New Tradeskill AA Ideas

[Neebat]

Tradeskills by Rote

Definition: Rote
1. (noun) routine; a fixed, habitual, or mechanical course of procedure: the rote of daily living.
2. (Idiom) by rote, from memory, without thought of the meaning; in a mechanical way: to learn a language by rote.

AA Name: Reseach By Rote (or Tailoring By Rote, etc.)
Effect: You may skip 1 subcombine per rank.

This would require code support, but it requires practically no UI changes, unlike most of the bulk combine suggestions. It doesn't require any new recipes and very little extra data at all. (It might require some data support for a few recipes which have more than one result, or where the recipe name doesn't match the item name.) It doesn't change the difficulty, yield, trivial, components or requirements of the existing recipes, which makes it simpler to balance than many of the suggestions.

Example 1: I'm trying to make the spell Wunshi's Focusing:
Fine Vellum, Ink Additive of the Nameless, Ink of the Monkey(2), Ink of the Rhino(2), Ink of Tunare(2), Invigorating Thickener, Quill of the Prophet

If I had 5 ranks of Rote Research, I could do that combine with this in my inventory:
Fine Vellum, Ink Additive of the Nameless, Ink of Tunare(2), Invigorating Thickener, Vial of Purified Water(4), Limonite Powder(2), Galena Powder(2), A Quill, Necrotic Treatment, Divine Treatment

This would only work from the new interface, where it would automatically look up the subcombine recipes. The missing ingredients would show up in Yellow instead of green (meaning you have it) or red (meaning you don't have it.)

The subcombines would happen automatically when you hit the combine button, and the whole combine would stop if any subcombine failed. Initially, it could be limited to combines under 70 skill, like those inks and quills.

Example 2: It doesn't work if I'm missing the Fine Vellum for the recipe above, even if I have the components to make it, because the trivial is over 250. I'd have to explicitly combine it...

Example 3: Looking up that Fine Vellum, I go to combine it...
Sooty Fine Vellum, Fine Vellum Solution, Celestial Cleanser

The Celestial Cleanser is only 54, so it would automatically combine if I had the parts. (And auto-inventory the extra results, halting progress if they couldn't all be placed in inventory.) In fact, celestial cleanser requires vials of purified water. If I had the parts, it should automatically combine those too, assuming I have at least 2 ranks of the AA. (Skipping one sub-combine and one sub-sub-combine.)

So it would work if I had:
Sooty Fine Vellum, Fine Vellum Solution, 6 Empty Vials, 1 Gnomish Heat Source, 4 Water Flasks, 1 Celestial Solvent

Example 4: What if I don't have the Fine Vellum Solution on me? It's over 250, so I have to go look up that recipe and combine it:
Aqua Regia, Jade, Opal, Platinum Bar, Ruby, Vial of Muriatic Acid, Vial of Pure Water

Counting sub-sub-combines and sub-sub-sub-combines, there are 7 sub-combines (Oil of Vitriol x 3, Aqua Fortis, Muriatic Acid x 2, Aqua Regia) involved at 102 trivial. By itself, Rote Research wouldn't help because of that trivial, but there could be a second AA (Advanced Rote Research) which allows you to increase the trivial cap by 50 per rank. So, if I've had none of the components in inventory, but one rank of ARR, it would allow any of the subcombines to be completed automatically. In fact, if I had enough ranks of Rote Research, it might do them ALL in one click, stopping if any of them failed.

So, I could make the Fine Vellum Solution if I had about 8 ranks of Rote Research AND:
10 Empty Vials, 4 Gnomish Heat Source, 8 Water Flasks, 4 Saltpeter, 3 Crystallized Sulfur, 2 rock salt, Jade, Opal, Platinum Bar, Ruby

You could limit Advanced Rote Research based on your trophy's progress. Open up the first rank for those with an Apprentice Trophy, second to Journeyman, third to Expert. (You might have to hail an NPC which would trigger the script to unlock the ranks.) You could take it all the way to 270 so all parchment combines could be automated, or cap it at 3 ranks.

If there were cross-tradeskill sub-combines, like the celestial essence used in brewing, you would need to have the second tradeskill container open or on your person. The rote AA for the sub-combine's tradeskill would govern.

[Aldier]

If there were cross-tradeskill sub-combines, like the celestial essence used in brewing, you would need to have the second tradeskill container open or on your person. The rote AA for the sub-combine's tradeskill would govern.

Not sure that would work as the tradeskill UI I think is only for that container. It knows the parts needed (say you are making Purified water in a brew barrel. Brewing tradeskill UI does not know what a Mixing bowl tradeskill UI needs, to my knowledge.

