The final craft for the weekly tradeskill mission has been made significantly more difficult.

This just makes my hand hurt doing this 3 times on 3 crafters I have 6 crafters but I wont do it but on 3 it takes too long and its to annoying.

This debate has gone on for long enough to where if the Devs actually cared what we think it would have been changed by now. Changing a quest into a punitive task for no reason other than to appease a few snivelers on the pve side is just a poor way to treat your customers. I'm glad this post hit 22 pages and hope it sends a clear message.

You can just about zone in afk in BG's right now with a naked toon and within a week have a full set of gear, but once a week the players who have taken the time to level top tier crafters can't enjoy an easy quest?

If the devs didn't care what we think, the argument here would be, "Why is this a weekly quest only giving 2 etyma?" Stop for a minute and really think: If there really was a tiny group of adventuring folk who could ruin crafters lives and the devs would actually listen to them, they could do much worse than make something take 5 whole minutes. The fact is there is no such group and they did not make this change. If the devs were so easily swayed, I'm sure we would also see housing have all the essential npcs and unlimited resources available for crafting which would only take one little click.

Weekly quests aren't supposed to be easy. You need only look at the adventure side of things, where you have to go to 2 dungeons and clear out the boss of each zone. This is a significant step above the dailies which only involve going to one. I don't know how anyone can sit there and complain about crafters not having easy quests. Just about every quest is super easy. Crafting in general is very easy. It doesn't get any easier than having 6 buttons to press while you wait for an icon to appear.* Some of you just don't realize how good you have it (I think it's actually something else altogether). That's why you can have the ridiculous number of alts some of you have. If you tried to do it with adventurers, you probably wouldn't make it to 5.

* edit: It actually does get easier. You mass produce any number of items ahead of time and hail your apprentice a couple times to get a random prize.

I have 16 lev 95/340 chars now all above 600cc and I use the to run the heroic/raid zones. I stopped leveling all my toons as crafters when they decided to add the torturous Thurgadin timeline. Your logic might apply in your case but for a lot of us that actually play the full game on 20+ alts it doesn't

You're just padding your post count when you reply like that, for someone who still only has 320 AA on their main (according to your sig) i doubt you do much questing anyways.

Congratulations, you've uncovered a display error in the signature. That or folks like Tabri, Coldmetal, Rotherian and myself have all been exposed as lazy bums in the 320 club.

By the way, when I made my comment about the ease of crafting, I wasn't directly referring to you. I don't like to make assumptions like that about people. I was making more of a general statement that covered at least one person I know fits the description. Your accomplishments are irrelevant to the conversation, as are mine.

What are you even doing here? You say you haven't leveled crafters since thurgadin. You're being one of those PvE people you complained about earlier, trying to affect change in an area where you don't participate.

Perhaps if he got the sort of change he wanted, he could participate again?

Or, since "going into dungeons and clearing out the boss of the zone" is pretty much the very definition of EQ2 gameplay, (unless you're a pure decorator or something, in which case why are you grinding for etyma?) you could say the weekly adventure quest requires doing nothing additional... it's like the daily "loyalty token" thing. Zero additional work required on top of what you do already. Literally the easiest thing in the xpac. And you can stack the daily quests with them, since the targets are the same!

I mean, they don't even really have to have "etyma quests" for adventurers. They could just put etyma in the final mob's chest that only appears 1/day/zone or 1/week/2-zones, and nothing would change. Just announce the "etyma zones" like the old "hot zones" on the login window.

On the other hand, the crafter quest requires doing X minutes of additional stuff that doesn't overlap with other relevant quests or goals. So, infinitely more work than the adventure side. So, making "X" bigger is just punishing crafters for no reason, then...

...different points of view from exactly the same data; it just depends on how much data you ignore or how much you don't.

Or, if you want to count all of the "effort" of clearing 2 dungeons as the "cost" of getting that 10/15 etyma, you have to add all the other rewards to it. There's no extra plat chests and random war runes and guaranteed-drop loot and possible fableds/ethereals and personal status and plunderable furniture and dungeon shineys and whatever else on the crafter side. I'll trade a far-seas coin and 20 aduki beans for some of that. And if you want to count it this way, I don't think there's any possibility of balancing the two; the rewards are far too different. So, again, why the change?

If I take Mae's friend's "it was either this, or less reward" quote as dev-sourced, then, given the above... I feel the devs in question are just simply wrong. They identified two possible solutions to a problem that does not exist.

