Pristine bonus changes coming

Heya folks,
Waters gave me the OK to post in advance about a change we've been testing out in beta. It's going to seem like a big change at first, but we feel it's the best solution to an issue that's been causing complaints since launch if not before.
The issue is the fact that the game awards an XP bonus to crafters the first time they make a new item to full quality (aka "the pristine bonus"). Although this was long before my time at SOE, my best guess is that this was originally implemented because pristine was supposed to be the unusual, rare outcome of crafting, and the "normal" level of a crafted item was supposed to be the third bar of progress. So this would have been intended to be a rare reward for an unusual feat. However, almost immediately pristine quality became the standard, expected result of crafting, so everybody could make every item to pristine quality and thus get the bonus. The side effect of this was that classes with more recipes therefore got more pristine bonuses, giving them a significant advantage to leveling speed.
The difference between classes in the number of recipes is pretty significant, mainly due to spells. Scholars make the spells for adventuring classes, and with roughly 2 spell upgrades (at 2 quality levels each) per level per adventure class, and 24 adventure classes who can reach level 90 each, a little mathematics shows you that spells alone account for 8000+ recipes in total, an entire half of which (12 classes) are made by sages. As everybody knows (and many frequently complain about) the other crafting classes get nowhere near this number of recipes. It would simply be impractical to try and give equal recipe numbers to everyone; for example an adventurer is never going to need 2 new weapons per level every level from 1 to 90 even if we could add that many more meaningful recipes, which we certainly could not. And it would benefit nobody in the long run to add more recipes that are useless, just for the sake of adding them. Nor is it a simple or satisfactory solution to try giving classes with fewer recipes a larger bonus; we had a longer discussion about this in beta which I won't detail here, but suffice it to say I don't believe this could ever produce a truly fair balance and it would not be a simple or low-work solution to implement on the back end either.
The root of the imbalance is clearly the pristine bonus itself. It's essentially a reward for having more recipes, so of course the classes with more recipes get more rewards. Therefore, after much discussion, we believe the best solution is to remove the pristine bonus. Without the bonus, it doesn't matter how many recipes you have; everyone is on the same footing and nobody is either rewarded or penalized.
With the launch of Destiny of Velious, the pristine bonus for crafting will be removed.
The immediate next question is how that will affect leveling. Crafting items will continue to give the same amount of XP as ever, so whatever you get from making an item now, you will continue to get after the expansion launches. You just won't get an extra bonus the first time you make it. However, to compensate for the removal of the pristine bonus helping speed people along, what we have done is increase the amount of xp awarded by tradeskill quests (including, but NOT limited to, writs).
Tradeskill quest XP will be increased to compensate.
Basically, this is what we expect it to feel like:

• if you formerly had very few pristine bonuses, and just crafted the same items over and over, leveling up will feel pretty much the same as ever.
• if you formerly had a lot of pristine bonuses, and crafted one of everything in your new books, leveling up will feel slower after this change.
• if you run through crafting quests and/or do crafting writs, the speed should feel comparable to how a scholar class would have leveled up with a ton of pristine bonuses prior to this change. So, should feel like about the same leveling speed for scholars, and will probably feel a bit faster for classes with few recipes.
• there is no longer any need to make one of every item in your recipe books just to turn around and sell them to a vendor, which should be nice.
• there is no longer any reason to hold off on making your exciting new items until a level cap raise to "save up" pristine bonuses - if you have a recipe and want to make it, do it!

Overall, nobody should be leveling up slower, and low-recipe classes will find it now feels faster, since they will now be on an even footing with the scholar classes.
I realize that big changes like this will always have a mixed reaction, and change is always worrying in general and takes some time to get used to. Unfortunately, I don't believe there is any one perfect solution here that would please everybody completely - life just isn't like that, alas - but I do believe this is the best solution we could find to produce the best outcome for the majority.
Once Destiny of Velious goes live, I'm sure there will be a lot of feedback on the changes, and we'll be keeping an eye on it to see whether there are any issues or whether the xp bonus needs tweaking at all. In the mean time, I hope that you'll take the time to think about the reasons I've explained above, and wait until the expansion to try it for yourself before drawing a conclusion about the changes.
Thanks for reading!

