Upcoming Cultural Changes

[Ngreth Thergn]

I suspect it is so people can actually get a benefit from the current tradeskill caps.
But I have some related questions. Will the revamped level 60 and 70 (and possible 80) armor still have the skill up bonuses? Will there still be success caps on the 70(and possible 80) armor?

Funny you ask

The new recipes will have the success cap removed, including the new recipes that create the existing pieces (the 60 and 70 armor)

We are still deciding on the bonuses on the "final" cultural combines (there will not be any on the templates), but at this time have leaned towards keeping them.

Note, this means that the drops needed in the final cultural combine will NOT be common. But they certainly will not be as rare as the current rarer pieces (but not as common as Shissar scales)

[Ngreth Thergn]

Just to clarify things, with this being over 150 points above and beyond the current tradeskilling caps, does this mean we may be seeing raised caps soon? Or are these combines designed to be extremely difficult?

They are designed to be extremely difficult.

[Ngreth Thergn]

We have to be careful in using the word "difficulty," since that word is used to describe the underlying value used to calculate the trivial. Is there a formal name for that underlying stat used internally within Sony? Perhaps we could just sync up our terminology across the board.

Difficulty is used in multiple places, including in code. We may just have to be more clear.

In actuality, I do not enter a "trivial" number in the database for a recipe either... I enter a Difficulty, that then has a formula applied to it that goes to the "trivial." I am actually even trying to get that changed (because there are "trivials" that I cannot assign due to rounding and the formula, and because it may become confusing to QA to have it different in the data than what shows in the interface)

We will jsut have to be clear about...

Skill Difficulty
vs
Recipe Difficulty

I think folks will be able to understand it by context we use it in anyway

[Justmenow]

There are many changes coming to the culturally tradeskilled armors.

The second change we’d like to announce is the introduction of a new skill-up path for both Tailoring and Smithing.

I hope you don't forget tinkering since that's used also to make DoN armor.

[Unapuma]

In other thread, existing book will still be useable. It's the quest for the book that will be changed. So if you're in the middle of it, finish it ASAP.

As fopr high trival recipes, I'm guessing it's to benefit someone that has 300 skill, mastery 3 AA and 15% mod item.

I do hope it does not mean a raise in tradeskill cap though. It's hard enough for some to reach the 2100 club (or the elite 3300 club)

Finally there are some players who mainly lives in bazaar doing nothing but buying and selling (possibly plat seller?) and it's possible they won't see these forums and won't know about the upcoming changes until it is too late. One bazaar mule on Maelin has over 50 glossy drake hides and is always pricing them higher than other on the belief that someone would pay premium for large quanity. (this may be true, maybe not but his buyer paid too much when the price of GDH went down fast)

[draglin]

The cultural armor will still require the quested books, as their patterns are what you will use to apply the culturally specific designs to the armor.

So does this mean that those of us working on our Tasks for the books should stop now or are the existing books going to be used still?

[Bobaten]

I suspect it is so people can actually get a benefit from the current tradeskill caps.
But I have some related questions. Will the revamped level 60 and 70 (and possible 80) armor still have the skill up bonuses? Will there still be success caps on the 70(and possible 80) armor?

[melkorr]

Skill Cap Change?

These templates range in difficulty from 15 to 465...

Just to clarify things, with this being over 150 points above and beyond the current tradeskilling caps, does this mean we may be seeing raised caps soon? Or are these combines designed to be extremely difficult?

[KyrosKrane]

We have to be careful in using the word "difficulty," since that word is used to describe the underlying value used to calculate the trivial. Is there a formal name for that underlying stat used internally within Sony? Perhaps we could just sync up our terminology across the board.

[Maevenniia]

There are many changes coming to the culturally tradeskilled armors.

The first change that we’d like to announce is a change to the names of the armor sets and symbols. The current names did not facilitate future expansion for higher level armor sets and symbols, so… The armor sets have been given a prefix that will more appropriately describe how ornately decorated the armor is. The symbols have been given a prefix that will more appropriately reflect the level of deity-specific connotation associated with them.

Level Armor Symbol
20 Simple Blessed
40 Ornate Revered
60 Intricate Sacred
70 Elaborate Eminent
80 Elegant Sublime

YAY! Possible new tier(s) of tradeskilled armor, woohoo!

So...would this table below be accurate, in terms of conversion/stats?

