Technically not a NPC. It is a bauble with limited charges that summons a writ NPC. I consider it very inconvenient in that it requires a rare for each scroll. Most people wouldn't use these on a regular basis.
Let me put this the other way. If dev is going to adjust the size of the personal fuel depot to accommodate the wishes of people that want to craft everything from a single house then they might as well save some time and go ahead and produce a writ NPC, a home fuel vendor, a home crafting mentor, a home banker, upgrade the sales board to allow purchases from home, and up the capacity of all the home depots to match the guild depots because this would save time versus making the decision to partially implement this and drag it out over several development cycles. Seriously, how much dev time has been wasted already on decided to increase the amount of space in the harvest depot? I'm sure the producer has a good idea. Instead of arguing about whether a single depot should be adjusted the devs should think if they want to make every home crafter's dream a reality. If they do, then do it all. If they don't, stop appeasing them.
each time you do a combine, you get 10 scrolls. because people don't realize you get 10 scrolls, some people are able to charge a lot for them.
Premise: People are asking for an increase in personal fuel depot capacity. First Implied Conclusion: People that ask for an increase in personal fuel depot capacity, so that they can craft in their houses, also want all of the benefits of a guild to be available within their houses. Second Implied Conclusion: (Because of the first implied conclusion) people that ask for an increase in personal fuel depot capacity will also request a home writ-giver, a home fuel vendor, a home crafting mentor, a home banker, a home broker / sales board that allows purchases from the house. Stated Conclusion: (Because of the second implied conclusion) the development team should produce all of the aforementioned house benefits. Please tell me that you understand that the two implied conclusions and the stated conclusion are not necessary consequences of the premise (even if you have to lie to me in order to tell me that). I'm trying to figure out why you seem so vehemently opposed to people crafting in their houses. I'm not hurting you by doing so, and I am surely not hurting my guild by doing so. And as long as I'm not actively inhibiting your ability to craft in your hall, why should you care if I do? If you don't care whether I do or not, then why are you so adamantly opposed to an idea that would allow it (i.e. the dev team increasing the capacity of the fuel depots to allow all current fuels)? In other words, what vested interest do you have in decrying the idea? I am hesitant to assume that you feel a need to try to control the play of somebody else - someone that is not you, and is not related by bonds of friendship, consanguinity, or matrimony (I prefer to give folks the benefit of the doubt, until such time as that is no longer possible) - so I'm asking for an alternate logical explanation that accounts for your apparent desire to quash the increase of the personal fuel depot capacity, but that doesn't also paint you in a bad light. Lest you assume that I'm just being a hermit in my house (not that you should care, even if I were), you should know that I do craft sometimes in the guild hall. Normally it is either when I'm doing rush orders for status, which I then turn around and add to the GH escrow, or when I'm crafting something for a guild member (regardless whether it is a commission craft or an item that uses resources that are either supplied by the requester or present in the guild depot). What's the difference? The difference is that when I'm crafting for the guild, I use the guild's resources. When I'm crafting for myself, I use my own resources. The only realistic differences between my current personal crafting setup without an increase in personal fuel depot size and the potential setup with an increase are that a) I could decorate the crafting house that currently houses my T1 and T2 fuels without having to incorporate the crafting tables into the design and b) I could spend less time separating the T1 fuels (and sometimes T2 fuels) that my toons purchase to complete quests out in the world from the higher tier fuels that they use for daily crafting. Not having the increase doesn't stop me from crafting in my houses - it just makes it really inconvenient to do so - thus preventing me from crafting in the manner which I prefer (which is to have all my resources, aside from my Frostfell components and fuel, consolidated into one house).
well said Rotherian - couldn't have put it better myself. although i do think a lot of people on the game get a perverse pleasure from controlling the game that other people play. i don't understand why, but reading a lot of comments from them on the forums leads me to that conclusion.
Its amazing how you clarify your own position and try to belittle my statements but go out of your way to fail to understand what I'm saying as a whole. Your ignoring the forest because of all the trees. My major argument is if dev is considering this idea, look at the underlying issue (people want to craft everything in a single house, for all 9 professions instead of just 1) and decide if they want to support that. If they do, then don't do just the single fuel depot but instead go ahead and fully support the idea. If they don't, well the status quo isn't bad. Rotharian might be posting this because it is the only thing he wants, but considering the amount of support from other crafters for this idea, and the history of asking for other amenities for personal housing that would further enable home crafting treating this as a single issue does not seem appropriate. Sorry Rotharian, your arguments might be your own but you and I aren't the only two giving opinions here. I also question "really inconvenient". Its really inconvenient for quests where you involve traveling out of your house to pick up the quests in the first place. You can't call back to your house without entering a zone where you could purchase the T1 or T2 fuels you aren't stocking so really, can't you just spend the extra 15 min to find the fuel npc and buy it? Heck, its only an inconvienance for one toon since the first and buy enough for the rest and you could just swap out a higher tier fuel for it temporarily.
first off, Rotharian is not the op here. second, he isn't the only one who wants them. and i agree with his opinions on this matter, as do a lot of other crafters. and as he does, i am wondering why you are so opposed. why would anyone oppose something that doesn't hinder them just because it benefits someone else? how is it any skin off your back if we get what we want?
