Effective Trivials of GM armor accounting for success caps

[Gaell Stormracer]

...I mostly do combines for free anyway.

Additionally, having to explain to (potential) customers that there is actually a capped success rate on these items is beyond absurd. What should I answer to a question "why?" ?

Um, those aren't customers. They are people for whom you are doing a favour.

In any case, If you tell them 'I have a 62% chance of succeeding with this -- nobody else has it any better', that's as much as they want or need to know.

While the whole topic is an anomaly, it's not one that is particualry useful to try and retro-fix; there are many areas in the game that are more worthy of fixing than this -- the whole thing about the availability of many of the cultural drop components, for example -- I'd much rather Ngreth & co. spent their time fixing those than trying to 'fix' this.

[Bobaten]

Additionally, having to explain to (potential) customers that there is actually a capped success rate on these items is beyond absurd. What should I answer to a question "why?" ?

That's why I think they (or we) should just come up with a retroactive lore reason. I haven't seen a single complaint about the jeweler's glass lense once people found out it was because you had to grind it to match your eyesight. Granted, the lense is several orders of magnitude cheaper, but the ability to tell your customers why you are so likely to fail would be nice. I still run into people who insist they have a better success on OoW augments because they have Mastery. It would be much easier to convince potential customers that they don't if it was written somewhere in an in-game book that neary a third of the augments have internal flaws that causes them to shatter if you try to cut them.

[Xulan]

That's why I think they (or we) should just come up with a retroactive lore reason. I haven't seen a single complaint about the jeweler's glass lense once people found out it was because you had to grind it to match your eyesight. Granted, the lense is several orders of magnitude cheaper, but the ability to tell your customers why you are so likely to fail would be nice. I still run into people who insist they have a better success on OoW augments because they have Mastery. It would be much easier to convince potential customers that they don't if it was written somewhere in an in-game book that neary a third of the augments have internal flaws that causes them to shatter if you try to cut them.

Let's see. Combining multiple plates (swatches, hides) from bars (swatches, hides) is so difficult that even the best smiths (tailors) can do no better than those a tier below them. It has to do with natural flaws in the materials, not the skill of the worker. Once one reaches a certain level of proficency (250ish) plus some magical help (aa's & skill mods), they cannot combine multiple sections of material any better due to natural flaws and the difficulty of connecting multiple pieces. The 1 and 2 piece items tend to be easier due to fewer seperate pieces used. The exception is the arm piece, which although it only uses one piece of raw matieral, it is actually cut up into smaller seperate pieces, which must then be connected back together properly.

The armor could have a tendancy to split/tear during the process of making holes in the sections which are used to tie plates/pieces together just due to natural flaws which run in the materials used.

Therefore, even with the best skill, due to the difficulty of working the materials with their natural flaws, ~62% is the best success rate that a producer can hope to have (and other rates on the other pieces).

[KyrosKrane]

The fail cap made sense on the Jeweler's Lense and the Dragon Mayo because, in the lore sense, you're not failing at all. You're repeating the same action over and over. The "fail" was humorous in that case, a clever use of game mechanics to simulate a repeated action. Frankly, I thought that was brilliant.

In the case of the armors, however, it's just downright depressing. A fail is most definitely a fail. You lose everything in the combine (barring a salvage), and it's all rare and expensive materials that need lots of time, effort, money, and questing to obtain. The worst part is, there is NOTHING you can do about it. At this point, I'm seriously thinking of petitioning every time I fail and telling the GM's it's a game bug. I'm sure I could convince at least one GM of this and get him to return my supplies, particularly when I fail a GM BP four times in a row.

On a less facetious note, I took the numbers we had above and did some charting. I tend to think better in graphs than just long columns of numbers. I took two sample items, Boots and Breastplate, and did some comparison of what would happen if we lifted the cap and raised the trivial. Both items assume a primary stat of 350, and that we're doing a smithing combine. For boots, I graphed 5% mod and no mastery, and 8% mod with mastery 3. For BP, I graphed 5% mod with no mastery, and 12% mod with Mastery 3. The graphs extend to a hypothetical 400 skill so we can see what would happen if the current cap of 300 were to go up.









