I was way off crediting Domino for KA TS Timeline. I found this article, https://eq2wire.com/2012/02/24/zam-emily-domino-taylor-departs-eq2-team-soe/ It certainly doesn't seem like we lost her 8 or 9 years ago. I've been trying to find out who took over from her when she left but no luck so far. People were talking about the Void Etched Mount recipes in gen chat today and some said they'd heard they only drop in raid zones. How true that is I don't know but it would be a typical move by DBG to do that. Is there any way to find out if the recipes have been Disco's yet? For pretty much any crafting questions, recipes, quests, walkthroughs, videos etc, give https://eq2.eqtraders.com/articles/news_page.php a lookup. It's a very informative TS site. I wonder what Niami Denmother will do when they discontinue crafting in EQ2
Well, to me it seems like you are giving yourself problems by only wanting to play half the game. Don't blame the game for that. This is not a crafting only game.
So, if crafting is 1/2 the game, then it stands to reason that adventuring and raiding is the other half. So, how would you feel, if they made the game all Crafting concentrated, and kicked adventurers and raiders to the curb... There would be a virtual riot! How does any company kick HALF their game population to the curb? This game was built with BOTH mechanics so EVERYONE would be pleased. It did it for over a decade. Then now as time has passed and the company has changed hands, half the population of this game is flat out ignored. And you know if it was the other way around, you would be complaining. Well, it seems to me like you are an adventurer who is only concerned with what you enjoy in the game, and only want to play your half of the game, adventuring. I do blame the game. Crafting was one of the big draws to this game, and still is. To ignore half of the game's base of players and fans, is financially detrimental.
Face it, daybreak is slowly killing of trade skilling. Because there is no money in it for them, no micro transactions in ts, no krono sales are needed for TSing. I think its short sighted though, crafting adds value to the game experience. What i resent though is being lied to, we were told this xpack was going to be better. its not, if anything its worst then bol. Recipes you can't get, or patterns you cant get, Items no one wants or worst heirloom.
I know that coding and scripting is time consuming, but creating a crafting game is simple. Make less items in the tradeskill books if you want to save time and energy. But all crafting should have the following principles (which I've stated before, when asked by the devs what we actually want): 1. Tradeskill timeline doable by adventure level 10. 2. Mastercrafted armor takes a rare and should be the gear for starting heroics. 3. Advanced tradeksill books should be available as drops on regular overland mobs, and always tradeable. 4. Have a non-aggro harvest spot. Sadly, now I have to add: 5. Basic books are purchasable from the guild/city vendor without restrictions. 6. No more gimicks like shadow materials or patterns! 7. Tradeskill quests should reward tradeskill items. The best rewards would be advanced books!
^ This. Why on earth they felt the need to completely change a system that had worked fine for the most part of 16 years is beyond me. Especially since they currently lack the resources to devote to these kind of changes anyway.
Fundamentally CRAFTING and ADVENTURING, are 2 very different systems. Barriers and gates to content, via heirloom and other requirements, Need to be different for crafters. Crafting is a solo game, no one groups for crafting, you go out and you do some harvesting, you come back craft some stuff and complete a mission or put it up on the broker for sales. The problem is that daybreak doesn't make any money of this solo system, so they use the same gating they use for adventures, they make it so you need to use ils of refuge to transfer items. Why not? from DB's point of view they made 76 million in profit last year selling kronos and station cash, for them the system works. For now..... Its shortsighted though. The barriers and gates to the crafting system are killing it, - you don't craft something you cant use. - you don't craft something whit unavailable components. - you don't craft acrylia, when its worst then the previous xpac - you don't craft something that's not useful I could use an hour listing every thing that's wrong whit crafting, the list is long. Don't you see were this is headed? the slow death of the crafting system. in 10 years from now, kander will announe on is podcast that tradeskill classes are being discontinued. In 2030, eq2 will become a pure adventure game. I understand the need for gates and barriers, the point I'm trying to make is that they need to be different, because the systems are different. Get cancer, call a doctor. Your house catches fire, call a fireman. Don't use the same medicine for different needs / goals Ideas: Want to slow down incoming crated items? easy, change the time on the crafting pop up, 5 min per craft. Want to ramp up the difficulty? easy, miss a counter you die and lose the mats. Want to increase your station cash sales directed at tradeskilling? Easy, put up an un-heirloomer on TS gear on the market. Want that one recipe you need but cant get? Easy, 1 token per mission, after 30 tokens you buy that ancient your looking for. Want to make more millions for DBG? EASY, items that are useful that we all want and are fully tradeable, make your money on the back end. Instead of slowing killing of part of the game, expand it, use it. Quit whit the shortsighted barriers.