CURRENT ARMOR NAME .. Level .. NEW ARMOR NAME .. Symbol

Journeyman.....................20........Simple... ..............Blessed
Expert............................40........Ornate ................Revered
Master's.........................60.........Intric ate.............Sacred
GrandMaster's..................70.........Elaborat e............Eminent
new tier?........................80.........Elegant... ............Sublime

I am guessing required level would remain at 5 below the Recommended level (ie: Journeyman's is 15 required / 20 recommended, GM would probably become 65 required / 70 recommended, and the new Elegant might be 75 required / 80 recommended...?

For safety reasons I have not yet put in the changes that will disable the old recipes, so if there is a patch in the meantime, all of the existing cultural will still work

A thousand thanks for this!

[Ngreth Thergn]

Someone asked "why"

When we looked at the amount of changes that were needed, and the fact that there would still be inequity, pretty much no matter what we did. From the outside it all seems simple. Change a few items, up some drop rates, lower some other, but in the end because of the large amount of different places, amounts, types of NPC's and other such considerations it just did not look feasible, and would have taken as much time as a revamp did. Plus we would have ended up with different inequities. Only some races would have had their "farmed" items made obsolete, while some others would not.

In the end we decided this was the best course, and it allowed us to insert one of the base concepts for a re-design of smithing a tailoring, along with a better skillpath for tailoring. Smithing happens to come along for the ride.

[Ngreth Thergn]

There are many changes coming to the culturally tradeskilled armors.

The first change that we’d like to announce is a change to the names of the armor sets and symbols. The current names did not facilitate future expansion for higher level armor sets and symbols, so… The armor sets have been given a prefix that will more appropriately describe how ornately decorated the armor is. The symbols have been given a prefix that will more appropriately reflect the level of deity-specific connotation associated with them.

Level Armor Symbol
20 Simple Blessed
40 Ornate Revered
60 Intricate Sacred
70 Elaborate Eminent
80 Elegant Sublime

The second change we’d like to announce is the introduction of a new skill-up path for both Tailoring and Smithing. This path will required dropped components, as has always been the case for these skills, however, they will be more widely available and spread out over much more of the known world. This path will consist of making armor templates that, while unable to be used themselves, will be used as the base used to craft other armor, including cultural. These templates range in difficulty from 15 to 465 and can be sold back to NPC merchants for the difference in merchant greed, allowing for a much more economical skill-up path.

The third change that we will be making is the possibility of changing the word “trivial” to “difficulty”, in an effort to make everything as consistent as possible between you guys and us. The goal is to help remove some confusion as to why the combine is not no-fail when you reach that ‘trivial’ level, and the word ‘difficulty’ doesn’t carry with it the same implications.

Now, back on track.

The fourth change that we’ll be making is to change the cultural armor recipes to use the above-mentioned templates in the process of crafting the base cultural armor piece. The cultural armor will still require the quested books, as their patterns are what you will use to apply the culturally specific designs to the armor. This will require a new drop that is generic for all races, as well as either ore or thread (for smithing or tailoring, respectively) that is specific to your race and sold by NPC vendors. The symbols will receive a similar treatment and will still require the quested books in order to craft.

This change will nullify the usage of all existing drops in the cultural armor crafting process.

Those of you who have stockpiles will want to make use of them as best and quickly as possible, as once the changes go in, the currently existing cultural recipes will no longer work.

There will be no exchange of the drops. The entire goal of these changes is to balance the drops, not create a surplus of the drops.

There will be a means for you to ‘learn’ the new recipes easily as a means to prevent you guys having to ‘experiment’ to learn all the new recipes. This will be provided via books in game that you can ‘scribe’ by right clicking them to learn all of the recipes associated with that book. These books will start out inexpensive, though we are considering increasing the price in a couple months to something more appropriate, so you’ll want to make sure you get them as soon as possible.

There is no current ETA for the launch of these changes, but we are working diligently on all the changes listed above (actually, they’re about 90% complete!). There are still a few loose ends to tie up, some code to be implemented and tested, and a host of other ‘small’ things for us to do.

The majority of the changes are in and we’re in the process of evaluating what drops what, and how often. The recipes themselves have already been converted and tested via our QA department. Once all the loose ends are tied up, we’ll make another post to let everyone know that the changes are up and available on the Test Server for you guys to check out, as well as letting you guys know the tentative launch date for the new changes.

For safety reasons I have not yet put in the changes that will disable the old recipes, so if there is a patch in the meantime, all of the existing cultural will still work.