Trivial Changes (The Good, The Bad and The Ugly)

[Cellan]

What is disturbing the most is that people have been actively farming their butts off to work on skills like Tailoring via Velious recipes and all of a sudden the trivials are dropped without warning. They could have at least given a heads-up that some trivials will be changing in the patch without being specific.

How is old cultural armor working for trivials btw...still 335?

[tnexus]

I was wondering that too. I have all needed for a WE cultural bracer minus oak bark. When I get home tonight I'll try to forage one and give it a shot.

Tnexus

[Verdandi]

Cultural smithing (the old stuff), at least for barbarians, still has the same trivs. Not that that necessarily means anything, but....

[allamar]

sigh,i feel like i been kicked in the stomach. i spent over 100kpp on nearly 40 stacks of wyvren hides,cod oil and velium studs each,spread out over the last month.as well as farming some in velks and CS.i was planin on doin the combines this week to see how far that would have got me.i now find it all worthless overnight,all my pp gone.
i had no clue they were gonna do this.had i at least known ahead of time,back when tradeskills were raised to 300.i could have at least used my pp on another tradeskill instead.
i was actually excited to do tradeskills again after they made the cap go to 300.now i dont even care anymore.6 years of playing this game,not once did i ever feel like i had some cruel joke played on me, like this.
just a simple warning,that was all you had to do.

[Maddoc-the-Wayfarer]

One of the most pressing questions I get asked, routinely, is if I have any plans to address gaps in the recipes available for various skills, to help balance them out against the other skill. Tailoring is the most prominent, with alchemy coming in second.

Inevitably, the answer always ends up being something like "It's something I really want to do, though it's going to be a while before I am able to get enough time to evaluate it."

Over the past week or two, I've been able to take some time after hours and on the weekends to start drafting up some ideas and making some changes to the way our system works. The changes I have in mind will give me a great deal more flexibility over the entire tradeskill system, on a per-recipe basis.

Without going too deeply into specifics quite yet, what this means to you is a much more smooth skill-progression for all skills, starting with Tailoring, at the expense of modified trivial levels. In the process of modifying the trivial levels, I will be able to evaluate them independantly, taking into account the product's relative power and the current difficulty in obtaining the items to craft the product, and assign them a much more reasonable and logical trivial level.

In some cases, this may mean that trivial of any given recipe will be increased or decreased, to help fill in the some areas of need. Overall, the changes will greatly benefit the tailors (and other tradeskillers, of course) in the form of a smoother progression across the board.

Now, as I'm sure you've noticed, some of these changes found their way live, somewhat unexpectedly, and I can understand the frustration at the changes, however...

Most of you should know by know that it's not very often that large changes go un-mentioned, let alone intentionally un-mentioned. The changes we've made to the tradeskill system thus far have largely been for the better, and even though this may cause a little undue hardship right now, overall, I don't think anyone will be dissappointed.

This is going to be very much worth it in the end. I just hope you guys will agree once it's all said and done.

-- Maddoc

[Laurelleii]

You took away with no notice the most used skill up paths and in return give us nothing but another "trust me" post. Great

[Baldary]

One of the most pressing questions I get asked, routinely, is if I have any plans to address gaps in the recipes available for various skills, to help balance them out against the other skill. Tailoring is the most prominent, with alchemy coming in second.

Inevitably, the answer always ends up being something like "It's something I really want to do, though it's going to be a while before I am able to get enough time to evaluate it."

Over the past week or two, I've been able to take some time after hours and on the weekends to start drafting up some ideas and making some changes to the way our system works. The changes I have in mind will give me a great deal more flexibility over the entire tradeskill system, on a per-recipe basis.

Without going too deeply into specifics quite yet, what this means to you is a much more smooth skill-progression for all skills, starting with Tailoring, at the expense of modified trivial levels. In the process of modifying the trivial levels, I will be able to evaluate them independantly, taking into account the product's relative power and the current difficulty in obtaining the items to craft the product, and assign them a much more reasonable and logical trivial level.

In some cases, this may mean that trivial of any given recipe will be increased or decreased, to help fill in the some areas of need. Overall, the changes will greatly benefit the tailors (and other tradeskillers, of course) in the form of a smoother progression across the board.

Now, as I'm sure you've noticed, some of these changes found their way live, somewhat unexpectedly, and I can understand the frustration at the changes, however...

Most of you should know by know that it's not very often that large changes go un-mentioned, let alone intentionally un-mentioned. The changes we've made to the tradeskill system thus far have largely been for the better, and even though this may cause a little undue hardship right now, overall, I don't think anyone will be dissappointed.

This is going to be very much worth it in the end. I just hope you guys will agree once it's all said and done.