Here's a link to the Excel sheet I used to generate these graphs, if anyone wants to play with it to try other combinations. It does use some macros for the formulas, though, so you'll have to enable those. To my knowledge, the file is virus-free, but as always, I encourage you to scan it before you open it.

http://www.gamesnet.org/KyrosKrane/T...Calculator.zip

[Xulan]

Kyros, thank you for the graphical output.

I do have one comment. It appears you still giving the 10% bonus to GM combines with the combine being uncapped. As per Ngreth's post on why we have caps, removing the success cap would also remove the 10% bonus, though I am guessing a 5% bonus may not be out of line due to uncapped Master's combines having 5%.

I mention this because GM tailoring was my skill-up path from 252 to 300 (minus a hand-full of lucky skill-ups). I hate farming and I just wanted to naturally let my skill raise up over a few months, doing combines for actual product that was being worn and not for skill alone.

If the caps were removed, the skill-up bonus would be lowered or removed, and it would take someone perhaps 2 to 3x's as long to use the GM-only skill-up method. Now, that may not be a bad thing, but it is something of which to be aware.

Using GM combines as a skill up was my best tradeskill experience I have ever had. It was extremely enjoyable. I looked forward to doing the combines. It allowed me to make useful things that people actually wear, it allowed me to make plats, and it allowed me to gain skill naturally by making a useful product at a skill-up rate that felt normal, not depressing. Not once did I have to farm. This is how all tradeskills should be and it is a difficult goal to achieve as a developer. Anything that changes that worries me.

I am not against uncapping skills, but the system we have does work. Very few people for which I do combines are upset about the caps. They just say, "I know, it is what it is," and they roll with it. I'd rather see this discussion applied to new items and future systems than spending resources redoing this. The time is not worth it, imo. Future things, yes. I think revamping the DoN drops and drop rates is more important, and Ngreth said that he does not even have time for that (or more correctly, is not being given time), so I doubt he will have time for this.

However, as I said, I'd love to see a good solution presented to the devs for future tradeskill combines that are uncapped and that do reward people with high-end skill, % mod, and mastery aa's. I hope to see some combines in future expansions that take advantage of a person's complete abilities.

[KyrosKrane]

I hadn't thought of the cap-vs-skillup-bonus relationship as such, but frankly, that wasn't my focus. I'm going by Maddoc's statement (which, incidentally, may now be outdated; I'll see if I can get an update at the Fan Faire) that the skillup bonus is a counter to the rarity of the drops. Assuming that GM armor drops (excluding silk) are more or less at the desired rate, then I see no reason to remove the bonus, based on that statement.

The difficulty of making an item should be directly proportional to how useful that item is. Items that are highly useful should have high trivials (or subcombines with high trivials), and items that have low usefulness should have low trivials. The GM armors are quite useful, of that there's no doubt. In fact, I wouldn't object if the trivials were raised even higher than this, such that at 300 + 15% + Mastery 3 you only get 80% success on the BP.

My main objection is that there should never be a hidden cap on success rates. I might even be mollified if the success cap were made visible in the UI, so that people would know there is no benefit in raising their skill or getting a better mod. I simply cannot abide a hidden cap that violates or negates every principle by which tradeskillers have judged the success of their careers.

[Wyvernwill]

I really can't post too much on this topic as I would end up bad mouthing devs or the player base. I've sat here trying to find a non-disrespectful way of posting my feelings and thoughts on the matter and it just gets wordy, twisted and skewed.

The only thing I can say without it being twisted too much is:

Putting in the effort to max out skill should not be useless, ever. Once upon a time in the past, when you were max skill, there was a noticable difference in everything you did compared to those who were 50 skill points lower than you. That is the way this game should be. If you put the time, effort and plat into raising your skill, there should be bonuses and pay offs. You should not put in an extra effort for nothing more than a pat on the back and a good job, you've wasted your time as it nets you nothing better.

[Aeght]

While I agree that max skill should be more useful than a lesser degree of skill, I disagree with much of the philosophy of this thread.

Max skill should be more useful, and max skill plus mastery should be more useful still, however that should apply to the skill overall, not to any given combine. Velium gemmed weaponry is still useful. Should it's trivial be raised radically until such time as it is no longer useful too? Max success on those recipies occurs well below 300, with or without mastery.

Just because max success on other combines is 95% rather than 65% does not mean other combines are not capped.

