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This is the final list of questions I will be sending to the devs. You're welcome to add any further suggestions or ideas, and if they're good, I'll take them with me to Vegas and ask them there.
About the formulae:
Short version: Walk us through every step of the calculations that happen from the moment you press combine to when you get your skill-up (or not) and success/fail result. What are the formulae and variables used at each step?
Detailed questions:
About changes to the tradeskill system:
When do you plan to release the second and later stages of tradeskill adjustments? (Adjusting trivials for existing recipes, and implementing an enhanced chance to skill up for certain combines.)
If the second and later stages will take a long time, do you plan to re-adjust tailoring trivials? If not, what plan do you have to help smooth out tailoring in the short term? Similarly, what plans do you have to ease high-end fletching (past 282) for classes and races that do not have a cultural or deity based option?
New requests (my priorities)
Success/Fail messages: Could we get a message that tells us what item you failed to make? Instead of "You lacked the skills to fashion the items together," could we get "You lacked the skills to fashion Metal Bits"? Similarly, could we get the name of the item added to success messages? Instead of "You have fashioned the items together to create something new!", it should be something like "You have fashioned the items together to create Metal Bits!"
Order of success/fail and skill-up messages: The order of success/fail and skill-up messages is inconsistent, which makes it very difficult to parse skill-up runs correctly. Would it be possible to change the order of the messages so that you always receive success/fail messages before skill-up/trivial messages, or vice versa? Either way is fine so long as it's consistent. Currently, it's as follows:
I have the following suggestions (and yes, I know some are mutually exclusive):
Loot all button: (Not tradeskill related, but requested by the tradeskill community.) For Brell's sake, can we PLEASE get a Loot All button?! Ideally, it should be on all corpses and when clicked, loots all droppable items at once. When clicked on your own corpse, it loots all your items (optionally with a confirmation box warning you if the corpse has not been rezzed, or perhaps leaving an empty corpse with the rez timer running).
DoN Tradeskills:
DoN tradeskills use up an unreasonable amount of bank space.
Slots covered: As of PoP onwards, tradeskillers have only been able to make armor for the visible slots, with some jewelry for fingers, ears, and occasionally neck or face slots. Are there plans to re-introduce full sets of armor as with the Blue Diamond cultural armors? (You could make those armors for any slot except fingers and ears.)
Updates on past topics
What updates, if any, do you have for us on these topics that have been raised and discussed before? (I won't rehash the discussions here.)
Merchants destroying oldest item instead of newest: I would like to revive the request to have merchants destroy the oldest item that was sold to them instead of the newest when their inventory is full. Tanker has already looked at this once, and at the time, it was deemed non-trivial. With the recent changes to the merchant interface, is this now a reasonable possibility?
Grand Robe / Grand Tunic / Phylactery Quest
Lubricous Metal Bits: If you search the recipes in a forge, you can find a recipe to make Lubricous Metal Bits using a Brick of Lubricous Ore. This recipe has been in the UI from the day it came out, I believe (but I'm not positive). Where is this ore obtained, and what are the metal bits used for?
Karana's Heartfruit Salad: Is this a real recipe and item? If so, it would appear that some of the items needed to make the salad are either missing or undiscovered. Could you give us some info on that, please?
Taelosian (mountain) wheat: Lots of recipes (and just general ideas) have been submitted for uses of the Taelosian wheat and Taelosian mountain wheat from Gates, including a rather lengthy thread on the official Everquest forums. Are there any plans to implement recipes using those items?
New requests (Others)
Research Enhancements: Research has a skill cap of 300, but no recipes that go beyond 227. There needs to be higher level recipes added, perhaps for higher level PoP spells. Researchers need a trophy. Research should have some vendor bought components to take them up a bit in skill (add an abysmal quest to go to 54, and then other vendor bought combines to go to 100 or so.) That would help low level INT casters skill up a bit easier, and be able to make their research only spells. Researchers should be able to craft hybrid spells, since they can already create priest spells.
The Ice Cream Churn needs a token: Caerlyna should accept Ice Cream Churns and exchange them for a matching token.
NPC value of tradeskilled items: Sellback prices on a lot of tradeskilled items needs to be reviewed, and also some items should get tribute values added (e.g., Palladium jewelry and DoN armors). It hardly seems fair to have zero-value (to NPC's) tradeskilled items when some no-drop gear from Omens of War and later can be turned in for personal or guild tribute.
Can we get food and drink with right-click effects? (This would be similar to the wine and bread summoned by the Veteran Rewards AA jester.) Eat the Extra Spicy Jalapeno Poppers and receive a 10-minute fire based proc effect named "Bad Breath" or some such. Rarity isn't so much the issue, nor is the scale of the effect. It's just something fun to do with food and drink, and to allow bakers and brewers some variety of "useful" items.