-- Maddoc

I am sorry, but what you have to say here is just so much lip service. What you are tyring to do here is rarionalize a poorly thought out plan. How can you say, with a straight face that losing thousands and thousands of plat is "a little undue hardship"? As someone said earlier, if you were going to change the trivials, you should have done it with the increase of the cap to 300. I am very disappointed in your attituede towards the players. {}
Baldary

[ramoen]

In the process of modifying the trivial levels, I will be able to evaluate them independantly, taking into account the product's relative power and the current difficulty in obtaining the items to craft the product, and assign them a much more reasonable and logical trivial level.

Maybe its just me, but the way i read this, is that the items with easy to get components will get lower trivial. So unless the droprate of highend drops get increased lots of people will have a hard time skilling up, when getting past 250ish.
e.g. How many people use high-PoP or GoD items (KT+ zones) to skillup ? none of the tradeskillers i know.
and what about the players not able to "farm" highend components. should they not be able to get to 300 also ?

I appreciate the answer, but to me it open up some more questions
(like some of the above posters, i am also stuck with tons of combines ready for velious leather, so a warning would have been good, heh)

Also the only way i was planning to do past 287 in Jewelcrafting (besides Blue diamond stuff) is now gone, since i dont have lots of augs to cut or paladium (i have done lots of DoN missions and only got items for 3 bars of paladium)
Of course i could still do the chains, but now that i cant use them myself, the pp loss is much worse.

Oh well..looking forward to see what the Devs have up their sleeves

Ramoen Sunchaser
Caer Cadarn
Vazaelle

[tnexus]

Most of you should know by know that it's not very often that large changes go un-mentioned, let alone intentionally un-mentioned. The changes we've made to the tradeskill system thus far have largely been for the better, and even though this may cause a little undue hardship right now, overall, I don't think anyone will be dissappointed.

This would not have been that big of a deal had their been at least 24 hours notice. I worked my butt off finishing off all the other tradeskills (minus fletching which is still broken after the promise it'd be patched) so I could focus on Tailoring. I had enough swatches for 800 combines, and was making chains as I went last night. Thank God I got to 283 before the patch came. But now I'm stuck with a bunch of chain materials and about 800 solstice swatches, and a bunch of velious armors combines that I was just lacking oil for. I'm not so much mad about the solstice robes, it's that the velious tailoring, an already hard to pharm and hardly worth the resell, was nerfed to oblivion. You could have kept certain pieces at a higher trivial that take more to make, but you didn't. Now all trivial at 252, and even less people will make them.

Another issue was the fact that nothing was put in to replace the reduced trivials. I'm sitting at my 283 skill wondering what to do now. I suppose I can do the new cultural, but pharming Shissar Scales is like pulling teeth. I've been in a mad rush to get all my skills to my max, mainly because I won't have time in a few days, and now I'm betting I won't see 300 tailoring until May or June.

Without going too deeply into specifics quite yet, what this means to you is a much more smooth skill-progression for all skills, starting with Tailoring, at the expense of modified trivial levels. In the process of modifying the trivial levels, I will be able to evaluate them independantly, taking into account the product's relative power and the current difficulty in obtaining the items to craft the product, and assign them a much more reasonable and logical trivial level.

Does this mean you are reevaluating the trivials on the stuff that was nerfed to oblivion?

In some cases, this may mean that trivial of any given recipe will be increased or decreased, to help fill in the some areas of need.

Were any increased? Were new recipes added?

Most of you should know by know that it's not very often that large changes go un-mentioned, let alone intentionally un-mentioned. The changes we've made to the tradeskill system thus far have largely been for the better, and even though this may cause a little undue hardship right now, overall, I don't think anyone will be dissappointed.

Most changes that go unnoticed only affect a very small percentage, and rarely will they be changed with no warning. I do not believe this was even on test. I'm not asking for a permanent revert back, but give us at least one day, just one day, to let those that spent tons of hours and hundreds of thousands of platinum be put to good use. By what you just did you effectively killed a large chunk of the market and trivialized the hard work of those that got where they did. Now the market will be flooded with wyvern hides, sacred tunare swatches, and whatever else people use to skillup.

I want to say that almost everything you've done in the past has been helpful to the tradeskill community, and we really do appreciate it. You've made it enjoyable to play again, but I know of people who've already cancelled accounts because of this monstrocity. I know I'm worried about how much fletching will be butchered if you do the same thing to it, and I can only imagine the people frantically skilling up smithing and pottery alike. You said this is all for the better, so please don't disappoint us Maddoc.

Tnexus Fyrewolf
Prexus Server
70th Season Ranger

[Maevenniia]

Maddoc,

we can all appreciate that good things are on the horizon, in terms of smoothing out the skillup paths, and that changes in trivials were going to be inevitable...

However, this is not merely "a little hardship"....as you can see from posters here and on the EQLive forums, tradeskillers spent a LOT of plat and.or time accumulating supplies in the past 2-3 weeks, planning for a skill-up 'run' in the near future. All that plat/time/effort invested is now worthless, except for possible resale value (which may be diminished as the bazaar is flooded with all the supplies of 250+ skilled tailors trying to unload supplies they can no longer use.) This doesn't affect me personally, I'm only at 193 Tailoring so can still benefit from skill ups to 252, but I sympathize with my fellow tradeskillers. Some of them may have a lot of plat to spare, but some will not, and will be hard put to recover from this.

