How much did 250-300 get worse?

[Twistagain]

It is true that those experiencing problems are more likely to say something than those who are not. It is also true that most people will deviate from the average (to one side or the other.)

BUT...

The average should be in the 30-45ish range per skillup. Lots of folks are claiming 80-100 or more attempts per skillup...for several points. Is this impossible? No, not at all. But, we were asked to report our findings on anything "out of the ordinary"...well, when is it out of the ordinary? A 100% increase? 200%? 300%?

The old formula yielded an average skillup rate between 1/20 and 1/35 or so. 100 combines is about a 200%-400% increase. How many people reporting that makes it a problem?

[Macnair]

Actually, the unfortunate point is that people wander in and out of here, get bits of information and sometimes wind up very very confused. Worse yet, some of them wander out and spread the 'confused' information.

There was a bug, the bug was fixed. There is this second problem, which is clearly not a bug but yes is frustrating. However, calling it a bug can lead to a lot of confusion for the more casual board readers. For instance, they could possibly erroniously assume that the first bug is still not fixed and thus stop tradeskilling from 0-150 but continue tradeskilling from 250-300.

So, best to keep the language clear and we won't be dealing with rumors of a bug for the next month

I don't mind clarity of language.

The announcement was, "We are going from OldTradeskillFormula to NewTradeskillFormula. This will encompass two changes. The first is, the curve for the average number of combines to achieve a skill up will be smoothed out, so that it will take fewer from 190 to 200, and more from 250 to 300. The second is, a bonus chance for skillup will be added when you are using hard to find components in the 250 to 300 range."

So.

The announcement anticipated a balance between an increased average number of combines needed per skillup, and the bonus created by using rare components.

This has not been achieved.

If people want to say, colloquially, "This is bugged" (because it is not yet working as intended) -- well, that's fine with me.

If people want to say, formally, "Technically this isn't a bug, since the code that they have installed is working as intended; but overall the process isn't yet working as intended, because they have failed to complete the job as advertised" -- well, that's fine with me, too.

The second is clearer in its linguistic formulation.

As I say, I don't mind clarity of language.

I don't think your first point is correct, though. The main problem isn't that casual people wander in and out, pick up little bits of information, and then accidentally spread misinformation. (Casual people do that all the time, when you have done things right and when you have failed to do things right.)

Instead, the main problem here is that The Plan for revising tradeskills has been explained, but it has only been half installed. So right now we are stuck with a tradeskill skillup product that is not working as advertised, because a piece of it has not been installed.

The bottom line is: this is not presently working as intended.

[Wyvernwill]

I hate to be captain obvious, but why not.

If tradeskills in their current state are a problem for you... Stop doing them until all parts are implemented.

That is the easy solution to this seemingly very complex and strange conversation. Everyone seems upset that the skill up rate was changed and made harder, but the increased chance of skill up per combine was not put in. Then don't do trades until the innate increased chance goes live. I don't understand what the rush is to continue to skill up if you personally view it as a problem.

Take the time off, collect a bunch of supplies and wait for the next tradeskill addition patch.

[Bolas]

Take the time off, collect a bunch of supplies and wait for the next tradeskill addition patch.

Exactly what I'm doing. Furthermore I'm saving up the stuff that I think might be considered "rare" rather than the store-bought stuff.

I'm trying to be patient.. but failing black gold inlays is getting to be a pain, so I'm tempted just to bite the bullet and skill up as much as I can stand on mistletoe cutting sickles.

-Bolas

[Bupper]

I hate to be captain obvious, but why not.

If tradeskills in their current state are a problem for you... Stop doing them until all parts are implemented.

That is the easy solution to this seemingly very complex and strange conversation. Everyone seems upset that the skill up rate was changed and made harder, but the increased chance of skill up per combine was not put in. Then don't do trades until the innate increased chance goes live. I don't understand what the rush is to continue to skill up if you personally view it as a problem.

Because there is not just one new tradeskill feature that has yet to be added, there are two.