(edit: corrected typo!)

Seems you've made a good choice here. I like that you've increased the experience rewarded via other methods, to soften the blow of missing first-time pristine bonus xp. This will be fine, I think. And I think most people will agree, running around and doing quests or helping to level one's guild is far more rewarding and enjoyable than just making everything once.

DominoDev wrote:

I hope you mean "but NOT limited to".
Sadly this does mean the only way to level up crafting after DoV launched IS to endlessly do writs for every class. No break from writs to make new things, just do the writs over and over. Since only 81-90 has writs ever 2 levels, this means doing the exact same small group of recipes, ad infinitum, for all classes for 80 levels.
While I am not sure what a better solution than "nerf everyone" could have been, I think its rather sad to be stuck with nothing but a very mindless grind.
I'm positive this will cause a lot more crafting via bot than in the past (and my guess is that already over 50% of crafting is botted) since there will be zero reason to change recipes when not doing writs and only limited recipes used while doing writs.

Tock@Antonia Bayle wrote:

There are only handful of quests and many guilds are level capped.
There aren't enough quests to gain more than 2-3 levels per teir in the lower level ranges and 1-2 in the upper ones, until you hit 80+ when you can get about 4-5 levels from crafting. Leveling via quests works heaps better for adventuring since there are a heck of a lot more adventuring quests for all levels.
Welcome to the grind for all classes.

Rijacki wrote:

Oops, yes. Thank you, added the missing word in.
I should have also remembered to reiterate too, we do hope to continue adding more tradeskill quests and improving lower level writs on an ongoing basis as time permits, no change in intention there.

I think Domino addressed these concerns pretty well here:
DominoDev wrote:

I think there's more than a "handful" of quests. It is possible to completely quest your way to crafting level 90? No. But did you expect no crafting?
(That's the rhetorical you. Rijacki and I already know we disagree on this.)

I do suggest waiting to draw firm conclusions about it until you've actually had a chance to try it when Destiny of Velious goes live. With a complex system like EQII's crafting, it's very difficult to accurately predict how a change will "feel" until you do physically try it out in game.

Since there is no level cap increase coming, it's gonna be pretty hard to make any judgements until there is.

This seems like a good change to me. Finally it means all the pristines I didn't get leveling up (Halloween stuff, I got my eye on you) doesn't matter.

I look foward to this in game.

Rijacki wrote:

Domino would you please post the OP in the EQ2X forums also.
Of all the thousands of recipies out there, 90% or more are now rarely ever going to be made. The only ones being used will be the items in writs. Consumables and a few containers will still be made along with some furniture but what is the point of having books filled with 47 different levels and variations of a "long sword" if there is no reason at all to make them? Why would anyone waste money on a crafting book if none of the recipies are used in a writ? Why even bother acquiring advanced books that are not the current top tier? Most recipies had little value beyond the pristine bonus. Now they have no value at all!

Calthine wrote:

I sure expected crafting something other than writs occasionally.

Sounds good to me and it makes sense.
Just means I can stock pile some city coins since between the two I most often chose crafting each recipe for the bonus over doing the writs. And every city festival that came up, I was always sad for that decision, lol.

Thanks for releasing this info a little ahead of time, Domino, so that those who will be affected have some advance notice .
I have to say that it does come as a bit of relief to me. As a level 90 carpenter, I cry inside everytime cool new furniture recipes are added (and I'm sure there will be some coming in Velious) and I know that I won't get bonus exp for my first time combines.
It will help my guild level too, since I tend to wind up leveling mostly via pristine exp rather than writs. Can't resist that first time bonus .
In regards to quests -- don't forget, although there's no level increase in the expansion, I'm sure there are likely to be new crafting quests. And as we provide more feedback to Domino about how the change affects levelling at various tiers, perhaps she will be able to add some quests to fill in some of the gaps.

