Existance of success caps vs existance of tradeskills AAs

[Mannwin Woobie]

Someone with JUST a high skill has the same chance as someone with a lower skill that threw AA's at it. Those "caps" are set so that a 300 skill does not see the caps.

Ahhh...If that is true, then I had a very bad misunderstanding of how they were working. I was looking at it almost in reverse. I thought it was more like someone with a 250 skill alone having the exact same chance as someone with a 300 skill alone, simply because the caps were "bumping down" the higher-skilled player's chances.

My bad, and my apologies for the distraction.

I still think having the caps appear in the UI, like the trivials do, would be a very nice addition

[Sliggoth]

The reason I despise the items with caps is simple.

After struggling to max tailoring during the peak of the DON armor I had a conversation with one of the other people selling armor..and he how *stupid* it was for me to have pushed and worked to get to max skill. He has the 15 percent mod shears and much lower skill than I did, but he had the same success rate that I had. He pointed out that even with a 5 percent mod I shouldnt have wasted my time getting any higher than needed to reach the max success limit.

And today, even with having gotten a fully evolved tailoring trophy so I too now have a 15% mod, I still am stuck at the same success rate. Struggling to maximize my skill, getting the trophy, fully evolving the trophy -- it did nothing to improve my chances of making that armor. If the armor had an extremely high trivial than at least having an adjusted 345 skill would have neted me a slightly higehr success rate. Instead my higher skill gets me zip, zero, nada.

A maximum built in success rate means that no mater how skill caps and mods change in the future we never, ever will make those armors better. If skill caps should someday be raised to 400 we are STILL going to be making the same screw ups and spoiling the same percentage of those combines.


Built in success rates basically start ignoring skill.




As far as the lore aspect of some supplies having a high percentage of hidden flaws that simply dont show up on inspection, forget about it. One of the things that distinguishes a master is the ability to judge supplies and make better choices.


Sorry if anyone is offended by anything I have said, but tradeskilling has long been one of the most enjoyable parts of EQ and this is one of my pet peeves.


Sliggoth, druid/ tradeskiller of 7th Hammer

[Bobaten]

One of the things that distinguishes a master is the ability to judge supplies and make better choices.

That is exactly the point. On closer inspection, the supplies are inferior, and you discard them.

[Queletan]

That is exactly the point. On closer inspection, the supplies are inferior, and you discard them.

Initially I didn not know about the caps on the GM armor, I just assumed I had a bad run of luck when I started to fail a few more than i would have liked. After I learned about it, I wasn't really bothered. I eventually looked at it from a RP aspect as well as a game mechanic aspect.

For the first, I was willing to believe that we were working with something so volatile that any minor mistake could end up fouling the entire combine. The scales/hides/silks are so delicate that even the smallest error will ruin the attempt to turn them in to a piece of armor.

For the second, I have no problem with the fact that they wish to at least slightly limit the introduction of these armor pieces into the world. The point may now be a little less valid with the armor that has been discovered in TSS, but GM armor is still quite nice, and it does not really bother me that they would like to place restrictions on its entry into the EQ world.

When it comes down to it, the reason I don't really care is that everyone else doing combines is subjected to the same limitations that I am. The reason that I do is that so many people do not understand the failure rate, and are not so willing to pay the price that I charge for my armor. That said, I am not going to complain, because I have made a mint on cultural armor, and I will definately not be the one to look a gift horse in the mouth

Q

[Elfdruidess]

Those "caps" are set so that a 300 skill does not see the caps. At a plain skill, your chance is the same as the cap (ok so now people can figure the caps)

If I am understanding this correctly, the caps are:

Grandmaster BP & Legs - 62%
Grandmaster Arms - 75.5%
Grandmaster Helm, Boots, Gloves - 95%
Grandmaster Wrist - 95%

If this is true, at least we have more confidence to make Helm, Boots and Gloves from now on. But that 62% for BP & Legs is even worse than what we imagined.

The issue comes in with the AA's and skill adjusting items. It turns out that those no longer matter, in these cases.

I still think tradeskill mastery AAs for Smithing and Tailoring (and Alchemy, Poison Making and JC if OoW aug success caps exist) should be refunded.

There will always be the argument that tradeskill masteries were useful before DoN and are still useful for non-DoN cultural combines. But when it comes to adventuring AAs, when game mechanics change, adventuring AAs are refunded even after those AAs have been serving the player for a looong time and can still be useful outside the boundary of the changed mechanic. So why should tradeskill AAs be treated differently? Tradeskill game mechanics encountered a change (introduction of success caps). Yet tradeskill mastery AAs were not refunded.

[Kibber]

The PROBLEM I have with the Mastery AA's is that they have nothing at all to do with being a good tradeskiller.

Instead of sweating away at a forge or a sewing kit, say from 250 to 300, you can just go do some xp in far, far less time and essentially have about as good a chance at succeeding a difficult combine as the ones who do tradeskill.

The caps are the terrible solution to curb the AA's, but then they also curb the "proper" tradeskillers.

I admit, I have the mastery AA's in Smithing and tailoring, I mean, who wouldn't??? It's better than to actually do some tradeskilling, lol.

Do away with the mastery AA and the caps. Make the skill bloody count.

I really like the Idea thats mentioned somewhere above; getting a salvage point for every 100 in a skill. Or maybe for every last 3 x 50 skill points.

Kibber, The Rathe (2100-the last 24 tailoring points!)

[Sliggoth]

There is nothing wrong with the salvage aa per se. It would however be nice to tie the salvage success rate directly to the skill level.

Tie the success rate of salvage directly to the tradeskill ability, a person with 300 skill will salvage 3 times as often as a person with 100 skill (or some such number).

This would be one way to make having a high skill actually pay off again, incentive to do the work to raise the skill.