/outputfile skills: When the /outputfile command was in the process of test and going live, it was requested that a "/outputfile skills" option be added to it. At the time, Tanker said it wasn't a bad idea but was too busy with a future expansion to get it in before the /outputfile commands went live (see http://mboards.eqtraders.com/eq/showpost.php?p=119889&postcount=24 ). Is this command still under consideration?
Great Reptile Hides & Teeth: Can the mobs that drop Great Reptile Hides also drop Great Reptile Teeth, and vice-versa? Also, can the general drop-rate be increased? Given the limited number of mobs that drop these items (especially compared to the number of mobs that drop Yttrium Ore, for example), the drop-rate should be higher.
Midnight Stones and Sandstorm Pearls can still only be crushed (for Night Terror Temper and Hurricane Temper, respectively) in a Mortar & Pestle. All other PoP items (as well as Windstones) can be crushed in a Mixing Bowl. It's a little thing, but it is very inconvenient.
About the formulae:
Short version: Walk us through every step of the calculations that happen from the moment you press combine to when you get your skill-up (or not) and success/fail result. What are the formulae and variables used at each step?
Detailed questions:
1) Absor mentioned that tradeskills will be adjusted to use a new skill-up formula. What is that new formula?
2) Is the success/fail formula posted at EQTraders accurate for all known trivials? And if that formula is wrong, what is the correct formula? For reference, the formula is posted here:
http://www.eqtraders.com/articles/article_page.php?article=g175&menustr=030000000000
3) At what stage of the success/fail formula are geerloks (and other skill-raising items) applied? In other words, does the formula use the skill as modified by a geerlok to compute success rates, or is the geerlok's effect applied elsewhere?
4) Historically, developers have stated that the absolute minimum chance to succeed on any combine, regardless of your skill and the combine trivial, is 5%. Is this still correct? If my raw skill is zero and I attempt a combine with trivial 335, will I have a 5% chance to succeed the combine?
5) If my raw skill is zero and I have the appropriate crafting mastery at level 3, what will my chance to succeed be on a combine with trivial 335?
6) Do some recipes have a minimum failure rate or minimum success rate? If so, do mastery AA's affect that?
7) Could we get verification that skill-ups in the range of 250-300, particularly from 290-300, are working as intended? Tradeskillers are asking in many forms and in many forums whether the developers actually hear their cries of agony at skill-up difficulty. Ideally, we would like a statement along the lines of "Yes, we have verified that the number of attempts per skill-up is indeed intended. At WIS or INT A, with a B% skill mod item, with [other relevant factors], doing a combine of trivial C, a crafter of skill D should expect an average of E combines per skill-up if all are successful, F combines if all fail, and G combines overall." (Fill in your choice of tradeskill and numbers for A-G.) A few such concrete examples will give the player community a benchmark against which to gauge our actual results.
8) The best guess of tradeskill difficulty factors is based on a study done by Suani and reported on the EQTraders boards. It puts the values as follows (note the discrepancy for Tailoring, which Tanker told us last year should be a 3). Is this list accurate? If not, what are the correct difficulties?
Due to the complicated nature of expressing formulae orally, I would suggest a written response for these questions, delivered ahead of the Fan Faire. That will allow players to analyze the responses and ask more appropriate questions at the Fan Faire itself.2) Is the success/fail formula posted at EQTraders accurate for all known trivials? And if that formula is wrong, what is the correct formula? For reference, the formula is posted here:
http://www.eqtraders.com/articles/article_page.php?article=g175&menustr=030000000000
3) At what stage of the success/fail formula are geerloks (and other skill-raising items) applied? In other words, does the formula use the skill as modified by a geerlok to compute success rates, or is the geerlok's effect applied elsewhere?
4) Historically, developers have stated that the absolute minimum chance to succeed on any combine, regardless of your skill and the combine trivial, is 5%. Is this still correct? If my raw skill is zero and I attempt a combine with trivial 335, will I have a 5% chance to succeed the combine?
5) If my raw skill is zero and I have the appropriate crafting mastery at level 3, what will my chance to succeed be on a combine with trivial 335?
6) Do some recipes have a minimum failure rate or minimum success rate? If so, do mastery AA's affect that?