Otherwise, I love the depth. I think it gets a bit confusing with doing the sub-sub combines of the sub-sub-sub combines, and would potentially cause problems with those...

If there was a 250 skill requirement to get the aa, and it worked on trivials under 50 (already no-fail recipes) then you wouldn't have to worry about it stopping in the middle for a failed subcombine. Perhaps you have 1 or 2 levels of the advanced rote to increase to 75 or 100 (locked to 275 or 300 skill, respectively) to ensure the no-fail rate on sub-combines. It also leaves room to grow if/when the skill cap is increased.

It keeps from making anything very high trivial automatically. It removes the risk of having to set up to pause midway through the sequence because of sub-combine failed. It gives an incentive, advantage to having more skill. It does not make you able to do anything you could not already combine, but does make it easier to do the (sub-)combines.


In your research example, there are multiple sub combines going on at the same time. If one were to fail, how do you determine the sequence of subcombines. Item A, B, C, D make the final item. A, B, and C have subcombines associated with them. If item A fails, it stops the sequence. If item C fails, you would make item A and item B, but C would stop the sequence. Well that seems somewhat arbitrary in what A, B, and C are.

[Deviator]

how about an AA(or quest) for a master container... when opened you need to select from a list of tradeskills... it then pulls your available recipes for that skill and you can then do combines in it. this way you only need one container for all of your combines.

[Aldier]

how about an AA(or quest) for a master container... when opened you need to select from a list of tradeskills... it then pulls your available recipes for that skill and you can then do combines in it. this way you only need one container for all of your combines.

Loses a LOT of the roleplay aspects of tradeskills.

There is no way that you could have a container that works like a pottery wheel wet molding clay and also forge armor and make brews. I understand the idea is to try and simplify but that is what I would equate to removing all the different classes and giving everyone all the abilities of all classes.

If you wanted to talk about this for just baking or pottery. However, they have 2 containers, one for the cold combines and one for the hot combines.

[Neebat]

Not sure that would work as the tradeskill UI I think is only for that container. It knows the parts needed (say you are making Purified water in a brew barrel. Brewing tradeskill UI does not know what a Mixing bowl tradeskill UI needs, to my knowledge.

The container doesn't "know" anything. It doesn't even know what to give you when you finish a combine. The client sends a request to the server, which knows about all recipes and all combines.

Otherwise, I love the depth. I think it gets a bit confusing with doing the sub-sub combines of the sub-sub-sub combines, and would potentially cause problems with those...

There would be a fair amount of fun code behind this. I'd enjoy writing it.

For instance, it has to check if you have item A, and if not, do you have the components to make item A? If it requires item B, perhaps you have the components to make that. It has to repeat the logic for every missing component regardless of whether it's used in the final combine or one of the sub-sub-sub-combines. But software makes that kind of recursive check all the time. You'd want a good fast hash table to map items back into recipes, but that's all in a days work for a coder.

If there was a 250 skill requirement to get the aa, and it worked on trivials under 50 (already no-fail recipes) then you wouldn't have to worry about it stopping in the middle for a failed subcombine. Perhaps you have 1 or 2 levels of the advanced rote to increase to 75 or 100 (locked to 275 or 300 skill, respectively) to ensure the no-fail rate on sub-combines. It also leaves room to grow if/when the skill cap is increased.

It keeps from making anything very high trivial automatically. It removes the risk of having to set up to pause midway through the sequence because of sub-combine failed.

Non-trivial combines have to be included or its nearly useless. The worst PITA sub-combines for research for instance are 102 trivial. So they CAN fail.

I agree though, there needs to be a limit, as I suggested. Nothing over 70 trivial for the first rank, and that shouldn't be available till you get to 150 or so. Beyond that, we can safely say it should never apply to a sub-combine which is non-trivial. It would be creepy to skillup twice on the same combine.

Starting from 150 for subcombines up to 70, I'd say each rank (of Adv. Rote) would require 50 points higher skill and raise the cap on subcombines by 50 points, so you'd never be able to do subcombines by rote if they were within 80 points of your skill. Subcombines 80 points below your skill are already moving toward the no-fail category, with a 3% minimum failure rate instead of 5%.

You can't of course require a certain skill in tradeskills before you can get an AA. (One of the problems with the Mastery AA's.) But, there are several examples in the epic quests where you must have a specific item equipped (like say, a Master level trophy) before an NPC will respond to you. You CAN grant access to an AA using a script, which could be trigger by say... hailing an NPC while you have your trophy equipped.

