Fan Faire June 2005 Write-up (Plus Tanker handout)

[Wyvernwill]

I don't see a reason why there should be compensation for JCM personally.

Nothing says that higher trivial items won't be added in the next expansion, but also JCM was in the game for years when skills maxed at only 250 and JCM made a huge impact on a lot of enchanters wallets.

It has lost some usefullness lately... then again, so did four others minus Smithing and Tailoring.

[Aeght]

I don't see a reason why there should be compensation for JCM personally.

Nothing says that higher trivial items won't be added in the next expansion, but also JCM was in the game for years when skills maxed at only 250 and JCM made a huge impact on a lot of enchanters wallets.

It has lost some usefullness lately... then again, so did four others minus Smithing and Tailoring.

When I suggested that perhaps the cost should be lowered, it was in the context of ALL the masteries, not merely JCM.

It may well be that JCM has helped many chanters immensely in the past. However, many enchanters bought the aa's recently on the basis of best available information (namely the minimum failure rate being at worst 5% for all recipies). Furthermore, there is nothing in what we have been told prior to now to suggest that masteries could not drop that 5% to 2.5%. Granted that is only a 2.5% improvement, but it was believed there nonetheless.

Changing recipies so that there are minimum failure rates above 5% is not a minor change with respect to these aa's.

And again, for anyone new, these aa's are simply not worth 18 points, at least not under the current system. Despite the effect on new tradeskillers trying to get to 300, trivials and skill up rates are being changed. Why shouldn't the related aa's be revisited too?

After all, those already at 300 have large benefits from the past (namely better skill up rates past 200) that are not enough to deter the current wave of change.

Aeght

[Bobaten]

A 300 skill smith, with a 5% mod, should have a 77% success rate on a GM chest (386 trivial). If (IF) the success rate is capped at or below 77% then
A) It doesn't help to have a mod better than 5% (which is fine since that was how it was before they raised the cap).
B) It doesn't do any good to have the mastery aa, since it seems it won't help with success capped combines.

[Boleslav]

Devs have specifically said that the effect of masteries is taken into account before the 95% max success limit (or higher for very trivial items) is imposed.

I would not expect a review of AA cost for masteries. Don't get hung up on the fact that they don't do much for most skills if you have 300 in the skill. They have a HUGE impact for those trying advanced combines.

I bet there are a lot of people who are more willing to invest 18 AA than grind past 250 right now.

Boleslav Forgehammer
Paladin of Brell in his 67th Campaign
Tunare (E'ci) - Sacred Destiny
Blacksmithing - 267, hugging his Blacksmithing Mastery 3

[Sylphan]

Suppose my skill is 280 and I'm wearing a gearlok or trophy, so adjusted skill of 294.

Is my percent chance of skillup 4.1 or 2.9 ?

That's a difference of 30 percent. By the time you get up to 299 skill, a gearlok could reduce the chance of skillup by almost 50 percent.

[Qaladar Bragollach]

The new formula for pass 2 takes into account raw skill not modified skill... so 4.1 in your case.

[Eggborn]

increase stack sizes for the armor molds....how is that going to help? the DoN patterns/molds are no trade, so instead of having 16 stacks of them (8 for armor slots and 8 for symbols) at 20 per stack, we'll have 16 stacks at 200 per stack? Still doesn't change teh fact that 16 slots are unavailable for use. Plus, since these are stored in 2 no drop 8 slot backpacks, you lose 2 slots per, or 4 slots total, that you could have had by putting 10 slot containers in those spots instead.

Increase stack sizes to 200 for almost all items, and then we'll be talking. Then I can store 200 Celestial essences in one slot, for example.

THAT would be immensely helpful.

----


One other thing, make Blessed sickle blades, hilts and pommels stack, since the trivial is being lowered. Same for the Humming Orbs. And make the No Trade essences for shadowscream droppable.

I'd prefer the trivials were not lowered, of course. Basing trivials solely on the 'power' of the end result item is bad, IMO. They should also look at the PITA-factor....ie: how much of a hassle it is to collect components and/or the complexity of the recipe (ex" lots of subcombines, non-stacking items.)

Mistletoe Cutting Sickles:
-gathering components: very easy, vendor bought, but expensive
-complexity of recipe: major PITA, lots of subcombines, takes 9 celestial essence per sickle, interim subcombines of blade, hilt & pommel don't stack.