Based on the arguements here, the implication is that caps for anything useful should only be reached at maximum skill. On what basis should that be true?

And would those arguing in favour of this change also agree if we were discussing jewelcrafting, and altering JC trivials such that max skill plus mastery would be more useful than simply max skill? Or is that 'different' because JCM is chanter only?

Now as for keeping max skill useful, that, to me, is a different matter. I think that there should be recipies that it does take max skill to use. For smithing, perhaps a new line of cultural smithed weapons? For tailoring, perhaps cultural cloaks or other such pieces?

Just my thoughts...

Aeght

[KyrosKrane]

Max skill should be more useful, and max skill plus mastery should be more useful still, however that should apply to the skill overall, not to any given combine.

This statement doesn't make much sense. The caps we're discussing are only applied to the most high-end items currently makable by players. For your statement to apply, then high skill and mastery should give a benefit on these items, same as any other. There's no such thing as "the skill overall"; the skill is nothing more than a collection of combines with varying difficulties and results.

Velium gemmed weaponry is still useful. Should it's trivial be raised radically until such time as it is no longer useful too? Max success on those recipies occurs well below 300, with or without mastery.

Velium Gemmed weaponry is moot in this debate; it has a set trivial appropriate to its difficulty, and there's no indication of any success cap other than that naturally imposed by the trivial. That's perfectly fine; in fact, that's the basis of this entire thread. The difficulty of a combine should be determined by its trivial, not by a secret value that artificially caps success rates.

Based on the arguements here, the implication is that caps for anything useful should only be reached at maximum skill. On what basis should that be true?

No, that's not true at all. The implication is that caps should be based purely on trivial, not on an artifical cap that renders player skill irrelevant beyond a set point. The items we're discussing have just such a cap. This means that players with top skill have NO benefit for their extra skill, AA, or modifiers. By removing the cap, we restore value to the extra time and effort players put to acquire those bonuses. However, we also acknowledge that such an increase may result in more of the final armors entering the game world than the devs would desire. In an attempt to keep the situation as close as possible to the current rates, the proposal here is to raise the trivial on these items so that the number of successes is close to its current value.

And would those arguing in favour of this change also agree if we were discussing jewelcrafting, and altering JC trivials such that max skill plus mastery would be more useful than simply max skill? Or is that 'different' because JCM is chanter only?

I would strongly agree with this change. In fact, I advocate more or less the same adjustment to the Omens augments, which are capped on the JC and alchemy/poison steps.

Now as for keeping max skill useful, that, to me, is a different matter. I think that there should be recipies that it does take max skill to use. For smithing, perhaps a new line of cultural smithed weapons? For tailoring, perhaps cultural cloaks or other such pieces?

That's fodder for the future. Right now, we're discussing the present situation. The original poster felt that the current state is unacceptable, and proposed a way to change it. I personally agree with him.

[Aeght]

This statement doesn't make much sense. The caps we're discussing are only applied to the most high-end items currently makable by players. For your statement to apply, then high skill and mastery should give a benefit on these items, same as any other. There's no such thing as "the skill overall"; the skill is nothing more than a collection of combines with varying difficulties and results.

Velium Gemmed weaponry is moot in this debate; it has a set trivial appropriate to its difficulty, and there's no indication of any success cap other than that naturally imposed by the trivial. That's perfectly fine; in fact, that's the basis of this entire thread. The difficulty of a combine should be determined by its trivial, not by a secret value that artificially caps success rates.

There is the 95% cap that applies to most combines. Why is 65% wrong, yet 95% ok? And as for 'moot,' velium gemmed weapons are the highest end trade-skill made melee weapons, still have an active market, and the velium gemmed dagger remains arguably the most practical casual rogue weapon for its level range (60-69).

No, that's not true at all. The implication is that caps should be based purely on trivial, not on an artifical cap that renders player skill irrelevant beyond a set point. The items we're discussing have just such a cap. This means that players with top skill have NO benefit for their extra skill, AA, or modifiers. By removing the cap, we restore value to the extra time and effort players put to acquire those bonuses.