Actually, thanks to the housing leader boards, you can access your house from anywhere. And with faction building mechanics that involve crafting, being able to set up one house for all your crafting alts' needs will help keep the leader boards from getting overwhelmed with crafting houses. It would make it incredibly convenient.
It's true there is no slippery slope. It's also true people will ask for said slippery items as they have in the past. I myself asked for a fuel vendor a few years ago. I also would have liked the broker board to work from the house back then. Others who will remain nameless (for fear of calling them back) wanted things like bankers and writ NPCs. I think we're at a point where things are convenient enough and the devs don't care to add anything more. It's not like it's a complicated change to raise the limit and (as I've said before) there's yet to be a truly compelling argument in favor of raising that limit. All it boils down to is "what I want for me and MY army of alts." Having multiple characters comes with disadvantages. This is one of them.
The thing with compelling arguments is that they are subjective. What you don't find compelling other may. The idea of Guild hall/player housing seperation though is becoming antiquated. With players able to make pocket guilds and singlehandedly give themselves all guild amenities anyways, saying that these amenities should remain guild only is a thing of the past. Keeping them restricted to just guild halls is more detrimental to guilds, players, and Sony's "Play your way" motto. Inevittably, guild amenities will become available for players, so why delay it any further? And that last part is true, yet misses almost every other post on this thread at the same time. Each one of us is saying we want the fuel depot made bigger for me and my alt army, because each one of us is talking from our own perspective. But when all those perspectives want the same thing it no longer remains me and changes to We.
You know, I have to agree here. In all honesty, we have a guild hall only for it's few amenities. My guild leader would probably not have said hall save for the call to guild, fuel depot, and writ givers. -shrugs- She (and I) prefer the layout of some of the prestige and city homes over the guild hall layout. Does it really matter a tinker's darn if folks decide to put amenities in a home versus a guild hall? We still have the same amenities, they are still inside a building. It's not like the walls of a guild define it, or change how visible it is to the outside world. Once it became possible to make a vanity guild, the idea of guild only amenities became rather antiquated.
It's still me over we, which is not what the devs want for their game. EQ is first and foremost intended to be a social experience. As you suggest, people can make their own little guilds if people want a big fuel depot. There are other means to get around the lack of space. This is one reason I say the arguments aren't compelling enough to promote change. They know what players can do and it's all way more than they could do before these depots were introduced (which was nothing). It's not even a case of time passing and the depots becoming too small to handle all these goods. We had our discussion with the devs and they gave us the number 50 and haven't changed their mind since then. If you want access to unlimited fuels, pay for it one way or another, getting another house or getting a hall. God forbid someone should even consider joining an actual guild. The argument hasn't changed either. It's the same as it was back on the beta forum post I've linked every time this subject comes up. This is the main reason I say there's been no compelling argument. You can only haggle so far with the same reasoning. Instead of people coming up with new ideas, they try to argue with me instead about how I'm wrong. Taking the 'play your way' motto and making it into something it isn't won't help the argument either. It's a simple tagline related to F2P's launch and how much money you invest into the game.
I'd say the me over we argument could also apply to guilds over players on this subject, as each member of a guild is just as singular as each member of this debate. There isn't any leverage one way or the other with this point. In game, guilds might outnumber the individual, but out of game it sounds like the community is outnumbering the guilds. Even in regards to guilds, this hurts them because there are only half a dozen different styles of guid halls, and those styles are severely limited when compared to available player housing. Why should a guild sacrifice immersion just because they want amenities? If they want their guildhall set up in the breakout of Timorous Heights because it has more flexibility to decorate as opposed to the Gorrowyn Guild hall, why not let them set up amenities there? The purpose of making a distinction between guildhall and player houses died a long time ago. If the arguments made then are even more validated now, there isn't a need for new arguments, just more pressure. You're hanging on to an idealogy that no longer applies the same way. If people don't immerse themselves when playing, changing the way amenities work won't change the way they play. But for people who do immerse themselves, changing the way they work will have a huge impact, and for the better. "Play your way" might have simply been intended to be a tagline when it was adopted, but it's a double edged sword now, because the players are expecting it to hold true. Even if it's simply a matter of how we invest our money, give us the option to invest in making amenities available outside of guildhalls and see how many players purchase that.
