Quality levels of crafting process - update on changes

Following the discussions in this thread (thank you all for the feedback), I'd like to talk a bit more about what's going to happen in the future with the different quality levels of the crafting process. To summarize, the intention is to remove the lower quality levels of crafted items, since (due to the way tradeskills and the game has evolved) pristine is nowdays considered the only desirable quality. As a crafter, I want all the items I can make to be desirable! And from the development side, it doesn't make sense to spend time and resources creating items that are only made by accident; it would be much preferable to use those time and resources more productively, for example, to add a larger number of different recipes.

So, where crafters currently can make four different quality levels of items, going forward, there will only be one quality of finished product. In order to get the finished product you will need to complete the fourth level of quality, just as currently in order to make a pristine quality product you need to complete the fourth level of quality. If you're accustomed to only making pristine items, you shouldn't actually notice any change at all. If you complete only the first, second, or third levels of quality in your crafting process, that's where you will notice differences.

Handcrafted items

• Currently, if you fail to complete the fourth quality bar, you get a crude, shaped, or regular quality item which can be sold to an NPC vendor to recoup the fuel cost.
• Going forward, if you fail to get a pristine result on a handcrafted item, you will get your fuel back, and possibly some harvests also, though definitely not all of them.
• Hypothetical entirely invented example: I try to make a "rotating meat bucket" handcrafted carpentry item. It requires 10 fuel, the primary component is 1 wood, the secondary components are 3 wood, 3 roots, and 3 metals. If I complete the maximum possible quality result, I get my rotating meat bucket house item, and nothing else. If I complete only three quality levels, I get 10 fuel back, plus 3 wood. If I complete only two quality levels, I get 10 fuel back, plus 1 wood. If I complete only one quality level, I just get my 10 fuel back.

Mastercrafted items

• Currently, if you fail to complete the fourth quality bar, you get a crude, shaped, or regular quality item which can be sold to an NPC vendor to recoup the fuel cost, but you cannot regain the rare harvest.
• Going forward, if you fail to get a pristine result on a mastercrafted item, you will NOT get your fuel back, but you WILL get your rare harvest back, which should be a boon to people inclined to link death or with cats who like to jump on keyboards unexpectedly.
• Hypothetical entirely invented example: I try to make a "tranquil ubercloth robe" mastercrafted tailored item. It requires 20 fuel, the primary component is 1 rare root, the secondary components are 5 common roots, and 5 pelts. If I complete the maximum possible quality result, I get my tranquil ubercloth robe, and nothing else. If I complete only three quality levels, or two, or one, I get my rare root back, but I lose the 20 fuel.

Multiple-crafted items

Items that are currently made in batches, including food and drink, potions, poisons, totems, and ammo, will not be affected by this change and will continue to work as they still do (ie, you get more of them if you get a pristine result, less if you don't). Edit: you won't get food back if you make crude, but you'll still get one back at the 3rd quality level and 2 at pristine.

Experience

Making a maximum quality item already rewards you with more experience than making a lower quality item does. You still get experience if you fail to make the pristine quality result, but you don't get as much. Initially, I don't intend to change that xp balance. Making the finished product will still grant more experience, getting a lower quality result will grant less experience. Depending on the feedback when it goes to testing, I'll decide at that point whether to tweak the experience balance between quality levels or not.

Lower level revamp

Initially we had been looking at doing this only for the Kunark recipes and onward. However, a number of people have raised the question of whether it will be more confusing for crafters as well as customers to deal with two different types of crafting. It would be possible to revamp the lower level recipes at the same time, so that crafting is consistent across the entire level range from 1-80. The possibility of a revamp of lower level items also is still being considered.

IF this revamp were done, it would imply a few other changes:

• Level 1-9 crafters will need durability buffs (in fact, this would be a good time to re-examine all the tradeskill arts)
• Top quality items would no longer be labelled "pristine", but would just have a normal name. Items crafted pre-change would be renamed to something else to distinguish them. For example, old items might be "pristine maple staff" "maple staff" "shaped maple staff" and "crude maple staff". These would be renamed to something like "maple staff", "average maple staff", "shaped maple staff" and "crude maple staff". The renamed "maple staff" would be identical in stats to when it was called a "pristine maple staff", it would simply have changed its name. The old third quality items would gain the new "average" adjective.
• UPDATE: it looks as if we'll most likely continue calling the 4th quality product "pristine" for now even though the other levels of quality will no longer exist, this is to avoid confusion, particularly on the part of the customer who won't be following these changes as closely as the folks in this forum are. Possibly at a later date when all the other changes are past history and everyone's comfortable with them, that might be revisited, but no need to overly complicate the changes.
• Better in-game instruction on tradeskill arts and how to use them would be added to assist new crafters in learning how to reliably achieve the best possible result.
• An all-level revamp would also imply the removal of Apprentice II and III spells, since it would only be possible to make Apprentice IV's. Which also implies that the "treasured" flag on them could then probably be fixed.

