Top 10 List - New Issues

[Nolrog]

OK, here's the current list, including comments from Maddoc (based on his Wholesome Tradeskill Goodness thread; which I will refer to this as "WTG" for short.)

Promised post... Text in red are notes from Maddoc. This has also been posted at EQTraders. Thanks Maddoc for staying late and providing all of this feedback!! (I posted suggested comments/updates to these items for the list. We need another 3 or 4 issues, depending on weather we consider #9 to be done or not. - Nol.)

Tradeskill Top 10 Issues

1) Velium weapon to Velium ore conversions
This is a particularly large issue that I didn't have time to get to this time around, primarily because it's going to require extra-special care to ensure that we don't introduce any profitability exploits. Fear not! It's still on the list and has even moved up a rank or two.

2) Bag tokens (This has been partially implemented with the update on 10/13 - Minor update)

Additional Tokens
Most specialty bags and containers have been added to this NPC. If there are any more, feel free to let me know, I'll throw it on the list.

Adding Bag Stats
This turns out to be more difficult than it initially seems and didn't make it in this round. It'll remain on the list for the future, though it may take some time.

3) Rotating stock on vendors
UPDATE FROM TANKER (thanks Tanker):About a month ago, I spent some time looking into this, and discovered a few gotcha's in the Merchant code that make this more than a one-day project. In talking about it with my lead, it was decided that the solutions to these problems were both too time-consuming for right now, and contained side-effects that would need full review before this was done. An optimist would place this issue as "Under review", but under no circumstances would I look for this Soon(TM). However, without going into ANY specifics, I wouldn't be surprised by an alternative method of gathering supplies coming up in the future... don't ask.


4) Nitram Anizok's plight
This is something that we need to investigate a bit, to make sure I'm not trivializing any combines or breaking any quests / events by moving him.
I think most people agree that just moving him wouldn't make sense, since he's used in PoI events. A more feasable suggestion was to duplicate the items that he sells on another vendor, either adding a new one in the tower where the PoI zone in is, or making the ogre that is there a merchant and adding that inventory to him. I will pull the specific suggestions out of the other thread that discusses this.

7) Tradeskill Super-trophies
This isn't something that I'm inclined to do quite yet, though it is something that we might do in the future, perhaps as part of an Aid Grimmel / Shawl style quest.

8) Expanding Jewelcrafting Mastery to other classes
With Omens, there are several additional "Mastery" AA's available to the players.
As mentioned at Fan Faire, there are currently no plans to extend JCM to any additional classes.

9) Portable or multi-user tradeskill containers Multi-User Containers
This is not something that is able to be done at the current time, though a portable Still has been added for the Brewers, though the gnomes still have yet to figure out how to produce a forge in a small, lightweight, and easy to carry package
Is this one considered done now, and can we remove it?

DONE ITEMS FROM THE LIST!!

5) Tradeskill recipes with missing ingredients
Each of the items on this list now drop in game off of appropriate NPC's.

6) Spiderling silk drop rate review
The drop rates of these haven't ever changed as far as I can tell, but given the number of new combines that require these as a component, it seems they are due for a little boost. The drop rate of Spiderling Silks has been increased by a good margin across the board.

10) The fabled Rune of Zephyr
Added this rune to the drop tables -- It should now drop off of the appropriate level of NPC's.

Next, I'll post the back up items, and the current status with them (some of them were addressed as well.)

[Nolrog]

These were the backup items.

Cultural armor review
The devs indicated that they would be willing to review and (if need be) overhaul cultural armors, but they noted that this would take lots of time.
Very time consuming to evaluate -- I'd like to do it, but it's not on the radar for the next few months at least.

Mid-to-high tailoring bridge recipes
Maddoc mentioned that he would consider new recipes to bridge the gap between 190 and 240 in tailoring, but most likely that would be part of a future expansion.

Excessively low drop rates for PoP temper components
On a similar note, the drop rate for temper components (used for plate, chain, and leather armors) compared to saps for silk armor appear severely out of balance. As Chenier noted in the EQTraders thread linked above, it's all but impossible for even an elemental guild to gather enough supplies to make a reasonable number of plate, chain, and leather armor pieces. The general consensus appears to be that the drop rates on temper components should be raised, though to my knowledge no one has posted an analysis proposing a new rate. To pull a number out of thin air, I would say the rates need to be doubled or tripled, but again, I just made that up.
Very time consuming to evaluate -- I'd like to do it, but it's not on the radar for the next few months at least.

