Effective Trivials of GM armor accounting for success caps

[Wymp]

Well, Bobaten's right about the adverse effect it would have on tinkerers .. myself included.

With no Tinkering Mastery, it may take a separate re-working of the trivials on tinkered armor.

Or just put in the mastery for us then it's a non-issue.

[Denidil]

Or just put in the mastery for us then it's a non-issue.

bingo

[Boleslav]

The success cap gives them a way to limit the success rate on an item without raising the trivial of it. In my opinion, this is to avoid situations where a high-trivial item from an old expansion provides easy skillup opportunities when the skill caps are raised again. Misty Thicket Picnics anyone?

Also, the availability of materials to make the armor was balanced with the success cap in mind. If the cap is removed, then more of that armor will be made in relation to the number of items that drops. While I see that as a nice bonus, a dev might be tempted to adjust drop rates.

I understand the desire to be able to limit the success rate on a given combine or set of combines. I also understand that extra skill should result in a better chance to make something.

Perhaps a middle ground is needed. A 'soft success cap' of sorts. Maybe soft success cap of 60% and a hard cap of 70% might work. Someone with a skill equal to what would calculate out to the 60% soft cap would get that normally. Someone with maximum skill, AA, and mod items would get a 70% expected success rate. Someone with skill in between would get between 60% and 60% depending on how close to the max they were.

Lots of ways to work around this if you think about it.

Boleslav

[Denidil]

soft cap requires coding, ngreth is already adjusting the drop rates and i believe it's considered a little to low even at the highest - adjusting the trivials is easier than refactoring drop rate.

[Fonceur]

The success cap gives them a way to limit the success rate on an item without raising the trivial of it. In my opinion, this is to avoid situations where a high-trivial item from an old expansion provides easy skillup opportunities when the skill caps are raised again.

We're talking of 386 trivials from rare drops... Good luck skilling up on GM armor from 250 to 300 in less than a few months and millions of pp...

Also, the availability of materials to make the armor was balanced with the success cap in mind. If the cap is removed, then more of that armor will be made in relation to the number of items that drops. While I see that as a nice bonus, a dev might be tempted to adjust drop rates.

Let see, since the DoDH release it has been acknowledged that the drop rate of GM armor components was too low and that some time in the next few years they will be increasing them... Can't have them fixing 2 problems at the same time, would be too efficient...

[Denidil]

initial post updated with more accurate success cap formula provided by bob

[KyrosKrane]

Because I know someone will ask, here are the results at 250 skill:

Trivial|250 + 0%| 250 + 8%|250 + Mastery 3|250 + Mastery 3 + 8%|
------------------------------------------------------------------
434    |  5%    |   5  %  |  38    %      |   48    %          |
425    |  5%    |   5  %  |  41.375%      |   51.375%          |
408    |  5%    |  15.5%  |  47.75 %      |   57.75 %          |
399    |  5%    |  22.5%  |  51.125%      |   61.125%          |

[KyrosKrane]

Two other things to point out. At the last Fan Faire, Maddoc explicitly said that the bonus chance to skill up on items is intended to balance rare drop rates. Hence, rare drops get the bonus chance, while common drops don't. The GM armors, being pretty rare, have a 10% bonus chance. Master's have a 5% bonus chance. Given the rarity of drops, this seems appropriate. Even if the trivial are raised, that doesn't make farming components any easier -- especially two or three expansions from now, when DoN is about as busy as LDoN. Remember that DoN crystals are tradable currency; they don't go away, and they'll still be there in the economy, a year or two from now. People won't do missions for crystals; they'll just buy them at 10pp per or something.

[Bobaten]

The success cap gives them a way to limit the success rate on an item without raising the trivial of it. In my opinion, this is to avoid situations where a high-trivial item from an old expansion provides easy skillup opportunities when the skill caps are raised again. Misty Thicket Picnics anyone?

I wish there was a success cap on kaladim constitutionals. The skill cap raise devastated that market. While increased successes do reduce the cost of making them, the bazaar value has plumetted to less than 10% of their pre-DoN prices, mostly selling at cost of components and ignoring farming/combine work. What many people don't seem to realize about success caps is they add value to the finished product. The other mechanism used to add value is the endless subcombine method.

We're talking of 386 trivials from rare drops... Good luck skilling up on GM armor from 250 to 300 in less than a few months and millions of pp...

