How much did 250-300 get worse?

[wayshaper]

well, figured i should post, with my dorf paly, i have experienced fantasitc skill up in my opinion, 250-280 in just over 650 combines, w/ 305 str, however my barbarian war only got from 250-265 in just over 800 combines, w/ 305 str, all were doing mistletoe cutting sickles, orginaly had enough for 1500 combines, toss in various sub combine failures ect.

[Cloud]

Edit: post removed by Verdandi. Find a way to say what you want to say without insults. If you can't say it without insults, don't say it on our boards.

[Valaglar]

Working on Brewing, at 251 skill. My current run is at 126 combines with zero skillups. Just to add data to the equation.

[Cloud]

Put it some way without insults... Not sure u can do that i mean it was a mistake SoE made they should have waited for the entire revamp of trade skills before any of it went live. Without the new code to make higher trival combines give higher skill up rates the 20% increase from 250-300 has become over 100%.

[wayshaper]

Hmmmm,
were to begin.....

Ok, my view point,
I want tradeskills to be HARD,
I want them to be time consumeing,
I want them to cost tons of cash,
I want recipies that can be almost all vendor bought droped in trivial so that you can not just sit in front of a npc all day and skill up 1-300,
I want it so that when someone actualy gets to 300 they earned it, they did not buy it just cause they got gazzillions of plat.
I want it so hard that there would be only 1-3 GM in any one tradeskill per server, and that GM would truly be a Grand Master with his or her patience and persistance in haveing the skill shown by being one of the 1-3 that has the Master xxxx title in their name.

Yes i enjoyed the coldain prayer shawl, yes i enjoyed the aid grimel, but both of those tradeskill quests have pretty much hurt the overall tradeskill market in EQ, in the old days a tradeskiller was rare and truely special, now anyone with a few hundred k can get some skills up, a tradeskiller is just another generic gamer. /rant off

[wayshaper]

if they reset mine to zero and made all the tradeskills harder, it would not bother me, cause i know that with enough persistance, i would be right back up there, i did not get my tailoring max'd befor the "nurf" but im still slowly plugging away at it, and i will eventualy get to 300, i do not consider it a nurf, just more challengeing. And when i do get to 300, i will be one of the few.

[Prelgor]

Time for another Clue? Do a search to find the first, here's #2 (which I thought was obvious from what we've said, but maybe not):

It's now harder to skillup at 299 than it is at 250, which is harder than at 200.


Oh, and to answer one pretty good idea/question I saw above: the expected 20% bump in average combines does NOT take into account any min_failure_percentage values. Any use of those recipes (when they exist) should lower that 20% value.

Hmm.. So, to try parsing out what Tanker told us...

1. The skillup difficulty curve declines continuously. Before the change, it bottomed out at 5%, or 1 in 20, assuming your combine was successful and your stats were sufficiently high. Now, there is no leveling off - it keeps going down all the way to 299. So, it might be reasonable to expect, say 20 combines 190->191, 40 combines 240->241 and 100 combines 299->300, or whatever the numbers are. It will require more thought and use of the Gnomish Abacus to come up with a curve that ends up with dramatic increases at the high end and merely a 20% overall increase in number of combines.

2. I'm not sure what to make of min_failure_percentage. Certainly, if you fail more often, you will likely skill up less often. Do we have any idea which recipes these are? The only impact of this on skilling up should be on increased failure rates on the combines, right? This is not a minimum chance for the skillup to fail, right? We should fairly readily be able to parse this out, if this is so. Based on the philosophy they seem to be using, I would bet that the more desirable products and/or the easily attained ingredients will have higher fail percentages.

There have been some complaints that the patch did not have the effect that some of us expected. Namely, skillups at mid-level mastery (say, 190-ish) were not noticably easier in exchange for increased pain at the high end. Am I just off my rocker for expecting this? I've put off most of my tradeskilling after a few runs that seemed worse than what I expected. Maybe the RNG just hates me...

[Tanker]

Thanx Prelgor for pointing out my mistake in the previous clue post, I was referring to the min_skillup_chance_percentage flag, not the min_failure_percentage. I've edited the post.

To reiterate, since I goofed the first time: The 20% average overall increase in combines needed to skill up from 250-300 does NOT take into account any min_skillup_chance_percentage values in recipes. Using recipes with values in that field will make it take less than 20% more on average.

