An update regarding trivials

[Hael of TT]

The following is an update on my attempts to contact SOE directly about the tailoring trivial changes. Included is the full text of all correspondence thus far. I am now awaiting a response to a post I made on Sonys forum.

Here it all is thus far, I will update as I get more:
I emailed the following letter to SOE, and got a response that had nothing to do with my letter.

Letter to Sony:
Im writing to you regarding the recent changes to tailoring trivials and the response to player issues by Maddoc on the EQTraders forum.

The changes were sprung on players with no advance notice, and according to Maddoc, they were possibly added to the patch by accident. The result of the changes was a very nasty shock to tailors. When the tradeskill caps were raised to 300 at the time DoN went live, many people including myself began farming foraging and buying materials to advance our tradeskills. Then, without warning, the Velious tailoring trivials were changed from 335 to 252. Velious tailoring was probably one of the most common paths used for skilling up simply because most of the zones where materials drop are available to a large range of levels. I myself have over 300 yew leafs sitting in the bank rotting now, as well as velium and black panther skins, all of which are now useless to me. Utilizing 2 boxes to forage I managed to achieve a drop rate of about 1 yew leaf every 20 minutes, which means I spent about 100 hours foraging those leafs that are no longer of any use.

When the tradeskill community responded to the change by asking that it be changed back for a few days or a week to give players time to use up their stocks of materials Maddocs response was NO. The lack of compassion towards the player base in that response has been taken as a slap in the face to many people. There are people who have as much as 500,000 plat worth of materials that have been rendered useless by this change.

Maddoc also stated that the change was a part of an overall change to all tradeskills to bring their trivials more in line with the difficulty of the combine. I wont go into details comparing tailoring to jewelcrafting as Im sure you can do that yourself and see how easy JC is compared to Tailor prior to the change.

What I do see happening is the division between power gamers and casual gamers widening even more. If Velious is considered to not be hard enough to deserve a 335 trivial, then I can only assume that 335 trivials will only be achieved with items from flagged zones such as Kod'Taz, EP zones, Anguish or other similar zones. What that would mean is the only people capable of farming drops would be power gamers as casual players generally arent flagged for those zones. Since casual players wont be able to farm themselves it means they will have to buy the materials. Those materials wont be cheap. At a guess I would estimate the cost of doing an EP level combine at about 12k-20k per attempt. Due to the fact that common drops in the OoW expansion are better than EP level tradeskilled items, players wont be able to sell what they make for anywhere near what it costs them to make it. Current sales prices on the TT server for EP and OoW tradeskilled items runs about 3k-15k.

What this does is widen the gap between power and casual players, and places casual players at the mercy of the power gamers. I see this as SOE Devs catering yet again to the power gamers at the expense of the casual player. This boggles me since at least on the Terris Thule server power gamers make up less than 30% of the players. That is to say, only 30% of Sonys income from the game comes from power gamers.

Because of the tone of the response by Maddoc to the reasonable requests of the tradeskillers in the game I have decided to cancel 2 of my accounts and give the 3rd one to my brother and say good riddance to all Sony products. Why the decision was made to ignore the protests over this change I just cant understand. Everquest is about to reach its 6th anniversary. If Sony continues on this path I will be very surprised if its around to see its 7th.

Hael
70 Cleric
The Terris Thule server



The response I recieved was as follows:

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Sony Online Entertainment Customer Support.


Thank you for taking the time to express your opinions about EverQuest II, we greatly appreciate the feedback of our players.
You can submit any additional comments via our Developer feedback form by following this link: http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/tracker?role=Dev


Paul F.

Technical Support Representative
Sony Online Entertainment


I posted all the above plus the following to the Sony forum today:


I wrote to SOE regarding the changes to tailoring trivials in the 3-03-05 patch to Everquest ONE, not TWO. Is this an indication of the complete lack of attention that gets paid to players issues? I also asked that my email be CCed to Brenlo in the subject line. There is no indication that it was done.



I not only want an answer as to why I got a response back that deals with Everquest II, I would like an answer from either Brenlo or Maddoc that actually deals with the issues that have been brought up by tradeskillers since the patch.



Th issue is NOT what SOE has planned for the future of tradeskilling as Maddoc seems to think based on his response to the EQTraders forum. The issue is, Why cant SOE change the trivials back long enough for hundreds of players to be able to use up their current stock of Velious tailoring supplies? SOE has undone changes in the past to avoid screwing over particular groups in the game, why take such a hard line on this?



Maddocs last comment on the EQTraders board was a slap in the face to all tradeskillers. His comment was "The changes we've made to the tradeskill system thus far have largely been for the better, and even though this may cause a little undue hardship right now, overall, I don't think anyone will be dissappointed." The whole point is, we are already disappointed pal, dont you read the /feedbacks??



Maddoc also had this to say:

Now, as I'm sure you've noticed, some of these changes found their way live, somewhat unexpectedly, and I can understand the frustration at the changes, however...

Most of you should know by know that it's not very often that large changes go un-mentioned, let alone intentionally un-mentioned.