AbsorEQ
So, in summary, there are three large changes coming to tradeskills:

1. Smoothing out the increase in the average number of attempts needed to produce a skill increase (coming with the next update).
2. Introducing a per-recipe minimum chance to gain a skill increase based on the effort and time required to get the components of the recipe (also coming in an update soon, but not the next one).
3. Changes to the trivials on many recipes in order to make the skill up and reward path more logical (coming in an update soon, but not the next one).

If you wait to benefit from rare-component combines, you will likely no longer be able to skillup from your favorite grind recipes. The components you are saving may become worthless. Also, Absor warned that the initial bump to skillup rates from rare components would be modest.

For those here who want to get to the answer that the title of this thread asks for, it is useful to see as much data as possible. I completed another 800 brut champagne combines yesterday and raised Brewing from 280 to 293. I'm still willing to believe I'm having unusually tough luck, but I'm growing more and more sceptical that the number of combines required from 250 to 300 is now only 20% harder.

[Spikehammer]

Ran out of money just before this patch so couldnt quite finish smithing was at 296.
Had a run of 200 sickles, how boring is this recipe, got one skill up. Now im out of cash and storage space, already got max tribute.

With this patch saying crocs drop teeth in PoN now thought great save a bit of cash and get some aa xp and finish off that way. Killed 36 of them no drops at all so this isn't a viable skill up route either if im going to need 200 attempts for one skill point

[Tanker]

Time for another Clue? Do a search to find the first, here's #2 (which I thought was obvious from what we've said, but maybe not):

It's now harder to skillup at 299 than it is at 250, which is harder than at 200.


Oh, and to answer one pretty good idea/question I saw above: the expected 20% bump in average combines does NOT take into account any min_skillup_chance_percentage values. Any use of those recipes (when they exist) should lower that 20% value.

edit: referred to wrong flag, see later post.

[Macnair]

I hate to be captain obvious, but why not.

If tradeskills in their current state are a problem for you... Stop doing them until all parts are implemented.

I was watching television and it started getting blurry lines on the screen. Watching TV began to really hurt my eyes, so I called the TV repair place. The TV repair guy came over to fix it, took the back off, removed several parts, and soon had stuff spread all over my living room. He said there was a problem, and he would have to install several new parts. He kept on working, and then before he left he handed me the bill and told me he had installed one new part, and he'd put the others in later. The TV is functional enough that I can still watch my favorite programs, but the blurry lines are worse than ever, and it really makes my eyes hurt.

So Captain Obvious, you can tell me that the blurry picture and the sore eyes are all my own problem, and I should just stop watching TV for however long it takes for the TV repair guy to get back and finish fixing my set.

But you know what? I paid for that TV, and I like watching TV, and I'm paying the cost for getting it fixed, and so I don't think that the solution is for me to stop doing what I enjoy and have already paid for. The solution is for the TV repair guy to finish the job of fixing my TV.

[Bolas]

That kind of provocative and pointless jab creates frustration and prevents communication. Let's hope they get the time and resources to make these changes that both the devs and players would like to see.

You're right, verdandi, I spoke out of frustration. I should have been more tactful and diplomatic in what I posted.

I'm frustrated because tailoring trivial levels were changed drastically (335 to 252 = roughly 30% change in value) with no warning whatsoever, causing a huge loss of plat value for SoE's most dedicated players.

I'm frustrated because skilling up was made twice as hard from 250 to 300 when it was only supposed to be 20% more difficult.

I'm frustrated because the ingredients to skill up from 250 to 300 are just not available at any price.

I'm frustrated because the coding that was supposed to make it POSSIBLE to skill up from 250 to 300 hasn't been implemented.

I'm frustrated because the few people with the time on their hands the first month of DoN release got from 250 to 300 on ceremonial solstice robes and arctic wyvern hides doing only 30-ish combines per skill up, and that path is not available to the average player any more, so those that did have the time and got lucky by picking tailoring to skill up rather than doing brewing or baking or jewelcraft or pottery first now have an unfair competitive advantage in teh marketplace.