And you don't have to pause in the middle to see if something failed. It all happens inside the server. When there's a failure the server tells the client everything which did succeed like a normal combine would.

It gives an incentive, advantage to having more skill. It does not make you able to do anything you could not already combine, but does make it easier to do the (sub-)combines.

The system I suggested ALSO gives an incentive to having high skill. The ranks of AA wouldn't open until you had a trophy to show that you had the skill.

In your research example, there are multiple sub combines going on at the same time. If one were to fail, how do you determine the sequence of subcombines. Item A, B, C, D make the final item. A, B, and C have subcombines associated with them. If item A fails, it stops the sequence. If item C fails, you would make item A and item B, but C would stop the sequence. Well that seems somewhat arbitrary in what A, B, and C are.

The key point is, you get to keep each subcombine result which isn't used up.

Assume it did A and B, before failing on C. If you still have the components to make another attempt, you can just hit the button again. It won't try A and B again, because you have them. You wouldn't be out anything anyway, since you were expecting to do the combines for A and B anyway. If you really didn't want to make A and B unless you had C, you should do C by itself first.

Assume it failed on C before doing A and B. If you have the materials to try C again, then the second time you press the button it will try them again. Yep. That's arbitrary, and it doesn't do any harm that I can see.

If you prefer, it could make all the combines regardless of what fails. If A and B fail, you get C, regardless what order they happen in. If A depends on B and B fails, A won't happen.

Note, if you don't have all the components for all the subcombines, it won't even start. The combine button grays out if you have components highlighted in red in the UI. If the recipe calls for two ink of the rhino, but you only have 1 Limonite Powder, then one of the inks would be highlighted yellow and one red.

The fun part is actually communicating to the client everything that's happening. When you click on a recipe in the UI, does that trigger a request to get the components? Or is that downloaded when you do the search? If it's the latter, you'll be potentially downloading data about a bunch of subcombines for different recipes. So long as it doesn't download the subcombine recipe until you actually look at a recipe, it wouldn't be too bad.

[Ngreth Thergn]

Recursive searches are BAD!!!!

this gets very bad with things like ore, which can go in a circle... then BOOM crash for infinite loop.

Now if you absolutely limit it to one level down, (I.E. you can only do a sub combine.... not a sub-sub combine) it is not in danger of a loop anymore, but then there comes the issue of what if there is more than one combine that makes the same item. Currently tradeskills depends on you choosing a specific recipe, either by selecting it from the list in the new interface, or putting the particular items into the container in the old interface. What if you are USING that fine steel sword (OK not likely... but lets go with it) and it chooses that to make your large block of ore with... POOF no sword!

It is an interesting idea, with many um... issues! when it comes to code.

[KyrosKrane]

Neebat's recursive search idea would be perfectly fine if there was exactly one recipe to make any item, or if there was no possibility of circular recipes (item A is used in a combine that produces item B, then item B is used in a combine that makes item A).

Having said that, that's not how EQ works, and I'd hate for it to work that way. Part of the richness of EQ tradeskills is the variety and sheer number of recipes a player can make -- think of how many different ways there are to make celestial essence or leather padding, for example. I've played other games like WoW or EQ2, and while I enjoyed other aspects of their tradeskills, I did miss the wide variety of things I could make in EQ, and the many different ways to make them.

[Neebat]

Recursive searches are BAD!!!!

this gets very bad with things like ore, which can go in a circle... then BOOM crash for infinite loop.

Now if you absolutely limit it to one level down, (I.E. you can only do a sub combine.... not a sub-sub combine) it is not in danger of a loop anymore, but then there comes the issue of what if there is more than one combine that makes the same item.

Recursive searches happen all the time every day and there's nothing wrong with it so long as you set a depth limit. In this case, it doesn't matter if the design allows 50-bazillion levels of subcombine depth, because the actual character abilities won't. I had a long explanation here, but an example proves it better.

Here's a very bad way of making empty vials:
Empty Vial (yield 4) = Dirty Empty Vial, Vial of Pure Water(3)
Dirty Empty Vial (plus Aqua Regia) = Muriatic Acid + Aqua Fortis
Aqua Fortis = Oil of Vitriol + Saltpeter
Oil of Vitriol = Vial of Pure Water + Saltpeter + Sulfur + Gnomish Heat Source
Vial of Pure Water (yield 5) = Empty Vial (5) + Water Flask (4) + Gnomish Heat Source

