Fine Plate trivials on Test

[Vulcon Mastercrafter]

I heard a rumour that fine plate trivials were being increased (to 210 plus). Is this just a rumour of does anyone have any actually information?

[Kronepsis]

Was the person you heard the rumor from on test?

If not, I'd ignore it if I were you. FOAF (Friend of a Friend) information is how urban legends get started.

[Xenephex]

As a leather padding supplier, the first thing that popped into my head was that this would send the price of padding through the roof.

The second thing that popped into my head was that if I was an unscrupulous leather padding provider, this would be a perfect rumor to start.

Seems unlikely.

On the other hand, someone on test was offering 500 plat a stack for leather padding a couple of days ago....

[Iannyen]

500 plat a stack for padding is pretty average to low on Emarr. /sigh

[splunge]

The test server economy... well... lets not go there..

Half the people price stuff like they are giving it away (me) and the other half price it like its the last of its species... Theres no semblace of nominal, rational economy. If you /ooc PC on xxx, ill tell you to try another server. There are no 'prices' per se, its whatever the heck you want to do...

I can try some FS later today and check. Its all trivial to me, and i use FS anyways to make clockwork armor.

[Xenephex]

Half the people price stuff like they are giving it away (me)

Yes - thanks for the (very cheap) geerloks. (bazaar - I think that was you).

[splunge]

I made a couple of small BPs yesterday (triv 188) and i was getting the trivial message (Skill 188). (Still managed to fail 1 out of 3). I did howver make 2 Clockwork Observer BPs out of 4 attmepts. Wheee.

[Bregalad]

Would be real nice if they do bump fine plate up. Farming for shadowscream gets tiresome.

[Jaradis Stormcaller]

People complain about how hard it is to skill up past 200 in some tradeskills yet they continue to not understand that its a good thing. If it was easy (using Fine Plate to get higher than 188) then you would have a lot more people with higher skill, making the supply much higher and dropping prices overall accordingly. The harder it is, the less non-dedicated people will GM a skill, the more viable the skill is as a means to earn income. Also, the more a skill requires non-bought components the less likely those with huge bank accounts will power up the skill.

How many 250 smiths or tailors are there on your server compared to 250 Jewelers, Brewers, or Bakers?

[Slippyblade]

Jaradis, that argument is only slightly rational... Once upon a time, You could go all the way to 248 with Fine Steel. There were fewer 250 smiths then than there are now. Folks with money to burn will buy the skill ups. Doesn't matter what the cost is. I do think that un-nerfing the Fine Steel trivials would be retarded at this point though. That would basically be a punishment to those of us that were mid-level smiths when they got nerfed and had to deal with these other "alternatives" to progress.

[Verdandi]

Once upon a time, You could go all the way to 248 with Fine Steel. There were fewer 250 smiths then than there are now.

There was also a LOT less incentive to be a smith. Grandmaster smiths at that point were almost exclusively in it for the love of the skill rather than profit. Nowadays there are boatloads and boatloads of people who want to be smiths because they hear how much money can be made, but give up due to the time and/or money required.

Given that over a year after the fine plate changes I am still the only barbarian GM smith on my server that I know of who is actively seeking business, I'd say that it's clearly too difficult to GM. I know of at least a dozen other barbarian smiths who have all tried to GM and given up. And those are just the folks I've talked to. While I can't say I *want* competition, it's not healthy for the skill to be quite this difficult. But at the same time, with all those folks who have smithing floating around the back of their minds, if it were made as easy now as it used to be, the value of pretty much everything smithed would plummet to barely profitable as dozens of new smiths appeared for each race. That wouldn't be good either. Something in between fine steel and the current options would be ideal, I'd say.

[Xenephex]

A bit more history on this.

For a long time, it wasn't just that high level smithing was un-rewarding, it was also that skilling up on fine plate was considerably more difficult than it is now. Blocks of MQ ore were sold in relatively few places and neither the ore nor the MQ sheets stacked (if I remember correctly - I know that something that stacks now didn't stack then). A typical scenario for a gating class to skill up was this.

Bind yourself in NFP near the bank (and forges). Run to High Hold Keep (always a fun thing to do). Buy as many blocks of HQ ore as you could carry (you had to have a sow to make this even moderately workable).

Trundle out to High Hold Pass (the nearest forge). Make the sheets. Trundle back inside and put them in the bank till your 8 bank slots were full. Gate back to NFP. Run to EFP where the fine plate molds were sold and fill up your Backpacks with them. Gate back to NFP and do some combines. Rinse. Repeat.

And if you were a non-gating class, this was even more fun.

And don't forget occasionally losing your smithing hammer, or a stack of leather paddings, because anything you put in a trade container disappeared if you hit combine with the incorrect components in it.

I still think that the events surrounding the great smithing patch are among the strangest in the history of the game. Where all of a sudden they actually put something worthwhile for high end smiths in the game and at the same time served notice that you had, what, a month and a half to skill up via the old path (which was considerably easier by then).

I wish they had just rewarded those who had already skilled up (and no, I wasn't one of them) and added the nerf and the new recipes all at once, with no pre-notice. The whole thing still strikes me as odd.

[Slippyblade]

Yeah - pretty much pissed me off. I'd been scrimping every penny to get smithing up back then and was in the 130's when they anounced you had 30 days till the trivial nerf. What heppened then? Well, the folks with uber cash went and GM'd smithing with a nice and easy and CHEAP method. Those of us that were busting our humps were suddenly screwed. Oh well. It has taken me from then till about 2 months ago to get smithing over 200, mosty cause it pissed me off so bad.

If they truly wanted to smooth the progression a bit, I'd say make all the skellies in Shadeweavers drop Shadow at the typically horrendously rare rate that the Lesser Shades do now. That would help a LOT.

[Cigarskunk]

Jaradis, that argument is only slightly rational... Once upon a time, You could go all the way to 248 with Fine Steel.

That's because being a GM smith back then was about as useful as being a GM begger.

[kiztent]

A bit more history on this.

For a long time, it wasn't just that high level smithing was un-rewarding, it was also that skilling up on fine plate was considerably more difficult than it is now. Blocks of MQ ore were sold in relatively few places and neither the ore nor the MQ sheets stacked (if I remember correctly - I know that something that stacks now didn't stack then).

Originally, neither stacked. Blocks still don't.

And you are, of course, assuming that the smith in question was a light race. Like, say, not KoS in Highpass. Evil races had to hike their ore from the Rathe Mountains to Oggok (well, you could gate if you had the spell).

Amusingly enough, I took the week to get faction up in highpass and soon after that they added more MQ ore vendors.