You said "Now, as I'm sure you've noticed, some of these changes found their way live, somewhat unexpectedly..." Does this mean that the change in trivials should not have gone Live yet, and would only have gone live when those new skillup paths you mentioned ALSO went live? Please correct this mistake, and put the trivials back as they were and let people use up their stockpiled supplies, until such a time as everything is ready to be implemented.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is a friendly reminder to all posters: We understand you are upset. We're personally not ecstatic ourselves. (And so we're allowing some leeway and being a little more tolerant of violations.) However, please follow The Rules and do not flame or attack fellow posters, including SOE Devs. Don't forget the many wonderful things Maddoc and his colleagues have done for Tradeskills in the past few months, just because you are upset now.

[ramoen]

...for all skills, starting with Tailoring...

So i guess we need to really tradeskill hardcore for the next few days if we plan to skill up in smithing using sickles, brewing using champagne etc, as they will probably be lowered too

Ramoen Sunchaser
Caer Cadarn
Vazaelle

[Lilandraa]

The changes we've made to the tradeskill system thus far have largely been for the better, and even though this may cause a little undue hardship right now, overall, I don't think anyone will be dissappointed.

How is lowering trivials by 83 points w/o warning better for us? I haven't seen one person jump for joy over these changes.

And "little undue hardship"? Are you kidding me?????? I spent more time farming silks, making gem chains and imbuing emeralds in the last 10 days then I spent at my real life job.

I for one am very dissappointed at this change. I don't think I have ever, in the 5 years I have been playing EQ, been this upset over a change. In the past, we usually got some kind of warning that a MAJOR change was about to happen.

I for one am debating if I am going to continue playing this game that I used to enjoy so much. I really liked doing tradeskills until this morning.

[Taadieri]

Usually when tradeskillers ask you to "fill in the gaps" in the tradeskill progression to smooth out the progression sequence, they think in terms of new recipes using new components (preferably ones that are easier to get than those in the current recipes). We certainly don't expect that you will make unanounced changes in existing recipes at a time when hundreds of tradeskillers are saving up dozens to hundreds of combines worth of materials in the mad rush to reach the new skill caps.

These changes would be understandable if, and only if, the following had been true:

1) Players had been provided with at least some slight warning of the changes so that those who had suppplies saved up could do whatever it took to use them before the change. Alternately, it would be understandable to make the changes unanounced if it could be honestly stated that the components were so common and so cheap that the high trivials made skilling up in tailoring too easy. I don't think anybody could make that claim with a straight face.

2) Since the components for Solstice Robes and Velious leathers are, in fact, not common or cheap, the lowered trivials were accompanied by increased drop rates on the Velious leather components and possibly the removal of the most expensive components for the Solstice Robes.

3) The simultaneous introduction of whatever skill up recipes are intended to replace those that have been changed for the 252 to 300 range.

If, by saying that some of the changes "unexpectedly" found their way live, you mean that they were not intended to go live until the rest of the changes were ready, then please, please have an emergency patch scheduled to put things back the way they were until the complete set of changes are ready to go. The current situation is having every bit as much of a negative impact on the play experience of avid tradeskillers as any dupe bug or plat leak.

As other posters have noted, there are a variety of reasons why players routinely save up supplies to do hundreds of combines at a time. Given the thousands of plat or hours upon hours of farming, imbuing and subcombines that can be involved in preparing for a skill up run, having all that effort and expense wiped out with no warning at all is totally unacceptable no matter how good the intentions were for the long-term health of the game.

I personally will probably not lose that much from these changes in the long run. Either my alts or other tradeskillers willl eventually benefit from the supplies I have on hand even at the new, lower trivials. However, the lack of any reasonable replacement recipes at this time, together with the failure of last night's patch to include a fix for the Fier'Dal fletching kit, have put my current plans to work toward Master Artisan on hold for the moment. Waiting until the next scheduled patch, presumably due in mid-March, is not acceptable.

[allamar]

i agree,put the tailoring trivals back to the way they were before the patch.let everyone be able to use up all the stuff they spent tons of pp on and time wasted farming for weeks.
even if its for a day,that would help relieve alot of stress.these "hardships" sure arnt little,not to me anyway.not when you lost everything and know it will take many many months to ever recoup from that loss.

all the other tradeskills now get a heads up on these new changes.and are preparing for the next patch.except for tailoring,those that were doin that tradeskill got screwed bad.how is that fair?
none of this makes any sense to me.this game is suppose to be fun,not make you feel like crud.

[AB-girlie]

put the tailoring trivals back to the way they were before the patc

or at least just the solstice robe ??

my dear tailoring.. im afraid its time to say goodbye (