7) Could we get verification that skill-ups in the range of 250-300, particularly from 290-300, are working as intended? Tradeskillers are asking in many forms and in many forums whether the developers actually hear their cries of agony at skill-up difficulty. Ideally, we would like a statement along the lines of "Yes, we have verified that the number of attempts per skill-up is indeed intended. At WIS or INT A, with a B% skill mod item, with [other relevant factors], doing a combine of trivial C, a crafter of skill D should expect an average of E combines per skill-up if all are successful, F combines if all fail, and G combines overall." (Fill in your choice of tradeskill and numbers for A-G.) A few such concrete examples will give the player community a benchmark against which to gauge our actual results.
8) The best guess of tradeskill difficulty factors is based on a study done by Suani and reported on the EQTraders boards. It puts the values as follows (note the discrepancy for Tailoring, which Tanker told us last year should be a 3). Is this list accurate? If not, what are the correct difficulties?
- Alchemy unknown
- Baking 3
- Brewing 3
- Fletching 4
- Jewelcraft 4
- Poison making unknown
- Pottery 4
- Research unknown
- Smithing 2
- Tailoring 2
- Tinkering unknown
About changes to the tradeskill system:
When do you plan to release the second and later stages of tradeskill adjustments? (Adjusting trivials for existing recipes, and implementing an enhanced chance to skill up for certain combines.)
If the second and later stages will take a long time, do you plan to re-adjust tailoring trivials? If not, what plan do you have to help smooth out tailoring in the short term? Similarly, what plans do you have to ease high-end fletching (past 282) for classes and races that do not have a cultural or deity based option?
New requests (my priorities)
Success/Fail messages: Could we get a message that tells us what item you failed to make? Instead of "You lacked the skills to fashion the items together," could we get "You lacked the skills to fashion Metal Bits"? Similarly, could we get the name of the item added to success messages? Instead of "You have fashioned the items together to create something new!", it should be something like "You have fashioned the items together to create Metal Bits!"
Order of success/fail and skill-up messages: The order of success/fail and skill-up messages is inconsistent, which makes it very difficult to parse skill-up runs correctly. Would it be possible to change the order of the messages so that you always receive success/fail messages before skill-up/trivial messages, or vice versa? Either way is fine so long as it's consistent. Currently, it's as follows:
- When you succeed and get a skill-up, you receive a skill-up message followed by a success message.
- When you fail and get a skill-up, you receive a fail message followed by a skill-up message.
- If you succeed and make a trivial item, you get a trivial message followed by a success message.
- When you fail at making a trivial item, you simply receive a fail message, without a note indicating it is trivial.
- PLEASE add a Done button to merchant windows.
- Please implement a way to sell "all" of a particular item you have. For example, if I have ten identical, unstackable items, I must click each one, then click sell. I would like a way to sell them all at once. Similarly, if I have four stacks of an item, I would like to be able to sell all four stacks in one transaction.
- Please implement a way to buy more than one stack at a time, or more than one of an unstackable item at a time. Each time you request to buy an item, regardless of whether the item is stackable or not, a little number-entry window should pop up. The maximum value should be however many of that item you have room for, the maximum you can afford, or the total quantity the merchant has, whichever is least.
- Finally, please implement a way to buy the maximum of an item (as shown above) in one click. I would suggest using ALT-Click to buy/sell all of an item.
I have the following suggestions (and yes, I know some are mutually exclusive):
- Adjust DoN tradeskills to require less bank space (see the DoN tradeskills topic).
- Make all combines that require Tanaan containers work in "normal" containers. (Is there still a reason to have Tanaan tradeskill containers? When PoP first went live, it made sense to restrict PoP combines to Tanaan containers -- that ensured the tradeskiller had purchased the expansion. However, the Plane of Knowledge is now available free to everyone. This negates much of the need for Tanaan containers. The limited number of Tanaan containers, particularly brew barrels, creates a bottleneck.)
- Make the Collapsible Brew Barrel work with Tanaan brewing combines that have four or less ingredients.
- Add four or eight additional top-level bank slots.
- Make the Tanaan Fletching Kit tradable, and allow merchants to buy it back.
Loot all button: (Not tradeskill related, but requested by the tradeskill community.) For Brell's sake, can we PLEASE get a Loot All button?! Ideally, it should be on all corpses and when clicked, loots all droppable items at once. When clicked on your own corpse, it loots all your items (optionally with a confirmation box warning you if the corpse has not been rezzed, or perhaps leaving an empty corpse with the rez timer running).
DoN Tradeskills:
DoN tradeskills use up an unreasonable amount of bank space.
Overview: A tradeskiller who wants to work on all four tiers and all four types (plate, chain, leather, and silk) would require abouthalf their bank space just for no-drop supplies and dropped components! My suggestion boils down to changing the book combine that yields the molds or patterns to instead yield a single stack of 160 items. Players could then use those items to create their own choice of molds or patterns.