[Cloud]

As wayshaper says he thinks it should be extremely hard to get to 300 I would agree totaly that it should be so hard that any more then 5-10 GM per server would be strange. However I also believe that their should be some kinda reward in this at the current standing the best trade skilled items are simplely not worth it or even close. There is really no hope at all for the average trade skiller to make any money on these things unless ur guild gave u stuff to build up ur skill or u farmed every item in which case it would take years for u to finish.

With that said I could think of a few things that would be rewarding for trade skills. Aid gim, 8th coldain shawl, tradeskill trophy etc are good rewards but showing three age now. I would like to see more reward chances for the 280 and 300 trade skillers maybe new quest. Also maybe a new trade skill trophy with 7 aug slots (not type 7). When u reach 300 in a trade skill you do something like making trade skill trophy and it fits into special 300 trade skill trophy and for every trade skill you master it slowly grows in power so when u hit 300 in all it is really nice item equal to best raid drops.

[wayshaper]

In part i agree with you cloud, but here is the problem, Aid Grimel proved this beyond a shadow of a doubt......

you got 3 types of players

Hardcore-hard core, constantly play, raid all the time, tradeskills was only an end to a means, ie the earring, most hardcore players do not like tradeskills(most, not all), and basicaly "bought" their skills, ive even heard of some paying other's to do the combines when they are not online or what ever, the end result of tradeskill items is borderline useful, they have tons o plat to blow most of the time and thus when "skilling up" the items that some would consider decent, they mass produce and sell below cost.

Casual Players... they acquire tradeskill items to suplement the gear

Tradeskillers... the serious ones, us, we do it cause we enjoy it, its our way to progress in the game, gaining skill, makeing plat ect.

If the award is too good, then the hard core gamers will just "buy" the skill again and get the item, and we are still stuck with tons of people that are GM, if the reward is not good enough, then tradeskillers complain that their time/effort is meaningless, its a toss up, flood the game with tons of GM tradeskillers, makeing overall tradeskills somewhat meaningless, why buy an item when you can make it yourself for all your twinks

see the problem?

[Fulminate]

My skill up rate post patch wasnt noticably worse than it was pre patch. I wasnt counting every combine, but it didnt take me hundreds of combines per up.

And, as to the RNG gods, they smiled on me today. 5 Tailoring skill ups (252 to 257)on 22 combines. I'm sure I will pay for that later with some bad runs, but today I'm happy.

[Tsaos]

My experience

I didn't keep precise skill up records pre-patch, but here is what I exeperienced...

Pre-patch, I had figured in 16 stacks of planar fruit to max my skill at 282 (20 combines per skill up is what I was shooting for). (393 INT). I used 13 1/2 stacks to hit 282. (Average of 1 skill up every ~17 combines) I then made 34 combines of Misty Thickets for 1 more skill up (283).

Then the patch hit.

After 278 combines and 6 skill ups (averaging ~47 combines per skill up) from 284 to 290.

290 there was yet another increase.

After 432 combines, I got 5 skill ups (295) with an average of 1 skill up every ~86 combines.

Now after 295, there was yet another change... which seemed very odd... I got 5 skill ups in 180 combines. An average of 1 skill up every ~36 combines. I was quit shocked and surprised at that... I was expecting it to go up to 100+ per skill up.

Needless to say, over all, 17 skill ups, 890 combines, 1 skill up every 53 combines... that's more than double the rate I was having before the patch.

[Bupper]

More Pottery data:

I prepared Star Ruby Encrusted Stein components in batches of 200. With each run, Salvage gave me slightly more than 200 combines but I didn't keep track of exactly how many. INT at 380 and trophy used.

April 25, 2005 - 200 combines - 3 skillups (241, 242, 243)
April 27, 2005 - 200 combines - 2 skillups (244, 245)
April 27, 2005 - 200 more combines - 1 skillup (246)

A total of 6 skillups after 600 combines. One Pottery skillup every 100 combines, from 241-246.

[Elyssanda]

5 stacks each of 4 ingredients for Shadow tipped acrylia arrows...
Grab VOQ... Pop up my int/wis buff song (being bard ) start to do combines...

within first 5 combines... 262, 263 Back to back...

then... nothing for the next 4 stacks.
About what I was betting on, just ot back to back

[Fractal]

430 jewelry combines, 7 skillups (254-261). 1 skillup per 61 combines on average. 310 int. Before the patch i averaged about 1 in 25.