the addition of this would take up a lot of character storage space.

NOTE: I am not a developer or programmer, these are just my views from a technical poit of view.

But i do agree this is a good idea!

[Larong_Alsou]

Sounds Familiar

This process sounds a lot like the tradeskill process in Earth and Beyond. I played this for a while during the beta release.

It would work that you would have specific terminals for making items, weapons, shields, etc. You would have to research the item by first deconstructing what you wanted to make (reverse-engineering I think the technical term is) and then this recipe would be stored in a personal database.

All you had to do then was gather the necessary components, either shop brought, hunted or mined and go to the relevant terminal. Have the correct items in the correct quantities in your personal inventory, select the recipe and hit combine. If you had the necessary skill, hey presto, you make a laser, stack of missiles what ever.

Worked very well as I recall, and didn't make the item any easier to make. You still had to gather the weapon or item to learn how to make it, and you had to sacrifice that item to learn the components. Also there was the chance of failing that stage, meaning that if you had just brought that 15,000 credit shield to break it down, and you failed, bye-bye 15k.

[Krazick]

Reverse-Auto-Equip

A strange thought just occurred to me...There might be a way more easily implement something on these lines... but not make it "too easy" to tradeskill up.

One of the real heartburns players have, is the repetitive nature of doing combines. Having to do the same thing over, and over, and over and over again.

When people are trying to get that skill up point, they don't bring one or two component sets, they tend to bring one or two STACKS of component sets. And then repeat the same recipe 20 times, or 40 times... or 20 x N times. And it tends to be those that complain about "wrist fatigue".

And people complain about having to dig the right components out of your inventory into the combine container.

Instead of adding in a new UI type feature (pull down menu as suggested at the start of this thread) which would require, I think, extensive work. Take the other idea of selecting the items from the inventory and doing the combine and mesh it a bit more with what is currently done.

Here is what I mean:

1. Get your STACKS of components in your inventory.
2. Get to the tradeskill container... open it up.
3. Put the components for the combine in the tradeskill container as normally done.
4. Then hit SHIFT-CLICK (MAYBE ALT-SHIFT-CLICK) on the COMBINE Button. This is different than the normal CLICK COMBINE.
5. What appears on the cursor is the normal success or failure components for the recipe
6. The Tradeskill Container is REVERSE-EQUIPED Auto-magically with ALL of the SAME Components just used, drawn from your Inventory. Ready for the repeat of the combine just done.

When you run out two alternatives
A. Only the components you have are REVERSE-EQUIPED. Ones you ran out of are not ... leaving X items in the tradeskill container. Not the best, but would likely be easier to implement
B. If Any Component is lacking, NONE are REVERSE-EQUIPED.

Special Case for either: When a Utensil (File, Pie Tin, Cake Round, Hammer, etc) that is returned success or fail onto the cursor the Cursor would need to be examined as part of the inventory for purposes of the AUTO-REVERSE-EQUIP.

[Liwsa]

Very nice idea and for those saying skill trades need to be hard and this would make them so easy and FAST, just add a 1 second delay for every component needed. If the items needs 2 components you can make one every 2 seconds, if 5 components it has a 5 second refresh timer. IF you want to do things the old way you could but someone that has carpal tunnel syndrome already could use the new method. One second per item may be much a 9 item combine is crazy to have to wait 9 seconds but maybe a scaling timer 2 items = 2 seconds 3 items = 2.3 seconds 4 items 2.5 seconds or something like that. However long it would take a noraml skill trader to load the container for the combine should be the delay.

Liwsa 205 Tailor
Terris-Thule

[Zedzed]

ideas about making combines less tedious

I thought DAOC was headed in the right direction with its tradeskill set up. Basically, you had to make sure you had the ingredients in your inventory, and if you were skilled enough to have learned the "recipe" for a combine, you had it as an icon in a list, which you could memorize as a hot button. Then, when ready to do combines, you clicked on the recipe icon, and waited the appropriate number of seconds as you "worked" on the item, then received your fail/success.

ZZ

[Cubwynn]

maybe I'm just cynical... but I think their answer to requiring less clicks would be to decrease drop rates, etc. Not something I'd find pleasant at all.