You need patterns for MC accolades? I just can't with this rubbish. If their intention is to make crafting just a bit more aggravating with each expansion, they're going about it the right way. At the start of this expansion I had mount patterns with no recipes. Now we have recipes with no patterns. I'm honestly starting to feel like we're being trolled. And is there some reason the Shadowscream Barding book etc doesn't drop from the harvesting quests? You know the harvesting quests that actually cost us plat to do. I thought Jen Chan was a crafter, I honestly doubt it. Not one single person could think crafting is in a good place. NOT ONE.
I am somewhat glad that they scaled back on a lot of the soloer-hate on adventuring from previous years, though I can't say for certain how it is at the high-end levels. I blush to admit I haven't done much beyond Thalumbra. It sounds to me like they're either afraid that throwing us our bones again would a) drastically reduce their revenue stream (doubtful, since crafters do actually often play other aspects of the game; hell, I often go to the Marketplace to purchase Building Blocks I missed out on during the City Festivals, if possible [no Triangle "Tiles"/Blocks is an occasional setback], and as long as they keep House Items around and NOT CONSTANTLY VAULT THEM, that ought to be a good money-spinner for them. Keeping the Player Studio items around is brilliant; thanks, devs! ). Hell, if they'd just LISTEN to us about putting up the goodies from the Collector's Edition up on the Marketplace a la carte in a year or two after an expac release, trust me, if they make a decent set of Building Blocks for their prestige houses, they'll make a chunk of change that way. Or, it could be: b) some high mucketty-muck really, really hates crafting because, Reasons, and is trying to do away with it deliberately. Signs seem to be pointing in that direction. Full of micro-transactions and "pay-to-win." >:-/ That last is brilliant. Well, they're all really good suggestions, but that one is the most brilliant. Question: how would they make their money on the back end? If they still had Vox or The Bazaar servers, they'd make it that way with commission fees on the Broker (and I'm not sure why there had never been as egregious an exploit hitting the Broker economy on those two servers that we have now [seriously, this Weimar Republic crap is ridiculous; we need an austerity program of no more than 100,000p items for sale on the Broker. You want to charge more, do it on the Auction channel]; guess they actually faced some sort of consequences on those two servers if it had happened?), but I'm not sure how else. :-/ Then again, I haven't taken any Econ classes (just history and living through RL inflation)... ;-> Uwk
I'm really disappointed that not even the basic recipe restrictions were removed with the patch. I still don't understand why that was ever implemented in the first place. Either none of the powers that be even read the Tradeskill forums or they don't care. Some sort of response to all the questions that have been asked, & suggestions made here & many of the other Tradeskill threads would have been nice. I assume it all would have been no, no and no we're not doing any of that. It's our decision to make because we're the gods here so screw you crafters, we don't give a damn about you. They don't HAVE to do anything about anything if they don't want to of course but some sort of explanation would be appropriate. I guess communication isn't their thing. Why so secretive? I've come to the conclusion that the only way crafters can make any reasonable amount of plat now is to buy Kronos and sell them. Crafters need more plat than ever now to buy those stupid patterns from the broker so they can CRAFT. The cost of paying for patterns just to outfit 1 character is going to cost millions of plat, that's only if you can get the patterns you want. After 15 years of playing eq2 I never thought the day would come that I say I'm fed up with the direction crafting is going. It's such a shame to see it going down the toilet.