Balancing the Grand Robe / Grand Tunic / Phylactery quest for melees
Maddoc said he would look at adding an alternate reward for melees who wish to do this quest, since they cannot use the Grand Robe/Tunic. Discussions included either adding a new reward for melees or making the Token of Service tradable.
This is probably something that's very easy to do, and again one of the easiest things to do which will get done before any of the others.

Improvements to the tradeskill UI
OK, these are some things I've noticed and decided would be nice to have included as part of the Tradeskill UI for sake of less moving the mouse all over to get things done.

Add a destroy button on the TS UI. Most people mass skilling (pottery for example) will simply destroy or drop the items resulting from certain combines. Add a destroy button so we don't litter Norrath and have to work like dogs to click destroy My actual beef here is the annoyance of it switching active windows in the interface when I click destroy, then having to click the other window, and click the inventory window... repeat until nausea occurrs.

Stack of items in your inventory are represented with a small number ranging from 1-20 in one of the lower corners. In the UI, add a *total* number to the items listed in the same manner as inventory stacks, so that we know when making fish rolls that we have exactly 102 bat wings left, instead of having toopen every bag we have and count the total number of bat wings. Many tradeskillers budget items for a series of combines that need the same item in each, thus knowing how many we have left will help this budgeting process.

This one is more related towards game code than the UI suggestions. Make tradeskill messages and text go into a separate log file than the rest of EQ's clutter. Many people like to parse the tradeskill runs and results to see exactly how many combines were done, how many per skillup, the fail to success ratio, wether the skillup was on a fail or success...etc etc.

Ghoul of Takish-Iz broken, very frustrating!
I have killed the Ghoul of Takish-Iz more than 30 times in the last 2 months - he is supposed to drop the last piece I need for the phylactery quest - the spiritual anchor. I know for a fact as recently as late April/early May he was still dropping the anchor. By all accounts the Anchor is a 1/4 to 1/5 drop so the odds of me not getting one in 30 kills are bordering on impossible .... in an ongoing discussion on EQtraders, if you factor in two other player's experiences in the last month we have killed the Ghoul 41 times with 0 drops.

The amount of time I have spent on this quest now vastly exceeds the amount of time it took me to get my epic or do anything else ever in this game - hundreds of hours, at least a hundred just on the ghoul..... somethin' ain't right about that.

Please look into this SoE ..... please, please....

Foraging Filter
I am a 200 forager and have my forage hotkey tied to my forward movement arrow so that I pretty much automatically forage without thinking about it. The problem is that it is quite annoying to constantly forage stuff that I don't want and then I have to take the time to either drop it or destroy it. I was even killed once when I tried to zone to escape death but just before clicking on the zone, I foraged a no-drop item when my inventory was full and died before I could destroy the item and zone.

Therefore, what I would like to see is a foraging filter. And it could possibly work something like this: When you enter a zone for the first time, your foraging filter for that zone is empty. The first time you forage an item in that zone, that item is permanently added to your foraging filter for that zone. Once an item is on your filter for that zone, you can put a check in the box next to that item if you don't want to forage it. Once checked, you will never forage that item in that zone until you uncheck it.

REMOVED ITEMS
(See Note under each for the reason.)

Poison Mastery AA Bugged
Howdy. Can you ask one of the guru's to look into the poison mastery AA. People are reporting that buying the AA will reduce your success rate, not increase it. If I recall correctly, the JCM AA had a similar problem in the past. This also may be affecting the Alchemy Mastery AA.

NOTE: I did submit this one recently, outside of the Top 10 List, and it was looked in to, based on some data that someone from The Safehouse came up with. The developer checked it out, and said it was working correctly.

Necromancer research: Servent of Bones
According to many posts on EQTC (thread link: http://mboards.eqtraders.com/eq/showthread.php?t=16141), the Necro level 56 pet spell Servant of Bones, listed as researchable in a book called "Fecae's Animation" purchasable off Alviarik in Gunthak, does not combine.

The recipe, as listed in the in-game book, is:

Words of Apparition, Words of Revenant, Words of Tenancy, A Piece of Parchment, A Quill

NOTE: According to the last patch message, this was fixed. Can someone please verify?

