I'm not actually in favor of this idea, but thinking about it there is a way to overcome some of the largest drawbacks to adding more Tradeskills to a character. That being how do you split xp between several new classes? Especially if your primary tradeskill isn't at cap? All crafting generates a single type of xp. Going back and introducing 9 different types of xp and retrofitting all existing crafters would be a tremendous amount of work, with a possibility of breaking characters. The solution I came up with is: don't use xp to level the other classes. If you don't use xp, how do you advance? Well, this is Everquest, shouldn't a quest be involved? That seems appropriate. The tradeskill societies in Freeport and Qeynos offer writs to support the city, and reward city tokens. Maybe you could show some quest NPCs how dedicated you are to supporting the society and they would teach you their own skills? You don't advance 1 level at a time, but instead gain access to an entire tier of recipes and +50 to the relevant skill when each series of quests is over. So for example lets say we have a Baker that can train non-provisioners to make food and drink. To get the initial quest you need to be at least a level 20 crafter and not a provisioner. The NPC's first task is to turn in 20 city tokens to start the series. After that you need to do 10 daily tasks for the NPC where the NPC gives you a temporary recipe and has you make 12 or so of the item. After doing 10 daily quests you take a final "test" where you make one of those "do or die" no-fail combines. After you complete the quest you are rewarded with access to the next tier of provisioner recipes and +50 to artisan (aka provisioning) skills. The quest chain repeats with a starting cost of Tier x 10 city tokens, and the materials/recipes change as appropriate. If the dev wants to be a little cruel, force everybody doing the quest to make the combines in the NPCs stove so they can "watch what you are doing". That really seems appropriate actually. The first quest might not reward the increase in crafting skills. There is a prestige ability that gives +50 to all of your non-class skills. If dev wants players to struggle, the first bonus isn't really necessary. Actually none of the skill is really necessary, it just makes the crafting more reliable. I'm really not sure if this is a good idea. It would allow crafters to learn all the recipes. Problem: All the extra recipes would increase the load time of those players and possibly break their characters. I'm not sure if that is still a problem. All in all, it gets around a lot of issues by avoiding "leveling". One last suggestion: throw in a few achievements and titles, maybe every 3 quests? And additional titles/achievements for doing all the classes.
if this game had a crafting system like World of Warcraft (and other MMOs like WoW's, because ya'know it simple and easy to use and ridiculous with tradeskilling AAs), i would stay subbed and probably sub all of my 6 accounts again. But alas, this game has a crappy tradeskilling system.
I like crafting the way it is. It's not a simplified afterthought like other MMOs. That makes crafting a viable play style. Dumbing it down would ruin that.
If you hate the tradeskills, why did you even bother to reply? I'm not sure what makes you unhappy with EQ2's system, since you didn't elaborate at all, but really your entire comment doesn't seem to address anything in the OP. Maybe you should start your own thread and actually explain what you're thinking instead of posting randomly on crafting threads?
And what does that have to do with this thread? I get the impression that you're possibly against the idea, but not sure if you are. Or if you like the idea. Or why you'd make the Dumbing it down comment. In one word: Relevance?
No thanks, keep it the way it is. It is not really that hard to level up different tradeskillers. And honestly, I have all of the classes already so this would have 0 benefit.
nice post. my thoughts were to just eliminate (simplify) the top level of the TS system. by removing the xp part then there is no need to split across a toons TS selection. back in the day there was a grand attempt to innovate and make EQ2 TS as entertaining and challenging as questing or hunting mobs, but due to issues it was never achieved. a leveling system was added to toons, tradeskilling, and guilds. the guild leveling system looks solid, but the TS system is not so much IMO. i suggest they take the classic MMO approach, thus uncouple xp from the tadeskills. then they can normalize the leveling based on the progress in the tradeskill class. the mats, recipes, and quests would have to account for the change. EQ2 is well designed, it should not be a major challenge for dev and has the benefit of making TS a little more clear for new players and more flexible for old players. i really don't see an issue with one toon having ALL tradeskills but 2 or 3 would be a reasonable compromise IMO. when EQ2 added a secondary TS level they already took the first step to being like WoW, it IMO is time to complete the work.
I think the biggest issue would be number of recipes... I seem to remember there being an issue with it causing problems and that's with only 1 main tradeskill...
they write scripts to do bulk changes. shouldn't be more than the change coming next xpac with wardrobe or classes.
Yeah, I mentioned that in the OP. I'm not sure if its still a problem. I vaguely remember them doing something to make loading faster that might of done something with recipes. Or that could just be wishful thinking.