Sliggoth, druid/ tradeskiller of 7th Hammer


PS The problem with built in fail rates is that they actually make tradeskilling a handicap league. Once a person gets a modified skill of 300 they will succeed on a trivial 386 don BP just as well as a person who has a modified skill of 345.

[Ngreth Thergn]

Built in success rates basically start ignoring skill.

For the ones players are concerned about (DoN armor, OoW augs)... again this is WRONG

It absolutely does not ignore SKILL. it is set so that a max skill = the cap.

What it DOES ignore is a trophy, and the mastery AA's which are not "skill" but "magic bonuses."

As for "refunding" the AA's that is done when there is a massive change to the AA itself. There will be no change in these AA's. If we "refund" them people will buy them, then in 6 months demand another refund round in an endless circle.

[gggrant]

About me:
Ok, my main character has salvage 3, Fletching Mastery 2, Blacksmithing Mastery 3 and is a Master Artisan with the Master Artisan's charm.
I have an alt rogue who is a Master Toxicologist with no tradeskill AA's. My rogue has his Master Toxicologist's charm.
I have an alt gnome who is a Master Tinker with no tradeskill AA's. My Tinker has his Master Mechanist's charm.
My rogue has no tradeskill AA's because I have placed I higher priority on AA's that will make him a better rogue. My gnome has no tradeskill AA's because he is level 30 but when he gets older he will purchase AA's to make him a better warrior BEFORE he gets any tradeskill AA's.

Success caps have been around since the beginning. 95% is your normal success cap. That is the best you can ever expect (barring the rare nofail combines). Lower success caps are a relatively recent concept (Omens, I believe). The lower success caps are used primarily to limit the amount of a product entering the economy. It isn't designed to limit the number of people that can produce the item which is what a higher trivial accomplishes. My one and only objection to lower success caps is that it makes it impossible to know what my success rate will be on a new recipe, not the worry that someone with a lesser skill may have the same success rate as I.

Mastery AA's reduce the chance of failure, just as geerloks and trophies do. The consequence of failure is loosing your ingredients. The salvage AA's reduce the consequence of failure. After a while with enough salvages kicking in you regain enough materials for another combine. In effect you are given a second chance to do the combine. The mastery AA's and Salvage AA's help tradeskillers, if the lower success caps on a few (yes, a FEW. As in not very many) combines is the price we pay, I can live with that.

The end result of what the OP proposes, is that there would be fewer people capable of making the higher end combines. This would actually benefit me, since I am already at the top I would be one of the few.
BUT, I am not in a competition with my fellow tradeskillers. I was raised in a tradeskilling community that rejoiced in others successes. When a person with a 248 blacksmithing skill succeeds in making a GM Ancestral BP, my response is, "Hey gratz ". I do NOT say, "OMGZ, n00bs ARE MAKING GM ARMOR!!!! "

I vote No on Proposition A.

[Blayze Meduenin]

I left just after DoN was released and came back full time again only recently. So i missed all the discusion on fail rates and the discovery of the success caps etc...

It wasnt until id made and sold sveral pieces i found out about them.

I wrote a long discourse examining the reasons for them and the maths involved and frankly cant see why they are needed (I wont go into the long details though)

Basically though i dont mind them, what i DO mind is

1) They arent common knowledge and no one, including the tradeskiller now knows what their success rate will be wether an item is trivial or not (though for those who check and read up out of game that gets narrowed down.

2) It goes against years of common knowlegde and system workings meaning people expect someone who is over the triv to have 95% success, so if they fail they get accused of lying about their skill, and when making to sell for profit it looks like they are charging a far higher profit margin then they infact are.

3) On sets like gm armor sets, varying cap rates make a mockery of the recipe for those who the items are trivial for.
Rather than a bp using 3 times the materials of a bracer, its almost 5 due to the larger fail rate and thus material consumption

So if caps must remain i think they should

1) Be documented in game so problems 1 and 2 are aleviated
2) be the same cap for a set of items so problem 3 is aleviated

But as mentioned i dont believe they are needed at all in fact.
From my understanding they exist for 3 reasons

1) To control the number of finished items entering the market.
2) To provide a viable (profitable i think is what is meant) way of skilling up.
3) To prevent them becoming an unwanted skillup path if the trade skill caps are raised again.

However if they just lowered drop rates and upped the modifier on skillups on success rates all of these would be solved just as well.

If they reduced drop rate by 30% and upped the modifer to skill up rates by 30%, then assuming worse case scenario (all were made at max succcess) the number of finished items entering the market would be the same, and people skilling up would have 30% less attempts but at 30% higher skillup rate so again no change.

As for to prevent an undesireable skillup path if caps are raised, well they do anyway even with caps. They triv upto 384 anyway, so if caps go up another 50 they can skill on them to new cap already, even if caps went to 400 (an 100 increase) they could skillup most of the way on them.

So, in summary i dont mind the caps if the issues regarding them are addressed (going against years of how the system works and common knowledge so need in game documentation that they are different), and that varying caps within a set lead to the recipe being nonsensical (as instead of 3 times material usage for bp versus bracer it is infact closer to 5 times).

But at the same time i dont think its neccessary to go against the system everyone has known since the start of the game.

Edited to add a word about skill, mastery aas and modifiers

The mastery aas dont need to be refunded or anything, but recipes need to be added where max skill, max modifier and max aas make a difference. In other words where 300 skill 15% mod and mastery 3 is better than say 295 skill mastery 3 and 15% modifier.
At the moment this isnt the case for some tradeskills, though i assume and hope new recipes are added that make this the case, like a new higher trivial set of armor for tailoring and smithing, hopefully next expansion as the DoN set is 4 expansions old now and doesnt make any use of max skill