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

[Auricula]

Maddoc,

I got suckered into buying DoN even though I knew deep down in my heart that the new tradeskill quests/recipes would not be something geared to ~ME~.

Who am I?

I am one of those bothersome non-raiding, no-interest-in an-uber-guild folks who just likes to play EQ for fun and relaxation.

I am someone who does not find sitting around, for hours on end with my LFG flag waving the wind, an enjoyable pasttime.

I am someone who found tradeskilling something I could accomplish slowly and steadily, yet take pride in every little skill up until I reached the 1750 milestone.

I am someone who, while kicking and screaming at times, weathered every slap in the face I took as a tradeskiller who is also a 'casual' player. Look at the AWESOME new tradeskilled items we added ... too bad you don't raid and will never see the components to make them ... unless of course you pay 250k in the bazaar to some who IS an uber raider and already has more pp and uber no-drop equipement than they know what to do with. After you spend that 250k, you have less than a 50% chance of a successful combine anyway ... hahahaha.

THIS was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. After I cancelled my EQ subscription, I sat down and started the mourning process for my dear friend Auricula. She has been a good pal for almost 3 years now, and I am very protective of her. I am trying to find some comfort in that I have time left on my subscription to say goodbye to her ... but when I logged her on this evening, she looked at me differently. She knows her life support has been pulled and it is just a matter of time now.

{unnecessary dev bashing}

[Myrron]

...some of these changes found their way live, somewhat unexpectedly...

If this is true, I think, given the situation, that it would only be fair to restore the old trivials and give tradeskillers at least several days notice before putting the current trivials back into place. If it went live unexpectedly, then it seems to me that it was not yet complete, and should be repealed until it is ready to present.

--Myrron Lifewarder

[Tigerwolf Spellbear]

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

You have made some good changes and things are a lot better then when Velious first came out (that is when I first started playing).

I've been trying to get tailoring to 250 (sitting at 239) since I began playing and learned about the wonderful world of tradeskills. I have farmed for hours on end for components and for plat to buy components and trying to spread my plat through out the tradeskills. Tailoring was my very first skill above 200.
Even with the velious and solstice robe tradeskill routes, I was only able to skill up a little at a time. It is more then a little undue hardship. Its a downright pain, but I love tradeskills so much that it has become the only thing that truely keeps me buying expansions and keeps me playing. O sure, I might get a group occasionally and ding sometimes, but thats not what drives me. I love to make things and hand them out to random people or to even help my guildies (small guild, not no large raiding type guild). Lowering the trivials for those was a GIANT slap in the face and it makes me want to quit playing. But I won't. I will keep plugging away forever with the vain hope that someday, things won't suck for the casual gamer.

There have been many wonderful changes in eq both for tradeskills and for the game itself and I do thank you for these.

[Salaza]

I'd love to see the ISO certification Sony has for their software development side of life, if it even exists. You all have the worst batch of control systems for producing a quality product from product design to implementation out in the field. Simply boggling.... but I digress.

The real point of my post is that time and time again, you all say you want this game to be enjoyable... yet you do {} stuff like this, and then in your words, "hope" we all like it. Well guess what... the world of games is a far cry from what it was 6 years ago, and people have choices. To flip the phrase, "you're just one game in our universe of games now." and perhaps your style of grabbing an idea out of the air and then implementing it before getting user feedback should be re-evaluated.

The smart developer would have said... hey, maybe I should involve the community in this first, and then see if I should be wasting my time on this. But as it is now, all you've manged to do is...

1) not work on what you said you would which would be the addition of combines for covering gaps
2) wasted a lot of your time re-adjusting trivials, something no one asked for
3) pissed off a large portion of your player base /kudos

Do your damage control... {}.

[tnexus]

Just out of curiosity, if the tradeskill department has a correspondant, why were they not informed of this at all? This is pretty friggin' drastic in my mind to have been jumped the gun.

Tnexus

[Kakg]

I'd like to thank Maddoc for stepping into this rather heated thread and trying to give us some perspective from the developers.