The patterns are pointless. Whoever implemented shouldn't be allowed to have anything to do with tradeskills. I'm going to guess it was the same person that put block on almost every piece of cloth armor. Even when MC armor was in Advanced books, the only time it is, and was useful, is at the START of an expansion. And as for having to get the patterns from Heroic zones? Why the hell would you bother? You're going to get better / equal gear in the heroic zones anyway. MC gear does not equal raid gear. None of it makes any sense to me. It's just one stupid decision after another. It's sad that Jen Chan seems to of made no positive impact on seemingly anything. I thought crafting was her thing.
Which is why an austerity program for the Broker, I think, would be a Very Good Thing. Yes, the speculators would whine and shriek bloody murder to the skies, threaten to rage-quit, threaten to spread all sorts of nasty, vicious lies (or even truths... ;->) about EQ2, DBG, DPG, whatever else they can on the Internet, etc., etc., etc. Screw them. If they want to destroy people's personal economies, let them try to do it on the Auction channel; leave the grand majority of us alone and let the prices in general come back down to sane levels. :-/ In the meantime, it wouldn't matter if the stupid necessity of the patterns, etc. were a little pricey (or even continued to exist); most would be able to afford them then, I think. Screwing over everyone else on the Broker isn't the only way to make plat. ;-> Uwk
It may be her thing, but if she's the overall uber-head of DBG, rather than just Darkpaw, she may not be able to do much at a more "ground level." :-/ Plus, if no Red Names are bothering to read this, maybe we should shift it over to her Letter, or convince Kaitheel or someone more crafter-friendly to open a thread for us in the top-level forums, where it might get noticed. :-/ Or even on the Wish Lists in the Norrathian Homeshow forum; we have been known to get results there. Uwk
I wish Kaitheel looked after tradeskills. It's more than obvious he has passion for his job, the players, and the game.
I moused over the Research Mission Reward Crate and noticed the list of rewards. I couldn't see Shadowscream recipe books listed nor any Void Etched mount patterns. There were a lot of Armo, jewelry etc patterns listed but I don't think all of them are covered. I thought this is a good thing! However on EVERY hand in I received either a shadowscream recipe book and/or a void etched pattern. Are they now the dud rewards that they're too ashamed they're to list? It's so ludicrous it made me laugh out loud. I definitely agree with you that we're being trolled. I think EQ2 has turned into a dictatorship. It's nota fun game to play any more.
You're showing how little you know about the way EQ2 was marketed. It was absolutely sold as a game where if all you wanted to do was harvest and craft then you were able to enjoy the game that way. It changed over time, harvesting of course gets harder as you go up in tiers, mobs get higher level, and you stay low level. Most crafters overcame that obstacle by leveling one adventure class to cap. Heck, most of us had at least one anyway. BUT the issue now, especially with these stupid patterns and recipes, is that you need to level multiple crafters to adventure cap. How would people who don't play the game primarily for crafting feel if they had to level each TS class to cap in order to progress alts that they adventure with? This thread made me sad to read. At the same time I really don't understand how people thought it would be different considering what happened last expac. It's going to continue to get worse as long as the current restrictions on crafting developing stay in place. Gnija is hamstrung and can only do so much and literally nobody else cares. There wouldn't even be a TS sigline w/o Gnija as it stands.
To a certain degree yes they are dictatorships. However, a business is there to make money of course, and if they're producing a product, it should be the very best quality they can produce. That's not the case here. Unless of course this is the best quality can produce, In which case they shouldn't be producing anything. Also isn't it their duty to talk to their customers if they're not happy with the product and try to rectify any problems the customer has? That's not the case here. As customers, paying for a product, we are being ignored. That's not good business practice. No paying customers means no business. It's not just crafters who are showing their displeasure. So many posts complaining about 1 thing or another that's so wrong and botched up with EQ2. Very few complimentary posts. I feel for the people who bought the expansion thinking they would have a couple of great mercenaries to use, only to find out they can't access the zone to hire them because their level is too low and they were not told this BEOFRE they spend their money. I hope that restriction is lifted. I tried to find some information about how bad mercs are this expansion. The one question I wanted answered is why does my tank merc only have 300 mitigation? There's no celestial tank merc and the fabled SK mushroom man isn't any better that the Fabled SK from BOL. Maybe ill start using Monila as a tank. At least she has 15K plus mit lol. Can anyone answer any of those questions for me? Not that any of that really matters anyway because I'm done.