Disparity in component requirements between Plate and Chain/Leather for PoP armors
The devs agreed that there is no in-game or game balance reasons for plate armor to require so much more by way of tempers and bricks than chain or leather. I posted a detailed analysis and proposal on my site here and linked it at this EQTraders thread and this EQLive thread for discussion.
Very time consuming to evaluate -- I'd like to do it, but it's not on the radar for the next few months at least.

According to WTG, this was addressed.

Making quest recipes learnable
Maddoc asked for a list of quest recipes that have secondary uses and are made often. To my knowledge, no such list was compiled; only Enchanted Velium Bits was mentioned. Does anyone know of such a list?
According to Maddoc, no list has ever been compiled or given to him, so he's not done much on this. I suggest that we compile a list, and I'll forward it on.

According to WTG, this was addressed.

[Tanker]

Sorry if you guys feel neglected. You should know that I still visit EQTraders at LEAST weekly, usually week-daily, to read threads, etc. I don't always post quick responses, however, as I like to filter my stuff through Maddoc and Absor to make sure I don't say something is "possible" and catch hell for promising it'll be done.

That said, I'll answer the Top Ten issue, but leave the rest of my responses for the full response to the Fan Faire list.

Rotating Stock:
About a month ago, I spent some time looking into this, and discovered a few gotcha's in the Merchant code that make this more than a one-day project. In talking about it with my lead, it was decided that the solutions to these problems were both too time-consuming for right now, and contained side-effects that would need full review before this was done. An optimist would place this issue as "Under review", but under no circumstances would I look for this Soon(TM). However, without going into ANY specifics, I wouldn't be surprised by an alternative method of gathering supplies coming up in the future... don't ask.

Tanker - Still a TS-er at heart, though I'm not crazy like those 1750 guys.

[Maevenniia]

Neglected? Far from it! But thanks for the update Tanker!

You have no idea how refreshing it is to get a response with some substance to it, as you and Maddoc and Absor have been doing for us. Even if the response is "No" or "Not in the near future" at least you have posted more than just that, you've given a reasonable explanation and done it in a timely manner. (More than can be said about CLASS issues, unfortunately.)

However, without going into ANY specifics, I wouldn't be surprised by an alternative method of gathering supplies coming up in the future... don't ask.

You....you....you TEASE!

[GigantuousOfPovar]

Tanker - Still a TS-er at heart, though I'm not crazy like those 1750 guys.

Woot thanks for dropping by Tanker! Hmm..Err..Umm.. Please..please reconsider about tradeskill trophies for us crazy 1750 people

[Dunthor Warsmith]

Neglected? Far from it! But thanks for the update Tanker!

You have no idea how refreshing it is to get a response with some substance to it, as you and Maddoc and Absor have been doing for us. Even if the response is "No" or "Not in the near future" at least you have posted more than just that, you've given a reasonable explanation and done it in a timely manner. (More than can be said about CLASS issues, unfortunately.)

Here here!

While I'm not sure of comparative frequency between us and class boards, it's certainly felt like the quality of the development posts on Tradeskill issues tends to be very high, much higher on average than with class-related postings, so it certainly doesn't feel like we're being neglected to me

[Kemie Dreamshadow]

Aye, thank you Tanker. =) Your prompt response is greatly appreciated. It's the not knowing that gets to us sometimes. LOL

Kemie Dreamshadow

[Brodybeard]

Darn, Tanker's response was so reasonable, it's preventing me from ranting about my ice cream frustrations.

[Nolrog]

Mmmm. Ice cream.

But back on the point. We need to come up with a couple replacement issues, for the ones that were addressed. If no one votes, I'll have to pick them myself.

[Boleslav]

Not so sure on new items, but we may want to wait on removing some of the ones that are 'done' until the impact of the changes can be evaluated.

Spiderling silks seem to be that way for me. When the dev posted that he didn't think the rate had ever changed I did a double-take. I won't believe this is adequately addressed until we do another round of spiderling slaughters after the patch and count up the results.

Boleslav Forgehammer
Paladin of Brell in his 66th Campaign
E'ci - Sacred Destiny

[Ozmandias]

Created Servant of Bones on Test, but almost positive I have made it before. Might want to wait until a live server player tries it before calling it fixed.

[Nolrog]

I thought it was pushed live in the last patch. At least, that's what the patch message said.