By removing the cap, you arbitrarily decide that these combines should be harder to make, not merely harder to succeed at. My point is that just because the end product is useful does not mean it should automatically only have best success at max skill. Is GM gear better than masters? Yes. But velium gemmed weapons are better than platinum bladed weapons. Why is the trivial level for velium gemmed correct, but the trivial level for GM armour incorrect?

However, we also acknowledge that such an increase may result in more of the final armors entering the game world than the devs would desire. In an attempt to keep the situation as close as possible to the current rates, the proposal here is to raise the trivial on these items so that the number of successes is close to its current value.

The proposal here is to change accessablility of supply after the fact. This will benefit those at the top, so it is not surprising that they would be for it, but it is at the expense of those on their way up. Right now, those with max skill already have max success rates. Even your revised proposal retains that. My counter-point is that those with max skill already have max success rates on most things. Assuming the max success rate is not going to change, why this need to punish those with lesser skill?

I would strongly agree with this change. In fact, I advocate more or less the same adjustment to the Omens augments, which are capped on the JC and alchemy/poison steps.

Caps less than 95% are actually not the entire picture. If they were not otherwise capped, you would still reach 95% at less than 300 skill on these recipies, even without mastery. Mastery has effectively been made nigh pointless by way of trivial settings. Basically, to deal with criticism of JCM being enchanter only, the Dev's have done an end run by way of trivial levels, just as they have for other new recipies. In other words, I argue caps are not the main issue here, but overall utility/difficulty of new recipies.

That's fodder for the future. Right now, we're discussing the present situation. The original poster felt that the current state is unacceptable, and proposed a way to change it. I personally agree with him.

With due respect, the proposal being discussed here is not reality yet, and thus is also 'fodder for the future.' My counter-proposal of new higher trivial recipies is just that, a counter-proposal, an alternative means of making high end skill meaningful. Basically, while I do not like the manner in which these recipies were done either, I do not like changing trivials after the fact. People make decisions as to whether to pursue tradeskills (or anything else) based on existing situations. Changing those situations on them should be done only with the greatest of caution and care.

At least that is how I look at it.

Aeght

[Bobaten]

At the time the skill caps went up there were zero preexisting combines across all tradeskills that benefited from 300 skill (even without taking aa into account). Even if the GM armor had the normal success caps, 300 skill still wouldn't be necessary to hit max success for smiths (but only if you had a 15% skill mod). Even with only a 10% mod, tailors could reach max success at 299 skill if they had mastery 3. So even without the success caps, the only reasons to get 300 skill in ANY tradeskill were a title and bragging rights (which are good enough reasons for me) and most importantly, to be ready to make future combines. In the 2 expansions since then, there have been new combines with higher trivials that DO benefit from 300 skill, and even 300 skill + 15% + mastery 3. Smithing and tailoring haven't gotten many recipes from the last couple expansions, but that's mainly due to recieving useful high end recipes in the 2 expansions before. New recipes will come that will make use of your skill, but at the current time, getting to 300 smithing isn't any more or less useful than getting to 300 pottery/brewing/baking/poisonmaking/alchemy. The new higher mods on trophies just compounds this. Mastery for those skills is just as useless at high skill.
PoR brought us the first combines that can make use of 300 skill + 15% mod + mastery 3. So while it is currently only useful for fletching and jewelcraft, expect future expansions to use your skill.
And finally, while GM DoN armor may currently be be the best thing available, I certainly don't expect it to stay that way. Bumping the GM armor up to the 400-500 range of trivials doesn't leave any room for the next set of even better armor sometime down the road, without once again raising the skill caps.

[Kaliaila]

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.

Your logic here is flawed due to the fact that people do NOT use the crystals in place of Plat to buy items from other Players. People buy Crystals to buy various items from the DoN Merchants at which point the crystals DO go away. The ONLY way that DoN crystals will still be around in a year or 2 from now is if SOMEONE is going and doing them.

As far as the main point of this thread, Bobaten and Aeght are dead on right about pretty much everything they've said. Changing the armors to an even HIGHER trivial will actually do the OPPOSITE of what the Dev's want. The min failure rate on the GM items has MUCH more to do to the Dev's wishing to keep the flow of said GM items down at a certain rate. But they do NOT want to make these same GM items near impossible for Smiths and Tailors who are below 300 with only 8% at best skill mod and 0 to 3 AAs.