So, if we assume you have at least 4 levels of Rote Research, you COULD make an empty vial this way, if you had all the components, including 5 empty vials already. But what if you didn't have the empty vials, wouldn't the server explode from trying to make empty vials out of empty vials? In reality, it would end much faster:
1. We're making an empty vial, so we need a Dirty Empty Vial. And we can do 4 rote combines to get it.
2. We're doing a rote combine for a dirty empty vial, so we need Aqua Fortis to do it. And we can do 3 rote combines to get it.
3. We're doing a rote combine for Aqua Fortis, so we need Oil of Vitriol to do it. And we can do 2 rote combines to get it.
4. We're doing a rote combine for Oil of Vitril, so we need Pure Water to do it. And we can do 1 rote combine to get it.
5. We're doing a rote combine for Pure Water, so we need Empty Vials to do it. We don't have any, and we can't do any rote combines, so we can't make the product this way.

And, that's assuming there were actually multiple ways to make a single sub-product. You can easily limit automatic subcombines to a fixed set of recipes keyed by specific products. If you did that, the whole algorithm could abort the first time it ran out of allowed rote combines.

EVEN if you ran an unlimited recursive search (bad idea), the example above would actually very quickly conclude you didn't have enough parts. A better example would actually be the jewelry tool loops, where there's no other components involved. If you failed to take into account the limit on the characters Rote skill, the jewelery loops could actually go into an infinite loop.

This all assumes the algorithm had ACCESS to a combine intended to produce Dirty Empty Vials. I wouldn't...

Currently tradeskills depends on you choosing a specific recipe, either by selecting it from the list in the new interface, or putting the particular items into the container in the old interface. What if you are USING that fine steel sword (OK not likely... but lets go with it) and it chooses that to make your large block of ore with... POOF no sword!

As far as the fine steel sword, each result should have one recipe (or a limited number of recipes) flagged as the way to make it automatically. If you, Ngreth, were doing the flagging, that would take quite a while, but you certainly wouldn't want to list recipes which destroy player-usable items.

A slicker way would be to allow the user to develop their own sub-combine favorites list. You would need to add a new button. Currently, when you bring up a recipe using a search, and there's a button to add it to your favorites. There could be a second button to mark this as your primary recipe to make the result. It might look like this:
1. Combine an Aqua Regia so you learn the recipe. It has 2 results.
2. Search in the UI for Aqua Regia and select the recipe.
3. Pick up the Aqua Regia you just made and click the "Rote Memorization" button.
4. If the recipe qualifies, it becomes available to the search algorithm above.
5. The next time you need an Aqua Regia, it sees that you have a recipe favorite for it, so it tries to make one.

To qualify,
A) the recipe must have a trivial lower than the cap on Rote Research for you.
B) the recipe must create at least one Aqua Regia. (or whatever item you put on your cursor when you press the Rote button)

If a player chooses to list their primary weapon as a source for ore, they could use Rote Smithing to destroy their primary weapon. Of course, they could do the same thing at least 4 other ways more simply. (Destroy button, drop, manual combine or normal search and combine.) If someone did, there's a quest in Dragonscale Hills just for them.

It is an interesting idea, with many um... issues! when it comes to code.

It hasn't come to code, and the things you think are issues may not be. If you want to continue to debug it on the forums, I'd be happy to come up with technical answer to the challenges. Would it be better to just put it on the list as something we'd like to have, and see if a technical team can figure out a way to make it happen?

[Ngreth Thergn]

Yes and no.

At some point it is up to the design team to decide what to present to code, to weigh the benefits vs a perceived amount of time. Sure we can do thing to reduce that, but in the end I don't want to present every idea to code as that takes up more of their time to just evaluate things, and this time has become very precious.

While I am not an experienced coder, I do have basic knowledge of code, and have had a good portion of classroom training in it. So I get an idea of the difficulties. Your idea is a bit contrary to the way the code currently works in having something specific to work with.

What if the player has not chosen their "favorite" recipe yet? just fail?

You are definitely asking the server to do a lot more work every time you click a recipe in the new interface. What if a group of people decided to maliciously see how much work they could make the server do and all start clicking different items in the interface as fast as they can. Now the server doesn't just have to check your personal inv for matches on each one, it now has to make a search on each item that you don't have. If it ONLY checked a client side file of "marked" recipes, and it was not "on my end" as the other suggestion, then it is not too bad, until that list becomes large. If I could say "no sub combine" unless you have actively marked it as a player. then sure it is not to bad, until that file gets too large. But since it is now a client file. What if a player edits this file and puts in data that is not valid... either by putting in numbers above their trivial... well then I need to add verification... not too bad. What if a player outs in multiple possible celestial essence recipes? suture I could choose the first in the list, but then the bugs start piling in "I had the components bit it did not work"

I am **NOT** trying to shoot down your idea as a BAD idea. Really I am not.

