I do agree that this should have been addressed on the company side and that anyone who used a pot with this known issue should be refunded how ever many they used. This wont replace the items they lost thinking they had the green light for fail proof crafting but it is at least something a business should do. If I bought a defective product, used it and it did not work as intended every store I shop at would exchange it for one that actually works which is basically what this is.
This is subjective I know. Me like many others, have wanted to work on their artisan prize and cresta's earring. Personally, I have been saving up so I could get the draught once it was on sale again, as it was already expensive, but offers a reduction to the amount of items I needed to get to work on boosting my character. I found and still do see DBG taking advantage of messy tradeskill system in EQ, instead of reworking the system, to raise their profits when the game is already extremely profitable as something that is persisting primarily on the good will and investment of devs in the past that really wanted to make a great game. I didn't know of any announcement of this change or anything else. As an item players have to save their 500 a month DBG cash for or use more RL money, this is already something people often wait for months to be able to get. The sudden change, while reflecting old prices, in a sale price that really doesn't seem like much of a sale to me since its the same price for 2 more days (though now sale is over) til being much more expensive. This is objective, or at least much less subjective. The game is being designed with more tradeskill emphasis now as something rather necessary. Sure one could make due without tradekills but with resistances being nerfed to being near pointless, players survivability is all about hp and ac, like always... just without any benefit of having high resists since your gear is going to keep you maxed anyways. So on fights you'll often die really quick from mechanics no matter what you do unless you got the extra ac/hp from the various tradeskill bonuses to make sure what's hitting you doesn't do more than your hp, this is even with full raid gear from a current expansion. The game has been skillfully designed around keeping players in a ballpark where they'll still occasionally experience instant death on group and raid encounters, unless you put it all the extra effort you can to boost yourself, including tradeskills. As an example, please consider the ancient dragon raid fight from EoK where the cure is line of sight and, while standing in a valid LoS spot, you may or may not get cured until after taking many ticks of damage just cause this mechanic is poorly designed. When the ticks may be knocking you into purple each round, even after using various rune clickies and heals. Resists no longer make a difference since everyone is maxed and a lame resist cap is in effect. So players are being forced to take on mechanics the singular way devs are designing them while opening up options to help your char from stuff like tradeskills. But no matter what you get, on fights like ancient dragon (back when eok was still the newest expansion) you'll still be experiencing your char going from full hp to purple in 1 tick quite often. This to me blands game play and reduces player creativity to overcome a challenge. But I love my ac/hp so I get as much of that as I can. And DBG knows that players are recognizing they could use the benefits from tradeskill bonuses and that this draught is a major component that (though optional) many use to overcome the grind from 300 to 350 in tradeskills. So instead of helping their fanbase out that often plays EQ because they don't want to spend a whole lot of money, DBG decided to capitalize as much as possible on us. While further designing features around forcefully creating a demand for these bonuses as players find the only thing they can do to survive some mechanics is get more hp, even if they are in full raid gear. I don't find economic arguments to be valid, economics are derivative of individuals. Individuals experience collectively what we are all sharing apart of and together we make this game what it is. Attempting to milk players for as much as possible while rewarding those that will use rl money to try to get ahead poisons the player base, and inevitably will reduce profits from less players. If devs want to make money, make something amazing instead of lackluster stuff that is in poor faith. And yes, unless this has be fixed recently, the draught doesn't work perfectly and is advertised falsely.
The cost of the potion is going up. The market place sale “is” your advance notice of it. Buy them now at the old price (sale price) or buy them later at the new price. How am I the only one that sees that. Shady would be if the cost reverts back to 1750 after the sale
I think some people have the perception that the game is revolving more around trade skills now than it did in the past simply because they neglected trade skills the last two expansions. If you look at EQ history and trade skills the whole idea that trade skills are now just becoming relevant is not accurate. Here are just some examples from our past (I know I am missing a ton). Velious EQ's 2nd expansion released in 2000 had the prayer shawl 1.0 POP EQ's 4th expansion released in 2002 had several quests revolving around trade skills Omens of war 8th expansion released 2004 Epic 1.5 and 2.0 which several require trade skills DON 9th expansion released 2005 introduced new cultural armor POR 11th expansion released 2006 trade skill trophies to help reduce fails TSS 12th expansion 2006 has several quests requiring trade skills (see the mesa quests for example) Secrets of faydwer 14th expansion released 2007 Trueshot longbow quest Underfoot 16th expansion released 2009 Shawl 2.0 ROF 19th expansion released 2012 shawl 3.0 COTF 20th expansion released 2013 POW access TBM 22nd expansion released 2015 Artisan's prize quest line was introduced EOK 23rd expansion released 2016 New trade skill AA's Again these are just highlights of trade skills and EQ history and this list is significantly longer. This does not even account for player made bags, potions (yes things like SOW pots were huge QOL improvements before mounts), spells (yeah people had to make some of these), cultural armor and early player made armor and well again the list could just go on and on. The fact that some people are just now realizing the importance of trade skills does not change the fact that they have been relevant and rather important since the start of the game. There is nothing shady going on in terms of attaching trade skills to an expansion's importance. Maybe seeing the huge numbers on things like the artisan's prize compared to other items in the past makes people believe that its all of a sudden worth doing but in reality crafting has always been rewarding once you get past the learning curve and the initial expense.