I agree that up until this patch almost all of the changes to tradeskilling have been very positive improvments. Advances like the new interface have been a great boon and even small things like the recipe for vegetables has made tradeskilling and easier experience. Given that background it's then hardly surpising the shock that has occured over this patch.

Maddoc's comment of "some of these changes found their way live, somewhat unexpectedly" is a somewhat interesting comment and I hope that some thought will be put into a temporary reversal of these changes if only for a week to allow those with large skilling stocks to use them up instead of wasting them. I personally am not affected by these changes but I can understand the great distress that has been caused to those who have sunk weeks of farming into building a stockpile for a skilling run only to see that effort wiped out in a night before they have a chance to use it.

Saying that this is "a little hardship" is very far of the mark. This is only a little hardship to those who are not affected, to those who have sunk their earnings into a stockpile and now can't use that stock it's a very significant hardship indeed. Any kind of warning, even just a simple heads up like "a number of trivials will be changing soon, you have been warned" would have been better than this.

Please reconsider this move and give the tailors a weeks grace to get rid of their skilling stocks.

Zmatil wanders off glad he is too lazy a tailor to have gotten that far and hadn't yet gotten around to trashing his faction with the Bankers Guild.

[Qadain]

There was no warning. That's probably the worst part about it.

The second worst part about lowering trivials is that there's a huge gap between 252 or so and 300 now.

[Ilona]

...some of these changes found their way live, somewhat unexpectedly...

Since obviously the trivial level changes weren't supposed to go live until the new recipes are introduced, please change them back until the new recipes are ready. Mishaps occur, they should be rectified as soon as possible.

Warning that a major review of trivial levels was imminent would have been appreciated.

[Aaldiwenx]

A little hardship? I can't believe weeks of my time and thousands of platinum spent is "little". I am offended that my personal time invested is regarded so lowly and so quickly written off and I am expected to make due with some hardshipfrom a rushed coding error. I have been playing since Kunark, non uber guild member, and have a job so only so much time can be spent playing. I play to enjoy myself, a drastic unannounced change like this not only takes away and trivializes the play time I invested but makes enjoyment impossible for the near future.


I don't know what I am going to do as no slap we have received from SOE has ever actually put me to the point of not wanting to play as this has. I couldn't bring myself to play last night as dwelling on how many solstice robes and arctic wyvern hide belt combine materials I have been storing up and are now worthless has angered me greatly. This "little hardship" is looking like the end though as my tolerance for rushed expansions and no consideration for those affected by poor decisions at SOE is a burden I feel I can no longer carry and still enjoy myself. I do so wish that yall would stop with the continued promises of better things to come without consulting us, all the "promises" from the players summit on communication seem to be forgotten. Breaking two things with the intent to fix one down the road would cost me my job, but I am expected to continue to pay for this in EQ? I have alot to consider and sadly if this is the developers attitude I don't see it being a difficult decision.


Aaldiwenx
67 Cleric Of Tunare

[Brodybeard]

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

Well, Maddoc has done some wicked cool stuff for tradeskillers in the past. If he says the trivial value changes are part of a greater plan that got pushed live too soon, I'm willing to shut up and wait.

It's not like I haven't got a ton of other tradeskill stuff to work on. Why, I could even try exploring the new DoN zones I haven't had a chance to see yet because I've been working on tradeskills so much lately.

[Ghismonda]

As someone who reads a lot of EQ message boards, let me say that this is the kindest, most in-hand board when it comes to changes. Mostly, you'll get thank-yous, and the only form of criticism accepted here is the constructive kind.

... When I read the patch message, maybe it was naive of me to think it was a positive change. I thought, "Sweet! Maybe they upped the trivial of bow cams so I can get to 300 in tinkering easier!"