I'm frustrated because the one glimmer of hope for the tradeskilling community -- recipies with a min chance to skill up higher than 3% -- hasn't been coded yet. But worse, there's no time estimate for when and if this will happen, so that makes it feel like false hope.

I'm frustrated because over a certain level, stats don't seem to affect skill up rate at all. There's a max chance to gain a skill up that seems to be hard-coded. So that someone with 255 strength has the same chance to skill up smithing as someone with 515 strength. That doesn't seem right to me -- skill up chances should be more impacted by the stat or stats used in the combine, so that someone with more than twice the stat would have at least twice the chance to skill up rather than the exact same chance to skill up (5% under the old formula).

I'm frustrated because I have an entire bank full of silk swatches, arctic wyvern hides, velium studs, velium bonings, cod oil, gem studded chains, and imbued emeralds, all of which are now worthless for skilling up and worthless for selling to other dedicated tradeskillers, causing me a huge personal loss of plat even though I've done nothing wrong.

Why am I being punished for lack of planning and communication on the lack of SoE? If you're gonna change trivials of items, do it concurrent with a raise in teh skill caps, not a month afterwards. If you're gonna change trivial levels seperate from a change in the skill caps, give a month of warning, so that people can have a chance to use up their existing stockpiles rather than be stuck with them and screwed over.

So yeah I've got a lot of frustration, I didn't mean to imply that SoE doesn't have dedicated, hard working, intelligent programmers. They do. I am just hoping that SoE management makes good decisions about how to best utilize their finite resources.

-Bolas

[Wyvernwill]

Ok... Let's take that analogy and look at options. That's the beauty of life, no matter what, there is always options. Sometimes it's the lesser of two evils, but sometimes it's the greater of two goods.

There are three common solutions to that problem that I see:
Buy a new TV instead of getting your TV fixed.
Don't pay the TV repairman until the job is finished. Then again, that goes for almost any service rendered IRL.
Continue watching the blurry TV and wait until things are fixed.

Now... all of those solutions seem less than desireable to say the least. Buying a new TV is an added cost, but if you want the immediate solution, there it is. How this relates to EQ... dump money into it, it will go up. If ya don't have unlimited money, that may not be a feasible option... not everyone has limitless resources in life at all.

You can argue the bill, saying that nothing was fixed and that you refuse to pay for the service rendered until the problem is fixed. In EQ terms, you could cancel your account until the said problems are fixed. Though, if you paid for 3mos - 1year, that really isn't a feasible option either.

And there is always the option of continuing on watching the blurry TV that hurts your eyes. Which, in EQ terms means... keep doing tradeskills and finding some way to cope with the problem until the fix comes around.

There is also a fourth solution. You could go out, pick up a TV Repair Manual. Learn the process on how to repair TVs and fix it yourself, fix the TV yourself, saving yourself a good deal of money in the long run. This also opens up the possibility of a new career should you actually enjoy fixing your TV. How this relates to EQ... you could go out, learn the programming languages that EQ uses, help offer them a solution to fix the problem. If you enjoyed actually doing programming, once again it could open a career field you might not have explored before.

Again, none of these options may seem all that feasible or desirable in, but there are some options and things anyone can do regardless. Me, I took the path of getting off the "TV" and went and explored PoN and Ssra temple to feel out drop rates for Master's Cultural. I found that, though the drop rates seem to be about 1 Gravel/Scale per 10ish mobs, there is decent exp to be gained also. Solo'ing Gargoyles in PoN yielded about 2-3% per kill AA and they weren't that difficult to kill, things I wouldn't have learned sitting around doing MCS all day long.

Sincerely,
Captain Obvious

[Macnair]

Dear Captain Obvious,

Yes, there are lots of things I can do while waiting for SOE to fix things they said they were going to fix.

I'm pretty surprised that you don't think it is obvious that they should go ahead and fix the things they said they were going to fix.

Instead you seem focussed on giving me advice on how I might cope with their failure to fix what they said they were going to fix.

Thanks for caring.

[thrashette]

Pushing us away...