I personally think they shouldn't change it to multi-class trades. Why you ask? I ask why should they? So people can spend less time than they already do interacting with other players? People like to toss around the "This is an MMO, why should you solo?" for adventuring things, I feel it's the same in regards to crafting things. If you by chance choose to not actually level up various alts in the current system, you SHOULD have to interact with other players, even if it's just buying from the broker. It sounds like a 'fix' for people who don't actually like crafting and would rather blow their plat elsewhere than paying the people who choose to do crafting for their services. On the same note, why not just remove levels from adventurers too? Make it so everyone can be every class Just do quests to unlock them all. Quest up your spells for power. Scrap everything else. Individual classes are overrated. Before you get up in arms about that suggestion, it makes about as much sense as completely deleting and remaking the whole crafting system from the ground up and I was not serious. It would be an absolutely ridiculous change to make from the ground up. Maybe they can add 'prestige' crafting or specialty crafting or heck ascended crafting in light of the new expansion of some sort at higher levels where you can learn another skill from the ground up, but completely reworking the entire system to satisfy the "I want to do it all on one character!" crowd is silly.
The problem is when a character zones it loads all of its character info, which includes all of the recipes the character knows. This resulted in some characters that had thousands of recipes taking noticeably longer to load. The fear is that if you have too much data to load that eventually your character will get to a point where the server will end the process before it finishes loading. i.e. you could break your character.
Maybe you should read the OP post again. There is nothing about removing the current system. The idea is you can quest to broaden out what you can make, you still need to level up the good old fashioned way first. As a matter of fact, if you do exactly what I said in the OP, it will take you a bare minimum of 10 days to gain a single tier of new recipes. 90 Days in total to get to T11 crafting. If you make an alt, you can get to 100 in less than a week if you try. And basically this entire idea was on how to add 1 or more crafting classes without reworking the current crafting system.
kindof on topic of recipes (and can be extended to spell scrolls and such). EQ2 is borderline RNG (random number generator, or gamble) when it comes to getting drops for recipes and spells/desc. added to the mix, peeps are putting key recipes and spells on the broker for unreasonable amounts of coin. so if you cant get the drop you need to have the plat to buy what you need. all because of RNG nature. RNG has killed many games, it has been replaced with quests to get needed items... the spell and scroll lists should be bit maps at this point (makes it a smaller data structure). my guess is they made the wardrobe list as a per character bit map also.
this thread is about adding the ability to have more than one tradeskill per character. it's not easy mode. you dont have to use it and continue to have one character per tradeskill. it does not add an advantage but does provide flexibility and fun IMO. EQ2 is in stiff competition now. Rift has some unique features and WoW has added some interesting features. neither game is easy mode. standing at a tradeskill workbench for hours on end looking at 6 buttons is not hard mode, it's just a time sink. puzzles in forms of quests, raids in the form of teamwork, and dungeons make or break a games mode IMO. EQ2 is far from done.
This forum is for trade skills dude. OP is talking about a trade skill change. May want to take your concerns to the other section.
at this point secondary is a wart on the EQ2 tradeskill system. the tinker skill-ups are pure RNG, no skill involved. when we spend hours mashing 6 buttons to level tradeskill it's hard to group or be social. focus is always on hitting the best combination of buttons... tradeskilling is a solo adventure.
The folks that want to be self-sufficient will do so whether there is a system for multi-classing in place or not. Ask a dedicated crafter or decorator how many alts they have purely for updates like PoP or the shawl. As for how to work it into a game with segregated XP, I could see a system similar to the original in Horizons (now Istaria) being viable. You train for a single class (both pve and craft) and can visit trainers to 'add' other classes, sometimes a quest, or series of quests are required. You then visit those trainers to flag whatever class you would like to use or progress as active so that all xp and the like are attributed to the active class.
If people don't enjoy tradeskilling and find it boring or worthless or whatever the current popular excuse for de-professionalizing them, then don't do tradeskills. Enjoy adventuring or raiding or whatever else it is that people do in the game and simply let others who deeply enjoy tradeskills help you with the tradeskills you hate on the rare occasions you find yourself needing something. They are not, nor should they be, a minor tack-on skill for adventuring classes. Believe it or not, many of us find tradeskills to be very enjoyable/relaxing and NOT tedious or boring. One character can pick a primary tradeskill, have two secondary tradeskills, can learn to transmute and harvest, and even craft many items outside of their profession during the multitude of signature quests, dailies, weeklies, epic quests, faction, writs, gaining special currency for tradeskill-specific items, and other tradeskill opportunities out there I'm forgetting. I have to wonder if the people who are here saying that their single character should be able to do every tradeskill have even bothered getting the most out of the tradeskill characters they have, or are they just complaining that the multitude of things that a tradeskill character can currently do still somehow isn't enough?