... The night before server went down, I blew 55k in velium, yew leaves, tempers... (70 gnome tinkerer, 70 halfling cleric 254 tailor)

... Since this isn't the shadowknight boards, I can't type out all the colorful words I said to my monitor when I opened my coldtain tanning kit this morning, but I think you can figure out what A LOT of angry tailors are thinking right now...

Please don't overlook how angry and disappointed you've made the tradeskilling community, just because our boards don't normally involve threats and angry hatred and vitrol toward Sony and its' employees.

I personally am far more seethingly angry now than over any change I've posted about on any facet of EQ, previous to today.

[Cellan]

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 glad you took the extra hours from your evening to ponder things and decide to make investments people have in solid information worthless. I am sure you would be happy if your bank told you that your savings account is worthless all of a sudden because someone stayed up late a couple nights and thought it for the better of your future.

But tell me, are you PROMISING a smoother skill-up route in the future or is it just an idea Maddoc? What would have been so hard to give a hint about upcoming trivial changes so we would at least be aware that we might want to use up what we have been buying and hording since DoN released and people have again begun to work on tradeskills? If the plan is so nice and well thought, why isn't it all implemented with this "smoother" route with this patch instead of us hoping your idea works out. No offense to you, but SoE has been "working out ideas" for a long time and alot of {} issues are being ignored and prolonged already.

When can we expect to see these changes? Or is it just a "in the near future" issue that will keep being pushed back over and over among many other things?

This is not directed at you Maddoc, but SoE's practice of "thinking things up and implemented" has a poor track record full of broken promises....so are you going to hold up to your end of this deal or will it be put on the backburner?

[Boleslav]

This situation should have been handled in a similar manner to the time when the trivials for Fine Plate Armor were lowered. There was plenty of notice that a change was coming; many people thought there was too much notice. And when those trivials were changed, the new cultural was released. Also, Shadowscream Steel was already in place as a viable alternative to get to the levels Fine Plate used to get you to.

I believe Maddoc when he says this is part of a larger plan that will result in a better system. I greatly value his involvement in the tradeskills community and the multitude of positive changes that have occurred.

Had this change been made before the skill caps were raised it wouldn't have been a serious issue. People would not have stockpiled huge amounts of components if they were already at 250. But to let the skill caps go to 300, and let people get well into the grind to get to 300 and then unexpectedly lower the trivials of the most popular skillup recipes in the hardest tradeskill was cruel.

I don't believe anyone had malice in their hearts when the change was made, but it was an undeniably cruel change for a lot of people.

I would like to add my voice to those that are asking for this change to be rescinded until the whole plan for tailoring is in place. At least give folks a week or two to use components they had farmed up.

Boleslav Forgehammer – who is not sitting on tons of tailoring components
Paladin of Brell in his 67th Campaign
E'ci – Sacred Destiny

[Bauhb]

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

Yesterday's patch brought two sources of frustration:

1) There was suddenly no viable way to reach 300 tailoring
2) Many tradeskillers have massive amounts of materials (that they spent lots of time and money on) which are now worthless

Thank you for posting, BUT your post only addresses issue #1 while being completely and utterly insensitive to issue #2. I consider myself somewhat lucky in this: With the materials on me that are now suddenly worthless, I'm only out about 10k and 6 hours worth of farming. Others on this board are considerably worse off. In your post, you effectively brushed those people off. Marie Antoinette's proverbial "let them eat cake" comes to mind.

Perhaps we can come to a simple compromise in this issue that I am sure will make many people on here very happy: Undo the trivial changes until the time comes when you are ready to revamp tailoring. Too many people are out in the cold right now to be satisfied with a revamp that comes at the cost of being screwed out of the considerable timesink of farming for now worthless items.

[miakiss]

As I mentioned in another thread, surely a reasonable way out of this (assuming they won't reverse the change, which maybe they still will), would be to have new recipes which use the old ones as sub-combines.

Yes, it probably means more farming or plat, but at least the components won't be wasted.

Anyway, whatever happens, don't dump your components yet! Imagine the double frustration if it turns out the new recipes also use wyvern hides and cod oil.