Just looking at it from an RP standpoint. Once you know how to make something you're going to generally be able to make it fairly regularly. IF the Dev's had wanted players to have to have a certain skill level to make these armors then, then they would have put that into the game.

Another reason against your proposal is the fact that the AAs are NOT obtainable by everyone who can obtain max skill in the TSs effected. This includes Gnomes with respect to there not being any Tinkering Mastery because they haven't figured out a way to do Racial AAs, plus AAs require you to be level 51 or higher, but you can be 300 in any Tradeskill and still be lvl 1 so making the AAs necesary for any combines is simiply unfair (personally I also think having the level req's to get the other cultural books is stupid as well but that's another debate).

[Bobaten]

The DoN merchants aren't a black hole though, don't forget that they buy the gear back from you. Looking at my magelo I have about 3000 crystals worth of augments on my main, and probably close to that on my alts. As I upgrade those augments and sell them back over the next couple years I will recover 4200 crystals to sell (unlike my recovered ldon points that are gathering virtual dust). As better gear and augments come out, more people will get crystals back to sell.

[KyrosKrane]

That's what I meant. As people outgrow DoN armor and augments, they'll sell them back to merchants and get some crystals back. Over time, if history is any guide, there will be far more crystals on the market than new players or alts looking for crystal-bought items. Supply will be huge and demand will be low, meaning prices will drop drastically.

I had some talks with Maddoc and Ngreth at the Fan Faire about this topic. Maddoc had a few concerns about the GM armors.

1) Final success rates must remain low to maintain the value of the finished armors. Making them too easy means lots of armor will flood the market, not to mention devalue a lot of existing (non-cultural) armor.

2) GM armors are actually a viable skillup path at the moment, barring issues with drop rates. Raising the trivials and removing the caps would make it harder to skill up.

3) Fixing the drop rates (by itself) is a desired goal, but changing the drop rates AND adjusting trivials or the caps makes the balancing problem exponentially more difficult.

Both Ngreth and Maddoc implied they weren't too happy with the success caps from a lore standpoint. There's no in-game reason why these caps should exist; the caps are an out-of-game balance issue (meaning you have to step outside the game and look at the mechanics to understand why they exist).

One idea we did bounce around may solve the problems, but it's going to take a lot of research and math. The basics is that by increasing the drop, removing the caps, increasing trivials, and either leaving the skillup bonus chance alone or increasing it on GM armors, we can maintain both the skillup chance and the number entering the world. More supplies means more skillup opportunities, meaning it's a viable skillup path. Higher trivials means more of the attempts at low levels fail, meaning fewer overall enter the world.

If the balancing point is set at 300 skill plus 12% to achieve success rates equal to the present success rates, and everything else is balanced around that, it could solve all three problems at once. Drop rates for GM armors could be significantly increased; the number entering the world is maintained, and skillup chances are still there, creating an ongoing demand for the supplies (and the finished armors, for that matter, as more people get access to type 12 aug raid drops).

[Bobaten]

The problem is that the people skilling up will no longer be on a level playing field with the people who are at 300 (not that this in and of itself is a bad thing). If there are more MDS entering the world, the chances are the price will drop. At the same time the person with 345 skill and mastery 3 will be able to make 1/3 more BP's than he can now. While in the beginning, the people will use their success advantage to increase their profits, competition will take over after a few weeks (if that).
For example (using proposed trivials from the first post):
Today an MDS costs 25k in the bazaar, a breastplate takes 3 MDS, and has a 62.5% success rate. Average cost to make a BP (ignoring salvage) is 120k.

With an improved drop rate, the price for MD might drop to 20k(guess), the breastplate now has a success rate of 85.5% for the top skilled/AAed smiths, so the new average cost to produce is 70k.

The smith at 290+8% (313) and mastery 3 has a new success rate of 69.5%(better than today). Making his average cost to produce a BP 86k.
But without mastery, the 313 smith has a success rate of 39%, and a cost to produce a BP of 155k.

Since the market price is by the people with the lowest cost to produce, if the top smiths are selling the final product with a 25% mark up (87.5k) the 313 smith is barely able to make a profit with mastery, and would be losing money without mastery.
In short, an increase in drops doesn't keep GM armor as a viable skill up path because the adjustment of the trivials lowers the relative value of skill sub 300.