you know, all of the arguments about "eq2 is a social game" kind of goes out the window. it is social in that we can talk to each other, that doesn't mean we have to. we can play with each other, but i have the right to choose who i play with, if anyone. it comes down to choice. it is only as social as you want to make it. again, as stated so many times in so many ways by so many people, you can't force socialization. just like you can't hold a shotgun to someone to force them to join a guild. and you can't force anyone to stop ignoring you. so why keep the same argument going? social goes only as far as i, the individual, allow it to go. when it comes down to it, your right to socialization ends where my right to not socialize with you begins. so it comes back down to the individual. no matter how often you say it, it doesn't make it true. it is all about the individual who pays for their own game and doesn't want anyone else telling them how to play it. coming from a background of rugged individualism, i can totally appreciate when someone refuses to conform to those who would try to force them into a tiny straight-jacket.
No one's forcing anyone into a straight jacket, but there seem to be a few people who were given an inch and want several miles.
We were given an inch with a value that applied 10 years ago. By inflation rules today that should be several miles by now.
I don't, personally, want a mile. I just want a central location to dump all my basic fuels. My primary reason for this is to reduce bag space while making the fuels available to all my alts plus guildies with friend or better access to my house. I keep the guild fuel depot stocked as well (at my own expense). So I don't really think that restricting the personal fuel depot to 50 items instead of the 72 items that it would hold if it was expanded to hold all fuels is really necessary. Heck, they could just put enough slots for all of the current fuels, but make the max capacity per unique item lower in the personal fuel depot (by halving the allowable max capacity for the guild fuel depot). So if a given fuel can only stack to 99,999 in the guild fuel depot, then the personal fuel depot stack size could be 49,999. This would give the guild depot more storage, so the players that have excess beyond the stack limit of the personal fuel depots can donate the excess to the guild depot.
What value applied 10 years ago, when the game was only in testing? Why this talk of inflation with a game that hasn't had an upward change in price point for all that time? As I've said before, I don't have a problem with the actual suggestion. The discussion, however, has gone nowhere except on some wild tangents. All I'm trying to say is that it's going to be a very hard sell, considering where we were before and what we're capable of now. One could easily split their team up into two houses and keep things stocked or (at the very least) have it so only one character (like a sage) needs to do the shopping. Some have said this depot system wasn't thought out very well and/or that the devs don't play the same game we do. I believe it was thought out very well and that's why we haven't seen (and probably won't see) any other changes. As far as the latter goes, that's actually true. They only (barely) have the time to run one crafter. I'd say there are few that actually play multiple crafters and even fewer that do so outside the doors of a hall, so the actual support for an idea to go through isn't really there.
10 years ago the game launched. At the time 50 slots would have been sufficient to hold all fuels needed for crafting. Also at the time being part of a guild was the only way to buy status items, raid, etc. To be fair, guildhalls weren't even introduced until 4 years later, but even at that time, 50 slots would have been sufficient to hold all crafting fuels, and at that time having a guild full of people was still the most likely way to support the cost of having a guildhall and it's amenities. Fast forward to now. Guilds are no longer required to purchase status items, guilds are no longer required to have depots, guilds no longer lose status over time and can be maintained by single people, and guilds are no longer required to raid. People are multiboxing more frequently or just using pocket guilds for their amenities. The largest advantage to being in a guild is the social aspect of the game, which is fine, but the way guilds are used no longer applies the same way as it did 10 years ago, and the way guild hall ammenities were intended 6 years ago no longer applies either. As content continues to develop, what was once considered essential (joining a guild) long ago is becoming more and more evident as simply a choice on how to socialize in the game. It's no longer necessary and maintaining the seperation of guild halls and players houses is obsolete. Also with the advent of massive prestige homes and their increased capacity for decorating, the line between guild hall and player house gets further blurred as players are now given more flexibility in how to decorate their preferred base of operation. The sheer volume of massive player homes alone puts the guild hall options to shame. But why simply compare massive prestige homes to guild halls? Players, and guilds even, should have the complete choice of where to base themselves out of. If a guild wants to have a criminal underground organization theme, why not let them build their guild hall in a Qeynos home and operate out of the basement? Restricting guilds and players to using amenities in the castle themed guild halls simply limits those guilds and players unnecessarily.