[Sylphan]

Spiderling silks seem to be that way for me. When the dev posted that he didn't think the rate had ever changed I did a double-take.

I'm convinced that the devs don't understand how drop rates work.

I figures there's a table somewhere, 1-100 perhaps. A random number between 1 and 100 would determine what item from the table drops. Coins need to drop too, but let's keep it simple and ignore that for now. Various devs have been known to say in many contexts that 'the table has not changed', even though the players have noticed big changes.

Consider... what if you start subtracting 10 from all the rolls in an attempt to reduce drop rates? Or multiply the roll by 9/10? Then items at 91-100 in the table would never drop, ever again. I'm willing to believe this sort of thing could be changed accidentally when someone's changing the xp modifier in a zone.

Or what if you add in a check right before the table to say 'if number is 1-30 then (quest item)'? Then the quest item would drop 30 percent of the time but other items would not drop 30 percent less. The items at 1-30 on the table would drop *much* less often, the items at 50-75 in the table would drop just the same as ever.

Or what if items 40-49 on a table are 'see subtable 3', but the random roll is not redone before checking the subtable? Then items 40-49 on the subtable would be the only ones that ever drop. (This error could even be zone-specific... other servers running other zones might still roll correctly on subtable 3.)

All of these sorts of things could mess up drop rate even though the actual drop tables are correct and unchanged. It's also likely that the method used in Chardok is different than the method used in GFay which is different again from the method used in Luclin zones. I can't pinpoint anything, I'm merely speculating, but I really think there's something going on the devs don't realize. The only other explanation is not fit to post here.

[Moraganth]

It's partly semantics. What they consider the drop rate, the code for the something to drop, probably didn't change. What did change was the variety of items that could be droppped expanded. The overall droprate of items on spiderlings is the same, yet because of the increased in possible drops, the specific drop rate of silks grew smaller to accomodate all the other items.

The spiderling silks rate dropped, not because of a coding change, but because of an increase of items available to drop.

[AbsorEQ]

I'm convinced that the devs don't understand how drop rates work.

I figures there's a table somewhere, 1-100 perhaps. A random number between 1 and 100 would determine what item from the table drops. Coins need to drop too, but let's keep it simple and ignore that for now. Various devs have been known to say in many contexts that 'the table has not changed', even though the players have noticed big changes.

Consider... what if you start subtracting 10 from all the rolls in an attempt to reduce drop rates? Or multiply the roll by 9/10? Then items at 91-100 in the table would never drop, ever again. I'm willing to believe this sort of thing could be changed accidentally when someone's changing the xp modifier in a zone.

Or what if you add in a check right before the table to say 'if number is 1-30 then (quest item)'? Then the quest item would drop 30 percent of the time but other items would not drop 30 percent less. The items at 1-30 on the table would drop *much* less often, the items at 50-75 in the table would drop just the same as ever.

Or what if items 40-49 on a table are 'see subtable 3', but the random roll is not redone before checking the subtable? Then items 40-49 on the subtable would be the only ones that ever drop. (This error could even be zone-specific... other servers running other zones might still roll correctly on subtable 3.)

All of these sorts of things could mess up drop rate even though the actual drop tables are correct and unchanged. It's also likely that the method used in Chardok is different than the method used in GFay which is different again from the method used in Luclin zones. I can't pinpoint anything, I'm merely speculating, but I really think there's something going on the devs don't realize. The only other explanation is not fit to post here.

Except that none of those things you came up with actually happen. You've created a very complicated system that would be more trouble than it's worth. Our system is pretty simple. No sub-tables, no random insertion of other items instead of a table (if you want that quest item to drop, put it right onto the NPC on a new table or insert it into an existing one).

Oddly enough, we know a lot about how this stuff works.

When we say we check these things out, we do just that. We take the data and figure out how often the item can be gained by players in the world. It's real data based on what actually happens. So if there was some strange thing that told it to add 10 to the roll, that would be figured in.

Memory is a tricky thing. It's sometimes difficult to remember the one time that I killed 40 spiders and got no silks at all, but at the same time it might be easy to remember the time when I killed 5 and got 4 silks off each.

There are certainly things that could have happened to reduce the number of silks available (more recipes that use them so people are keeping them, more people doing tradeskills so people are keeping them, fewer spiders in the world, drop rate changes for some reason off existing spiders, people just aren't killing those NPCs so their drops are less available, etc...). These are all things we can check.

A