Shadowscream armor:
-have to do a quest for no-trade items (anvil, ammel) in order to be even able to make this stuff
-gathering components: major PITA to farm the essences & swirling shadows, interim subcombine of Humming Orb doesnt stack.

As far as the increase to 200 in stacks of DoN molds there is one thing that is helpful about it. So far, I have attempted about 10 GM breastplates and legs, but none of the others in plate. I will have to use my book again soon I am sure, but I wouldn't want to destroy those 40 bracers, 20 arms, helms etc because I need 20 more bp and leg molds. Although I cannot do the expert or master molds atm because I simply don't have room, at least maybe I will be able to make more molds and hold all of the GM on the second time around. I do agree that more needs to be done however.

Shadowscream is a pita! I dont care if it's cheap, that's the point of it! I really wish this nerf wouldn't occur!! It makes it seem to me that tradeskills are more and more out of line with the thought that skills could be performed by any character. How well one hunts shouldn't determine it! On a related side note, I tried to put my level 30 , 250 baking skill druid on eqrankings the other day and it wouldn't let me! I got a warning not to put fake or dream profiles up!! (until I actually did an authentic one) That proves it! Halfings should be able to make pie! Why should she have to go kill the monsters to know how to cook them better?

[KyrosKrane]

I did specifically ask about the idea of getting 200 of some generic item which you can then convert somehow into molds or patterns for a specific slot. The devs shot this down because then you could make, say, 200 BP combines with a single use of the book, which is not something they want. They specifically want to limit it to 20 combines per slot per use of the book.

Having said that, my impression was that they're NOT against changing how the cultural items work. It's just that they can't come up with a better system that both adheres to the restrictions they have to balance how powerful the cultural stuff is, AND uses less bank space.

If anyone has any suggestions on how to do this, by all means, please bring them forward. Who knows, the devs might like them! =)

[Justmenow]

Increasing stack sizes would help me. My 63 palladin is trying to get her tailoring up by doing the human expert DoN. I started it at 196 so was doing the sleeves at that time. Only recipe after the sleeves trivial at 212 is the legs or chest for it.
So far I've used up a whole ancient book and a half ancient book (total of 15 uses) on making patterns. I deleted the ones that I couldn't use and saved the legs and chest patterns for when I hit 212.
Now that I have hit 212 I got 15 stacks of leg patterns and 15 stacks of chest patterns using up bank space. If the stack size for those patterns would be increased to 200 it would only use up 4.

This would in no way interfere with the use of the books since that has already happened. The making of the patterns could still be limited to getting 20 per gear slot.

If all stack sizes would be increased to 200 it would also solve some of the problems with the guild bank running out of space fast.

[XytheX]

Poisoncraft

ctually, for a 351 trivial (the trivial for radiant cut augments, IIRC), max success rate occurs at around 294 skill, assuming no masteries.

As far as poisonmaking goes with the 327 triv augs, is there a max success skill cap? Is there any use in obtaining the Poison Mastery AA? Am I wasting my time farming Golden Ember Powders to skillup past 287? Does my +5% GMAS help or hurt me?

[YurienStonebow]

I did specifically ask about the idea of getting 200 of some generic item which you can then convert somehow into molds or patterns for a specific slot. The devs shot this down because then you could make, say, 200 BP combines with a single use of the book, which is not something they want. They specifically want to limit it to 20 combines per slot per use of the book.

Having said that, my impression was that they're NOT against changing how the cultural items work. It's just that they can't come up with a better system that both adheres to the restrictions they have to balance how powerful the cultural stuff is, AND uses less bank space.

If anyone has any suggestions on how to do this, by all means, please bring them forward. Who knows, the devs might like them! =)

could there be some way of getting the molds summoned on to like a library card ( since it is a book) let it summon all that is supposed to summon on the combine but keep a running tab of how many helm/bp/legs etc you ahve? would free up bank space, let you ahve larger stacks if needed, and you don't have to delete molds/patterns you aren't using

[Bobaten]

As far as poisonmaking goes with the 327 triv augs, is there a max success skill cap? Is there any use in obtaining the Poison Mastery AA? Am I wasting my time farming Golden Ember Powders to skillup past 287? Does my +5% GMAS help or hurt me?