Current Bank Space: Let's assume that a human tradeskiller wishes to work on all four tiers and all four types of armor. Let's further assume that our tradeskiller never keeps more than one stack of an item (unrealistic, particularly with raw materials and the rare augment patterns -- so in reality it would require even more space). And just to keep things simple, let's say that the tradeskiller only keeps the components to make the deity waters (like Purescale Ore), and not the deity waters themselves (again, unrealistic). Current bank space requirements are as follows:
Augments: Modify the tradeskill quests to summon a single stack of 160 "Journeyman / Expert / Master / Grandmaster Infusion Essence" as appropriate to the quest (using similar technology to how Radiant Crystals and Ebon Crystals can be stacked to 200). The tradeskiller would then combine one Infusion Essence with a cheap, store-bought component (say, a "Helm Crucible" or a "Breastplate Crucible") to create an augment pattern -- this would be identical to the augment patterns you would obtain from the quest book now. This reduces the space requirements for four tiers of augments from a combined 32 bank slots to just four.
Armor molds/patterns: Similarly, have the combine that currently produces the armor patterns or molds instead produce a single stack of 160 "Armor Material". When the Armor Material is combined with the matching Crucible, it produces the mold that would be used in the final combine. This combine would have to be done in a cultural forge or sewing kit to produce the appropriate racial mold. Again, this reduces bank space needs from 8 slots to one.
Notes and Summary: All combines with a (Slot) Crucible should be no-fail. For a tradeskiller who does all four tiers, this would reduce their bank space requirements for no-drop components from a total of 48 slots to just five. Another five slots for the no-drop books puts the total at ten item slots. All other components are tradable and can be stored on alts.
Viability: There is currently no Type 12 augment for DoN legs. In addition, the DoN purchased armors (for Ebon/Radiant Crystals) recently received an update with new Type 9 augments that put them ahead of the crafted armors in some slots. Add to that the fact that the GM-level tradeskilled armors are already very close to the Omens Tier 1 quest armor, and the DoN crafted armors become less and less viable. Are there plans to add more Type 12 augs, particularly for the legs? Alternately, would it be possible to make the new DoN Type 9 augments into Type 9 & 12?Current Bank Space: Let's assume that a human tradeskiller wishes to work on all four tiers and all four types of armor. Let's further assume that our tradeskiller never keeps more than one stack of an item (unrealistic, particularly with raw materials and the rare augment patterns -- so in reality it would require even more space). And just to keep things simple, let's say that the tradeskiller only keeps the components to make the deity waters (like Purescale Ore), and not the deity waters themselves (again, unrealistic). Current bank space requirements are as follows:
- Eight slots per tier for augment patterns, a total of 32 slots
- Eight slots for armor molds
- Deity water components: Jade Shard, Lambent Stone, Crushed Diamond Dust, Purescale Ore (Four slots)
- Smithed aug components: Warbone Chips, Fire Opal, Shissar Scales, Metallic Drake Scales (Four slots)
- Tailored aug components: Silk Swatch, Drachnid Silk Swatch, Nightmare Arachnid Swatch, Glossy Drake Hide (Four slots)
- Four slots for smithed armor raw materials, less one for Metallic Drake Scales (three slots total)
- Four slots for leather armor raw materials, less one for Glossy Drake Hide (three slots total)
- Four slots for silk armor raw materials
- Implements: Cultural needle, cultural smithing hammer (two slots)
- Quest books: Four augment books plus one armor book (five slots)
- One cultural tailoring kit
Augments: Modify the tradeskill quests to summon a single stack of 160 "Journeyman / Expert / Master / Grandmaster Infusion Essence" as appropriate to the quest (using similar technology to how Radiant Crystals and Ebon Crystals can be stacked to 200). The tradeskiller would then combine one Infusion Essence with a cheap, store-bought component (say, a "Helm Crucible" or a "Breastplate Crucible") to create an augment pattern -- this would be identical to the augment patterns you would obtain from the quest book now. This reduces the space requirements for four tiers of augments from a combined 32 bank slots to just four.
Armor molds/patterns: Similarly, have the combine that currently produces the armor patterns or molds instead produce a single stack of 160 "Armor Material". When the Armor Material is combined with the matching Crucible, it produces the mold that would be used in the final combine. This combine would have to be done in a cultural forge or sewing kit to produce the appropriate racial mold. Again, this reduces bank space needs from 8 slots to one.
Notes and Summary: All combines with a (Slot) Crucible should be no-fail. For a tradeskiller who does all four tiers, this would reduce their bank space requirements for no-drop components from a total of 48 slots to just five. Another five slots for the no-drop books puts the total at ten item slots. All other components are tradable and can be stored on alts.