How this relates to EQ... you could go out, learn the programming languages that EQ uses, help offer them a solution to fix the problem.

Or offer yourself a solution by writing a macrobot to deal with the problem, since Sony isn't EVER going to let you touch thier code.

Moderators and Sony: That's not a serious suggestion.

Still, at 20 skillups per point 300 was achievable for most players in a finite time. At 30 (or 50 or 100) it's NOT achievable for several tradeskills due to utter lack of components.

At this point we, the player base, should be asking what that 20% means.

Is it 20% for every higher ten points over 200? That's what the skillup numbers in this thread say.

Skill 300 is 20% over 200? That would be a meaningless increase, and NOT match either this thread or my own results.

Skill 250 is 20% over 200 and 300 another 20% over 250? That would make sense. Which, I am sad to say, makes that implementation unlikely.

To Tanker:

It's ok to be mad at stupidheads, but remember that we are the people who persisted until we got alchemy fixed. We trust Sony exactly as far as our test results match Sony claims. If you make a promise, we -expect- to be able to validate the performance and we -will- call you out if you fail. Non-performance is exactly what we are seeing here with the 'rare components + easier skillups' situation. You said A + B, and you did only A. Time to get those recipes in game, pardner. Cuz you know, every 100 combines without a skillup makes you look more like somebody we ought not to trust.

[Wyvernwill]

I'm not denying that I would rather they have done everything in one go. The fact is, they didn't. There is no amount of grumbling, begging and whining that will change that fact. It's been done this way and it's the course they chose. No one here can just change that, and there really isn't that much point in begging for it to be changed. They didn't change the tailoring trivials back, they won't rollback this either.

The new skilling steps seem a lot more difficult than intended. Then again, this may be what 20% harder is. I won't deny that even I personally thought 250-300 was extremely easy in the trades that I did take to 300 already, especially the last 20ish points when almost every combine you made with 335 trivial items was a success.

The items to get to 300 are accessible and still they have left the buyable means to 300 in the game. It's still possible to buy your way to 300, in the main tradeskills except tailoring. They moved the harder to get master's cultural items to easier to access locations. I have spent a good while in PoNightmare farming gargoyles as I know have that option. At lvl 70 with my main, I was pulling in 2-3% AA per kill. Lvl 60's could easily group the castle and it wouldn't be a problem at all. The drop isn't amazing, but they do drop. Look at the better side of it... they are dropping in a more accessible place now instead of RCoD and VP. Be happy for the good side of things instead of just down on the negative. I almost wonder if people just want lvl 30 green kills dropping the items every single time instead of there being a challenge and some sort of accomplishment involved.

As for the coping comment... that's about all we can do. I guess I have come to accept the fact that trades are going to be a lot tougher to finish up than before.

[Niphreedil]

I have skilled up smithing from 260 to 280 before the patch, and to 291 after (on sickles). I have also skilled up from 250 to 284 in JC after patch. All I can say is that while JC is a pain, I didn't notice a big increase in skillup rate.

Smithing for sure remained close to the reasonable rate of 1 skillup / 20 combines. JC seems to take from 60 to 80 which is high, but fits my experience from 0 to 250.

Bottom line is: I don't think it's bugged.

[Ngreth Thergn]

I will not name anyone. I don't want anyone to feel picked on. It is more than one person.

Stop the snide, sarcastic and rude comments in this forum. This forum is for more reasoned discussion. If you must be snide or sarcastic take it to primal screams. If you MUST be rude, please don't post on our boards.

Please get this back to the topic.

I don't know if more than one person used the "captain obvious" snipe or not. I am not going to scroll back and look so that I am not "picking on" one person. I don't know who it was because my memory is not that good. I don't care who it is becuase my comment is not specific to one person. I know I have seen it more than once on these forums (could be this + the EQ2 forums... doesn't matter) If it is only one person and you feel picked on deal with it. If more than one person, all of you deal with it.

The next person that uses the captain obvious snipe is at least banned for a week if not longer. It is uncalled for. These forums will continue to be place for reasoned discussion, not kindergarten taunt fests.

Thanks