If it truly is capped at 70% then you hit the cap at 264 adusted skill (252 raw). If it's a normal 95% cap (and I have read plenty from the rogues that indicate its not), you hit 95% at 289 (276 raw) skill. So Poison Mastery will not help you with augments. If its capped at 95% you need 2 more points untill you can go without your GMAS.
If you actually want to use poison making to make poisons you need adjusted skill 311 (297 raw) before you can achieve 95% on the highest trivial (356).

[Neebat]

could there be some way of getting the molds summoned on to like a library card ( since it is a book) let it summon all that is supposed to summon on the combine but keep a running tab of how many helm/bp/legs etc you ahve? would free up bank space, let you ahve larger stacks if needed, and you don't have to delete molds/patterns you aren't using

This is a rather technical post intended to be from one software developer to the devs at Sony. If someone can translate this for everyone else, that's cool.

We're effectively running into a database storage issue. Sony wants to record how many patterns I've got for all 7 slots, all 7 augs types at each of the difficulty levels. Right now, the count for each type of pattern is represented as the quantity of stacked patterns in an inventory slot. Changing the content of that inventory slot to a potion just means they store the number of charges instead. Changing it to a library card or book can't bypass the fact that only one quantity is stored.

There is at least some potential for compression if we admit that all those patterns are going to eat up an entire INTENTORY SLOT. Each character has 24 general purpose slots. (That's 8 in inventory and 16 in the bank. Excluding shared slots because this stuff is all no-drop.) Each slot can contain a bag, which may contain 10 more items. For each item inside a bag, there are potentially 3 augs. That means, each general purpose slot is allocated:
1 identifier for the bag
PLUS, for every item in the bag,
1 identifier for each item in the bag
3 identifiers for the augs on each item in the bag

That means a single general purpose slot has at least 41 fields in some database. (If Sony stores quantity in stacks or doses in a potion separately from those fields, then that's a bit MORE space. Potions cannot be aug'd, neither can stackable items. My bet is that one of the aug identifiers is overloaded and used to store the stack quantity.) Sony can tell me if I'm wrong on that.

By my count, we have 35 different types of patterns:
Armor X 7
Journeyman Aug X 7
Expert Aug X 7
Master Aug X 7
Grandmaster Aug X 7
(We only store those in 8 slot bags because they give us 2 stacks of bracer patterns.)

I'm imagining an item, call it a Pattern Album. This would be an entirely NEW type of item in EQ, which could NOT be stored inside a bag. In fact, you can think of it as a specialized bag SPECIFICLY for holding PATTERNS.

We already lose almost one entire bank slot storing just the 7 patterns of one class above. I say "almost" because you can junk that 8 slot pack you get with the patterns and transfer it all to a trader's satchel. Now the Album will effectively be MORE than 10 slot, so you won't be junking it. (In fact, I believe a single album will hold all 35 types without increasing the space Sony allocates in the database.)

Since an album takes an entire bank/inventory slot like any other bag, it always has all 41 fields available for storing itself and its content. Now, one field is always used identifying what kind of thing this is, which would tell you this is a Gnomish Pattern Album, as opposed to a Bag of the Tinkerer's. That's the ONLY identity information we need in this case, because the ONLY items which can be stored in the Gnomish Pattern Album are the 35 types of gnomish pattern. That means 40 identifier fields are not storing identifiers. If we overload those other used within a bag, we'll have the space for a quantity of all the patterns.

Unfortunately, to achieve that compression, we give up the ability to place an Album inside any other container, including a tradeskill container. That means (for instance) you cannot combine it with a pants pattern to obtain a Journeyman Pants Pattern. Even with that restriction, I think the developers can come up with at least 3 workable ways to extract the patterns from the albums, removing a "charge" from one of the 35 stacks each time it's applied.

[Dyllwin]

By my count, we have 35 different types of patterns:
Armor X 7
Journeyman Aug X 7
Expert Aug X 7
Master Aug X 7
Grandmaster Aug X 7
(We only store those in 8 slot bags because they give us 2 stacks of bracer patterns.)

I've worked leather and plate armor for Halflings, and I know there is a difference between leather patterns and plate molds. I don't know if there is anything different for Chain or Silk. If there isn't a third or fourth type of pattern/mold, then we have an extra 7. We could have up to an extra 21. Either way it would throw the numbers out of kilter for your plan

[Aeght]

Chain and silk use the same molds and patterns respectively. There are no third or fourth sets.

Aeght