It is not for current skill ups, but for future skill ups (300-350), though with mastery it is a profitable option(though slow to farm) for skilling up from 250-300. Don't forget, you have a nearly a 5 times better skill up chance 290-300 making GM armor). If the skill up rate from 300-350 were to drop from 1 in 40 combines to 1 in 80, you better believe people will be doing GM combines for the 1 in 10 shot.

Let see, since the DoDH release it has been acknowledged that the drop rate of GM armor components was too low and that some time in the next few years they will be increasing them... Can't have them fixing 2 problems at the same time, would be too efficient...

Other than coarse silk (which was much more common at release until DoN got compressed to basically creator or blackwing over and over), I haven't heard any talk about GM components, only Master components. Though I will agree that as people move on to new content we will see fewer and fewer GM components enter the world. If the level capped is raised to 75 this fall, DoN will die as quickly as LDoN did when OoW introduced level 70, if there aren't any level 75 missions introduced.

[Denidil]

a success cap on KCs wouldn't have stopped that price decline - all it took was someone willing to sell at little more than cost (they are making a profit) and your market goes down. I doubt that same thing happened on my server because I don't think the KC prices are artificially inflated.


I also SEVERELY doubt the tradeskill caps are going to be raised anytime in the next 2 to 3 years, if ever.

[adding KyrosKane's post to the top one]

[Bobaten]

I realize that most of the problem stems from KC shifting from a reason to have maxxed brewing to the way to get maxxed brewing. But eliminating 1/3 of the KC produced would have reduced the number available. This is exactly the situation that the success caps were intended to prevent with GM armor and OOW augments. Personally, I think reduced drops from few people doing DoN will have enough of an effect that the success caps aren't really needed. Ngreth has said any success caps he introduces will have a lore reason (easily torn power belts, and having to grind a lens to exactly your vision so far). I like the idea of lore behind success caps (and telling us up front there is a success cap). If a book somewhere said that 1/3 of the oow augments have hard to detect magical flaws that cause them to shatter when you attempt to cut them (or something similiar for Drake scales/hides) I think more people would have accepted them. So I am not denying that the success caps were badly implented. But, they were, and changing the trivials now will lower the success rates of some people, while raising the success rates of others, and leaving a third group (tinkers) right where they are. That doesn't seem right to me, although it is not unprecedented in tradeskills.

[Denidil]

it only lowers the success rate for people who i consider to be exploiting a design flaw so quite frankly i don't care about them. They can skill up to 300 like i still have 80 points to go for.

[Wymp]

Raising the trivials will have a unilateral effect on everyone based upon their actual skill level.

If you are riding the Mastery AA's instead of skilling up, then of course you would have (and should have) a lower success rate.

I just find it impossible to believe that Mastery AA's were intended to let people, who for whatever reason don't want to skill up to 300, reap the same or even more benefit from purchasing them than someone who puts in the time, effort, and expense of skilling all the way up.

Basing it solely on a trivial system without any imbedded caps would encourage people to max their skills and reward those who do ... as it should be.


As for Tinkers ... well, we'd not see the maximum benefit until they give us Mastery AA; but it would still be a good change and could be accounted for either way through trivials on later recipes for tinkering.

[Denidil]

aye - if they don't want to give tinkerers mastery then they can leave the tinkering trivials alone

[Gynko]

Kryoskane:

Months and months later, the developers finally acknowledge, "We feel 400hp items would be overpowering and would trivialize the content they drop in. Therefore, 25% of the HP in those items won't actually add to your HP totals. Maybe, in a future expansion, we'll make some encounters where that extra HP will be enabled."

Can you imagine the outcry from the raid community if something like that happened?

It's simple. You do NOT mess with progression. Getting a higher skill, a higher mod, a higher mastery level, should ALWAYS mean something. People acquire these items with the knowledge and intent that they now have a better chance of making item X. A hidden cap, not revealed until players more or less forced the devs to acknowledge it, is flatly unacceptable.

I could never agree more then i am atm.

Lets say there is an AA that permit you to have more hp, but then SoE decides you have enough hp and cuts the benefit from that AA to NIL. What would poeple say? Thats exactly what i feel when i get Mastery 3 and get nothing out of it. The AA says that i will fail 50% less, then i want it to be true. Nothing more, nothing less.

There is 4 aspect in this game: Xp - Quest - Tradeskill - Raid . If you are missing one of these aspect in your play style , you are missing a part of the game and therefor you shouldnt complain that you dont get full benefit out of EQ.

So you poeple who have less tradeskills - aa - gears - quest stuff, stop crying and work it out. You play more = you improve more plain and simple. I dont care if your mom gives you only 1h per day to play, its not the rest of the gamer's problem.