Calthine wrote:

There's crafting in the quests. Making new items is as much crafting as making the same item ad infinitum for writs, so I don't know why you'd assume "no crafting" was expected. Or did you mean to say "did you expect no mindless grinding of the same thing over and over?"
As for HANDFUL. Yes, there are several quests -now-, but it still only gets you at most 2-3 levels in each group of ten levels and then only in the lower levels. After that its 1-2 levels gained from quests and the rest from writs until the SF crafting quests which is about 5 levels. If all the levels were like SF for crafting content, then the idea of "you can gain most of your XP through quests and writs" wouldn't seem so... well.. onerous and nothing but grinding the exact same recipe for 5 levels.
Yes, I do have a carpenter (2 actually, with one at 90). Yes, I do have a woodworker and provisioner (2 provies, one at 90), and a tailor (90), armorsmith, and weaponsmith. I even have an alchemist (90), sage, and jeweler. I have only four 90s 'cause I don't just sit down and grind them out since getting them all to 90 isn't my only game motivation or desired game play (I only have one level 90 adventurer, too *laugh*).

Banditman wrote:

New levels are quite likely to be like 81-90, writs every 2 levels. For 20 to 80, you'll be doing the same recipes -only- for x4 to x9, 'cause those are the writ points. For each class there are, I think, 4 writ combinations using 6 recipes per writ point.

Is it the end of the world? No. I have a 90 Jeweller, Sage, Alc and Tailor and each one was levelled a little differently. The most recent was Tailor taking advantage of the new Craft quests and via writs.
I have no problem with removing the Pristine bonus but I do feel a little sad that it's being done because some have whined about some levelling faster than others. Adventure classes are not balanced in levelling speed and I don't really see why crafting classes have to be.
Of course I would love to see more crafting quests added. In my ideal world you'd be able to use quests to level all the way to 90 but I understand how labour intensive adding all of those quests would be.

I had the good idea to save my feedback and test on the beta boards before they closed down said boards. Here it is.
Whilhelmina wrote:

I had made a previous test which was far worse but the xp gain for writs was doubled in the meantime so no need to post it back

Eveningsong wrote:

Lordy, Eveningsong, I hope you're right about new crafting quests, especially for Provisioners. There are few things in this world WORSE than having a Provisioner, I swear (forget buying NPC food/drink; it's awful), largely due to complaints that I feel are unfounded. My Provie alts have made money hand over fist when they can actually stand still long enough to do the whole smegging bit of countless makes to get to stacks of 20. But when they do and Broker them, they do make far beyond their materials cost, both on Live servers and Test, so I don't see how raising the numbers of product per make from 1-2 to something like 2-4 would destroy the game. It certainly didn't kill the world when Alchemists got theirs raised to 3-10 (I'll get lynched for saying this, but I'd be willing to pay as much as Alchemists do for their fuel if I could get their results!). One argument is that people don't use Alchemist potions nearly as often as they do food/drink (one would think that would be a reason to increase the Provie results!); I just turn my Auto-Consume off unless I know I'm going into combat.
That being said, one of the best ways for Provies to level is in making Pristines (in a way, it's sad we don't have any need for Advanced books at all, and there's only Adornment type things to do besides making basic food/drink); I am sad that's going away for them, but my Armorers (including yours truly!) and Weaponsmiths are grinning like rabid possums. ;->
Uwk

Enox wrote:

Thanks for the reminder, it is done!
And I think the fact that I could easily find a thread complaining about lack of pristine bonuses on the first page of both forums that I could link in the original post is a very good indication of the size of the problem.

As someone with one of each crafter maxed, I can fully appreciate what you are attempting to achieve here Dom. My Sage and Alchy could fly through leveling while the WW was akin to watching paint dry.
The only issue I have is that while I hated the grind, seeing each new recipe's result at least added some 'fun'. Sure selling things to vendors was a loss (I harvest the broker not real harvesting as it pains me lol) but I could maximize my time and still have a lil variety. Sadly now it appears you are leading those of us that view time as money down the path of endlessly grinding writs.
Yes I realize I can still do all the recipes but with no bonus, it makes no economical or time sense. It will be grind writs and/or make things repeatedly that folks buy again and again, either way grinding on all toons instead of just the ones that had few recipes.
Something to think about...