Slots covered: As of PoP onwards, tradeskillers have only been able to make armor for the visible slots, with some jewelry for fingers, ears, and occasionally neck or face slots. Are there plans to re-introduce full sets of armor as with the Blue Diamond cultural armors? (You could make those armors for any slot except fingers and ears.)
Updates on past topics
What updates, if any, do you have for us on these topics that have been raised and discussed before? (I won't rehash the discussions here.)
- A tradeskill super-trophy of some sort
- Bag tokens showing bag stats
- Velium weapon to velium ore conversions
Merchants destroying oldest item instead of newest: I would like to revive the request to have merchants destroy the oldest item that was sold to them instead of the newest when their inventory is full. Tanker has already looked at this once, and at the time, it was deemed non-trivial. With the recent changes to the merchant interface, is this now a reasonable possibility?
Grand Robe / Grand Tunic / Phylactery Quest
- 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. What updates do we have on this, given that it was nominally one of the easier fixes to implement?
- Ghoul of Takish-Hiz spawn rate and drop rate for Spiritual Anchor: The Ghoul is an insanely rare spawn, and almost impossible for a non-tracker to catch without using tools-that-shall-not-be-mentioned. In addition, even when he does spawn and is caught, his drop is way too rare. One person suggests that the Anchor drop rate should be no worse than 1 in 3 kills, and preferably better than that.
- Mana Crystals: Is there currently an undiscovered use for the Mana Crystals? If not, do you plan to extend this quest or link it to a new quest using these crystals? (People who have done the Phylactery combine need to know whether to keep or destroy the Crystals.)
Lubricous Metal Bits: If you search the recipes in a forge, you can find a recipe to make Lubricous Metal Bits using a Brick of Lubricous Ore. This recipe has been in the UI from the day it came out, I believe (but I'm not positive). Where is this ore obtained, and what are the metal bits used for?
Karana's Heartfruit Salad: Is this a real recipe and item? If so, it would appear that some of the items needed to make the salad are either missing or undiscovered. Could you give us some info on that, please?
Taelosian (mountain) wheat: Lots of recipes (and just general ideas) have been submitted for uses of the Taelosian wheat and Taelosian mountain wheat from Gates, including a rather lengthy thread on the official Everquest forums. Are there any plans to implement recipes using those items?
New requests (Others)
Research Enhancements: Research has a skill cap of 300, but no recipes that go beyond 227. There needs to be higher level recipes added, perhaps for higher level PoP spells. Researchers need a trophy. Research should have some vendor bought components to take them up a bit in skill (add an abysmal quest to go to 54, and then other vendor bought combines to go to 100 or so.) That would help low level INT casters skill up a bit easier, and be able to make their research only spells. Researchers should be able to craft hybrid spells, since they can already create priest spells.
The Ice Cream Churn needs a token: Caerlyna should accept Ice Cream Churns and exchange them for a matching token.
NPC value of tradeskilled items: Sellback prices on a lot of tradeskilled items needs to be reviewed, and also some items should get tribute values added (e.g., Palladium jewelry and DoN armors). It hardly seems fair to have zero-value (to NPC's) tradeskilled items when some no-drop gear from Omens of War and later can be turned in for personal or guild tribute.
Can we get food and drink with right-click effects? (This would be similar to the wine and bread summoned by the Veteran Rewards AA jester.) Eat the Extra Spicy Jalapeno Poppers and receive a 10-minute fire based proc effect named "Bad Breath" or some such. Rarity isn't so much the issue, nor is the scale of the effect. It's just something fun to do with food and drink, and to allow bakers and brewers some variety of "useful" items.
/outputfile skills: When the /outputfile command was in the process of test and going live, it was requested that a "/outputfile skills" option be added to it. At the time, Tanker said it wasn't a bad idea but was too busy with a future expansion to get it in before the /outputfile commands went live (see http://mboards.eqtraders.com/eq/showpost.php?p=119889&postcount=24 ). Is this command still under consideration?
Great Reptile Hides & Teeth: Can the mobs that drop Great Reptile Hides also drop Great Reptile Teeth, and vice-versa? Also, can the general drop-rate be increased? Given the limited number of mobs that drop these items (especially compared to the number of mobs that drop Yttrium Ore, for example), the drop-rate should be higher.
Midnight Stones and Sandstorm Pearls can still only be crushed (for Night Terror Temper and Hurricane Temper, respectively) in a Mortar & Pestle. All other PoP items (as well as Windstones) can be crushed in a Mixing Bowl. It's a little thing, but it is very inconvenient.
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