Your thoughts or questions on these changes, and on the possibility of revamping all level recipes at the same time, can be posted below.

OK, I've been working with this on Test, and my biggest problem so far is with the Mastercrafted not returning fuels. I have crappy DSL which enjoys dropping out from under me with no warning. Now, while getting the rare back is *wonderful*, is there any way you could recoup at least a partial amount of your fuels used? Twenty T7 fuels is a *lot* (to me), and if I could recover even some of those for a link death that's not my fault, I think this system would be about perfect. I know, I'm nitpicking. :wink: Also, I really think this needs to be applied retroactively to all recipes, or have a pop-up or something when you make one of the new ones, because this is going to confuse the heck out of new crafters. I know I nearly /bugged it on Test when I made my first one of the new recipes (that was before Domino said these changes were going in with GU36). When tiers 1 and 2 were revamped with no sub-combines, leaving tiers 3-6 the old way, it caused a lot of confusion and probably a lot of unnecessary bug reports or customer service tickets related to it. It's probably a good idea to try to head all that off.

It really doesn't matter. We won't really be able to get a feel on it until we can actually do it. T7 fuel for my sage is 6g91s loss of about 7 gold if I fail. Can'r remember the last time I failed an adept III so it wouldn't have any effect on me. Though I'm not sure how it's going to work as currently the 4 levels of adept III's are the same. Only difference is dust amount.
If your going to take a look at arts through the tiers and possibly resoing them. It might be a good chance to see if there are any alternative and more... Interested methods to crafting. Though I really am not sure if there is a better way to do it.

Don't forget though theres quite a few prisinte items out there that aren't desirable no matter what. I suppose that's a different topic.

I'm generally enthusiastic about your approach. My view is that ALL levels must work the same way so there cannot be an old way - read that as pre-Kunark - and a new way. If you're going to revamp then it must affect the entire spectrum of crafting.
My view is that, at higher levels, fuel is too expensive and that combines require too many fuel. I'd like to see a substantial reduction if the number of fuel needed per recipe and the unit cost of them.

I like what I see. Still would like a resource return on pristine handcrafted but, that's mostly because of the insane harvest reqs I see if current trend continues. For your lower level questions, buffs in general need to be discussed in a different topic. They are long overdue and require a discussion about what we are looking for and what can be done. Better in game instruction, well, I was really a fan of Dreak's workshop at launch. Give it a voice over/pop-up instructions that point out buffs,what they do and some tips how to use them. Removing App2-3 and changing the treasured tag? Heh, do you really have to ask? Is there really any negative? You touched on xp. What about pristine bonus? I still say the current setup prevents you from making needed and innovative changes/additions but, lacking quests, other sources of xp and larger crafting content in general, this is a very tough discussion to have. The name changes, do they really have to be made? Seems like a lot of work for no discernible reason to me.

I'll start another topic to discuss reaction art changes. Pristine bonus or not is also a separate discussion not related to this one, I know a lot of good points have been raised elsewhere, but I'm still pondering the pros and cons and options. What I didn't like in Dreak's tutorial was that it didn't touch on tradeskill arts at all -- instead it cheated, and you never even got any warning icons when doing the tin bar and spike, and were guaranteed pristine if you didn't click cancel. Whatever better tutorial information gets put into place in the future, will not cheat!

I think the system sounds really good. The mastercrafted recipes should have a higher risk since they're fancier. I can't tell you how disappointed I was when, after harvesting for months, I finally found a feysteel cluster, found a weaponsmith, and then he sent me a tell, "Oh no." "What?" "I didn't make the edge pristine" "Oh. Well, do you have any more feysteel?" "No, I can't afford any... Do you want a forged feysteel leafblade?" ... I really don't think it will be that confusing for crafters if there's a transition period when level 71-80 recipes are in the new system. It was a lot more complicated after KoS when the 61-70 recipes, scholar recipes from 1-19, and a few new 1-19 recipes had no subcombines and everything else still did. It would be simpler if they were all done at the same time though. I think level 1-9 crafters should get some kind of durability buff(s) either way. It's always been silly that you could only boost progress. It's like being a priest and not getting any heals until level 10. Changing the name of the top level result from pristine to normal isn't really a big deal, unless it's just a quick and easy "search and replace." I would just be careful to check that none of the crafted items have the same name as dropped items since that can get confusing. Something like \aITEM 470704253 1109734399ristine conditioned bone fighting batons\/a should have a different name than the treasured \aITEM 1568052135 -637453655:bone fighting batons\/a. This is only partially related but it would be nice if totems could be changed to follow the potion model, so that they had single charges and stacked up to 20. Othesus - Dirge - Lucan DLere Vaspar - Fury - Lucan DLere

Heh, never said it was perfect. In that one spot though it did teach a lot from placing to crafting itself. It also had a personal feel as opposed to the "Go do this..." we currently have. Best part is it was on the island so beginners really could try it out without getting lost in the main cities. Speaking of newbie experience though...actually, that should probably be it's own thread too.