I am concerned about the feasibility of the idea, and the coding resources required to get it in.

[Neebat]

Probably better to not spend so much space discussing one suggestion on this thread.

[Jinaabu3169]

How about....

A special inventory slot designed specifically for portable tradeskill containers. Restrict them from storing any items (just like a forge returns all items to your inventory when closed). Require the container to be empty before it is allowed to be 'equiped' in the new slot.

I know 80 inventory slots sounds like a lot, but if I am using a mixing bowl, there goes 6 of them. And, if I have to 'experiment', then the last 4 are gone as well. With the complexity of today's recipes, and the number of subcombines, it would be nice if I could have access to all (potentially) 80 slots for attempts involving portable tradeskill containers (mixing bowl, fletching kit, etc)

I would ask that the slot be an addition to the way it is done now, not a replacement. If I happen to have multiple portable tradeskill containers, I only get the benefit of the additional inventory space by putting one of those in the special slot. If you require all portable tradeskill containers to now be in this special slot before it can be used, then I get my extra inventory, but I also have the aggrevation of shifting inventory around so that I can swap out the mixing bowl, and inserting the sewing kit (for example).

[Aldier]

A special inventory slot designed specifically for portable tradeskill containers. Restrict them from storing any items (just like a forge returns all items to your inventory when closed). Require the container to be empty before it is allowed to be 'equiped' in the new slot.

I know 80 inventory slots sounds like a lot, but if I am using a mixing bowl, there goes 6 of them. And, if I have to 'experiment', then the last 4 are gone as well. With the complexity of today's recipes, and the number of subcombines, it would be nice if I could have access to all (potentially) 80 slots for attempts involving portable tradeskill containers (mixing bowl, fletching kit, etc)

I would ask that the slot be an addition to the way it is done now, not a replacement. If I happen to have multiple portable tradeskill containers, I only get the benefit of the additional inventory space by putting one of those in the special slot. If you require all portable tradeskill containers to now be in this special slot before it can be used, then I get my extra inventory, but I also have the aggrevation of shifting inventory around so that I can swap out the mixing bowl, and inserting the sewing kit (for example).

No container can have more than 10 slots. This would be, if I am reading this right, a new inventory slot that only accepts portable containers and has 80 slots?!? First, it would not help the stationary tradeskills (pottery, brewing for the most part-although there is a portal brew barrel). The difference between this and just adding another general inventory slot seems too much work and would be better if we could just have more inventory slots, though I suspect that will never change from the 8 bags we can carry now.

[thomenthechanter]

No, Aldier, he got 80 by multiplying 8 general inventory slots by 10 slots per the-biggest-bag.

If you can't have a bag in the slot because you have to put a mixing bowl there, you lose six "slots" because the mixing bowl only takes four items.

[Aldier]

No, Aldier, he got 80 by multiplying 8 general inventory slots by 10 slots per the-biggest-bag.

If you can't have a bag in the slot because you have to put a mixing bowl there, you lose six "slots" because the mixing bowl only takes four items.

Oh. I see. The 80 is your normal inventory and he wants to add a special 9th inventory slot that only holds empty tradeskill containers. It would be simpler to just add more generic inventory spots.

You can't put a container in with any items in then you want to be able to experiment with it? You make all portable containers not work unless they are empty in that slot? That's not helpful.

[Jinaabu3169]

I am afraid you are still not catching on fully. When you walk up to an oven (stationary), you click on it, it opens, and allows you to bake and you get use of all 80 of your inventory slots. Basically, the '9th' slot would make all portable tradeskill containers 'act' as stationary ones.

The reason I suggested only allow empty containers to be dropped into that special slot was because I had read somewhere that adding more bag slots, or increasing the capacity of the largest bags beyond 10 would be a practical impossibility (I could be wrong though).

I do not want any extra slots. What I would like is to not sacrafice the ones I have due to portable containers. Now a spit and some of the others make sense to sacrifice bag space for the convience of portability. But with things like a mixing bowl, we don't have a choice....we have to sacrifice the bag space.

Once again, the mixing bowl, equiped in this special slot (can not be equiped if there are items in it), should behave identically to an oven. It is empty when you open it (because it 'technically' isn't in your inventory), allows tradskilling without sacrificing any bag space, and automatically puts anything left in it back in your inventory (or hand/on the ground) when you close it. Experimenting, etc work exactly the same.

The idea is fairly straightforward, I think.

Oh, and I am a she =) (and spelled my name wrong because I rushed registration, it should be Jinaabi )