Now if the addition of the trivial changes to the patch wasnt intended for that patch, WHY CANT THEY BE CHANGED BACK?????



Hael

70 Cleric 252 AA

250 Tailor

on the Terris Thule server

[Bobaten]

I'm not sure why the "somewhat unexpectedly" comment makes you think the change was accidental. You are assuming he meant the change was unexpected to him, when a more likely interpretation is it was unexpected to us. Changes to trivials were even mentioned in the patch message.

[Lanthorny]

Maddoc's post implies that the changes to trivials was part of some work in progress he is in the middle of regarding skill up routes for ALL tradeskills - and that someone thought the work he had done on tailoring was all there was hence someone shoved it into the patch whereas in reality he is probably still working on how he is adjusting smithing, and other trades too - or at least that's the impression i get from his post and therefore why it was unexpected, to us .. and to him. (I may be/probably am wrong)

This is why the trivial on velious armors and solstice robes should be reset till his work on ALL skill up routes is complete. And then to push the whole lot live at the same time not to cripple one tradeskill - and probably the most time consuming and/or costly tradeskill at that. Wheteher that is/is not with any warning is irrelevant - the annoyance is that after the carrot of new max trivials (of purchasing the new expansion) the route to get there has been pulled away from tailors.

GoD was a disastrous expansion with players - noone except raiding guilds go there at all now - and certainly not beyond natimbi anyway. OoW was a far better planned out expansion and helped to restore a lot of the confidence of many of the palyers - tradeskillers and otherwise - now however this change after DoN goes live has broken that restored confidence amongst some of us. I had seen tradeskilling as a major part of my play style. After this - not anymore.

I will however continue to work at my skills - but the days of spending time farming anything are over - i will simply attempt to make stuff with what i get from normal xp groups. I wont be buying mass amounts of farmed stuff in the bazaar as i no longer see any point to skilling up - research is broken, fletching (unless you have a cultural option) is broken, alchemy is broken, and now tailoring destroyed. If i make something with drops i have acquired from normal xp/questing grps - great - if i get a skill up even better - if i fail - it didnt cost me anything in pp or time then. So as for this encourraging me to try the cultural options .. having tried to kill 120 lavaspinners to loot 80 eyes .. and killed 400+ of them and looted just 2 eyes - forget the cultural route too.

One solution that SoE might like to consider .. increase drop rates on all tradeskill items (even if already a common drop) by 5x across the whole lot. Restore people's confidence that getting to the max trivial is a possibility and that the items are makable high end items will still be rare even with this increase to drop rates.

[Hael of TT]

Bobaten, reread that part again. I am quoting Maddoc from his post. I didnt say somewhat unexpectedly, he did. From the context of what he is saying, the changes going live at this time were unexpected by him. Read his post, he didnt intend that any tradeskill changes go live with this patch.


Update on this:
I PMed Brenlo, SOEs Community Relations Manager, yesterday 3/08 about this and am currently awaiting a reply.

[Wyvernwill]

Fletching is far from broken. Actually, if you look at the Fletching Quick Trivial Listings, there is a rather easy way to skill up. But then again, it requires farming and some actual effort. The way I found:
Acrylia Arrows (Flame/Shadow/Ice) to 262
Shaped Shadewood Compound Bows to 282
class 7 dragorn drakespike arrow (small groove) to 295
class 7 drakebone drakespike arrow (small groove) to 302
Or you can do the PoP Fletching Bows to 300 also.

That skill up route is far from bad or broken in my book.

Tailoring hurt, yes, however judging by the posts I have seen regarding the cultural skill up combines, it doesn't seem all that bad of a route for raising skill.

[Sanadila]

Tailoring hurt, yes, however judging by the posts I have seen regarding the cultural skill up combines, it doesn't seem all that bad of a route for raising skill.

Unless you're only 55...since the cultural is level limited, those who aren't high level can't do it. While I have a cleric who is 66, she isn't my tradeskiller. My tradeskiller is a 55 druid. *shrugs* It annoys me no end that I can't do some tradeskills with her unless I level her up.

[Twistagain]

Unless you're only 55...since the cultural is level limited, those who aren't high level can't do it. While I have a cleric who is 66, she isn't my tradeskiller. My tradeskiller is a 55 druid. *shrugs* It annoys me no end that I can't do some tradeskills with her unless I level her up.

AFAIK, only the symbols are level restricted (in that you can't do the quest to get the patterns for them until 15, 35, 55, and 65.) So, you can still make the Master ARMOR (which trivials up to 304.) Not to mention that, at 55, you should be able to get the symbol quest for the Master level stuff, anyway. That is the lower limit.

[Wyvernwill]

It's kinda amusing how many people haven't understood that, eh Twist?

[Myrron]

While the tradeskill involved with the recent change was tailoring, this thread is not so much tailoring in nature as it is complaining about SOE and it's customer service. I see that this exact same letter and response was posted in the official SOE forums, so let's keep the discussion there. Closing this thread.

--Myrron Lifewarder