I think one of the problems with levels 1-9 is that the tradeskill quest (which I think is wonderful) gives way too much experience. You certainly don't get a feel for crafting when you can get your first 10 levels in 12 combines. I don't think it should take long to level up but I think having people make at least 4 (I'd prefer 10) combines per level might give them more time to figure things out. There are SO MANY T1 recipes and they are basically wasted because they grey out so fast but even more importantly people have to decide what they want to be with no real idea yet what they are picking. And durability for T1 I think is a must... even if you don't change anything else. It seems crazy to me that while people are LEARNING they are stuck with the process being total luck. That is the time when it is most important to introduce the durability bars... once they get past T1 people think they know how stuff works so it is almost too late.

I agree that a change needs to happen like this (1 quality all the way through), although I did and still do vote for the returning of resources based on quality of item you make. It can literally take over a 1000 resources to get a level, and will certainly be way over this in T8. The chance to have some of those resources returned (like adornment creation) would certainly help this burden. I know back in sub-combine days most resources would sell on the market for 2c, now with the massive resource requirements to level the prices for many resources is 10s+ (one in particular is as high as 60s). I think a return of resources would help correct the massive drain the single combine system has had on resource requirements. That's not even going into the fact that some resources are used more than others but spawn less, making for a double drain on that resource. Go to any server and check out the prices on roots or ore compared to wood. Anyway I agree that there needs to be 1 quality of item per recipe I just hope that resources are going to be looked at in some way also (I just think they could both be helped along at the same time).

Here's a new thread to discuss the tradeskill arts, so we can keep this thread for discussing the quality level changes and possible revamp.

I can see one downside to this change. Currently if I'm making an AD3 on my alchemist, if I'm in a hurry I can stop after I finish the first bar and get an AD3. I don't get the experience for pristine, but then I'm not sure people routinely make mastercrafted merely for the XP anyway and at the price of rare loams on the broker I sure don't. If I get a bad run on the RNG and lose a bar of durability, it costs me some dust but I still get the AD3 to give to the customer and don't have to go through the whole crafting process again. Getting the rare back keeps it from being fatally painful, but with the cost of fuel in the higher tiers it's still more painful than currently.

I like the concept and would like to see it across all levels for consistency if nothing else.

I can already foresee an exploit to the changes when dealing with mastercrafted recipes. Someone can use the same rare component over and over again to get the experience from a rare recipe by stopping at the third progress bar. One way to stop an exploit like this is only giving experience if the fourth bar progress is completed (on mastercrafted recipes). Another way to stop an exploit like this is make the third progress bar mastercrafted recipe experience equal to fourth progress bar handcrafted recipe experience.

I am all for consistancy. If the change happens, let it be global.

Devilsbane wrote:

? Maybe I misread. I saw nothing about higher xp from mastercrafted so all this would be is a really expensive way to save one raw.

Deson wrote:

Mastercrafted recipes do give more experience then hancrafted recipes now. I did not see anything saying that would change.

Devilsbane wrote:

Never noticed. Is it more than double to make it financially worth it as opposed to doing writs or just grind handcrafted?

Devilsbane wrote:

That would be a bit silly of an "exploit". Since I don't believe that Mastercrated Pristine gives anymore EXP than a Handcrafted Pristine.
So, for someone to do that they would be #1 - wasting Resources(since they won't be getting anything but the Rare back) and #2 - paying Double the Fuel of Handcrafted to get the same crafting experience.
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*shrug* on the Whole Revamping of the Lower Tiers. Doesn't bother me one way or another.

• If you left it, it would just be one of the few differences in the Sea of Sameness that is Crafting in EQ2.
• If you changed it, it would at least be consistant and therefore easier to keep track of, explain, etc ..

:roll:
If you do change it .. you better think about sending Niami a box of chocolates .. she is going to have a hissy fit about having to revamp her database .. AGAIN! :shock:

For imbue recipes and the like(handcrafted included) how will less than pristine be handled? Neither stated system works particularly well for a fail and leaving it the same as current isn't going to be an option with less than pristine going away.