Even with all that said, I don't mind the idea of the quest taking some effort. There has to be some amount of effort, since reward for zero effort doesn't make a very good game, either. I mind it being so mind- and wrist-numbingly designed. I mind that people are here saying "just suck it up, and program your G15 keyboard to do it for you". There's a difference between X minutes of even-slightly-engaging mob-avoiding/harvesting content and X minutes of 4-5-6-pause-4-5-6-pause-4-5-6-pause-1-2-3-pause-4-5-6-pause-....-zzzz. This is a game; if a "balance" change cannot be made without removing "fun", it simply should not be made. Assuming, arguendo, that this was "imbalanced" somehow... "imbalance" in a game is a far, far, far smaller sin than a lack of fun.

(I'd actually go a solid step further, and argue that no pure balance changes should ever be made. All changes should be made only if they increase the fun of the game. Every "balance" change that is worth making can be re-stated as being about enjoyment. "Mob X drops gear that's less powerful than what you need to beat him" = "effort for zero reward is no fun". "Tank class X is all ways superior to Tank class Y" = "it's no fun to be Tank class Y, and also no fun to be in a relatively-gimped group with Tank class Y". etc. etc.)

The real problem is the tradeskill system wasn't designed to be so complex as to offer a variety of options for experiences. It was just a way of not making a simple click give a random chance to succeed or fail. Over the years, people who haven't quite grasped that have insisted that there need to be more quests and more rewards for the "poor crafters" who lack for something to do. Every dev's hands are tied for what to do with this stuff. There's only so much one can do with such a limited system. Pushing them to do more will get you nowhere. I've said this since the new forums were up and running. I rejected the idea of new quests altogether. Here we are moaning about extremely long progress and harvesting some herbs. If enjoyment is what you want then just skip the quests altogether. Find another way to get the reward you want. That's why they have multiple ways to achieve that reward in the first place. No one's holding a gun to anyone's head saying you must do this. Just leave it be and move on.

...which would be a reasonable argument if I said "the content has always been awful". I liked the content up until a month ago, then they sucked the fun out of it for, IMHO, capricious reasons.

...it would also be a reasonable argument if etyma weren't both time-limited and ultra-important. I'm only gimping my characters if I choose not to take every route available to get them.

This change is very much "eat your liver and onions, or go to bed hungry."

It took me 15 minutes today from first hail to last hail to complete both the daily AND the weekly quest. I just don't see what the big deal is. Sure, it's not the most engaging content, but is it worth all this grumbling? You really gotta pick your battles, and to me, it's not a huge deal. It's still a very quick way to make 20 etymas.

Something that seems to get neglected in all the posts about how easy it is to get 20 etyma is that the time it takes to do this is
168 hours and 15 minutes for someone who zones quickly. This is WEEKLY. and the etyma for doing it is 10 unless you pay an extra 15 bucks a month. The punishment long combine that often gets crashed while doing was a tack on knee-jerk response to complaints from players with an agenda. The length of the thread shows that unfair policy often is more annoying than glitches and other types of game annoyances.

What kind of "agenda" do you think people who thought a 5 minute quest for 10/20 Etyma was a little excessive had? Other than, you know, having an opinion different than yours?

The only person around here with an agenda is you. Because you overindulge in characters, everything needs to be changed to suit you. You act like the victim of a conspiracy, but you're really just the victim of your own desires (Your quote of 168 hours and 15 minutes says it all). You're mad at the world and trying to get it to change, when you should be making your own change.

The only thing the length of this thread shows is how we can spin our wheels on a subject ad nauseam. Honestly, we've gotten nowhere with this. It's been the same handful of people that don't like the combine and the same people trying to convince them how things really aren't that bad. There have been no new revelations or ideas in here for a very long time.

My agenda is now and has always been to have the best experience that requires the least amount of answering questions of why did they do that? Once it something makes it to live and seems reasonable it could be left alone.

There was no reason to extend the combine section of the last crafting part of the weekly crafting quest.
Nothing about the extended combine fits the rules of the current system or years of crafting gameplay.

For you, would it be a huge deal if they fixed it?

For me, it would! If, as you say, you don't really care about the time/tedium, then:

1) As-is: you/Deveryn/etc indifferent, me/Cloudrat/etc unhappy.
2) Back to the way it was: you/Deveryn/etc still indifferent, me/Cloudrat/etc happy again.

I can't see a reason not to choose (2), as it's a textbook win-win. And I really can't see a reason for you to continue arguing for (1) if you really are indifferent. Don't you have better battles to pick, as well? Or are you indifferent to every change in the game, and just happen to like discussing this one?

As for "picking my battle", this is easily the most bang-for-the-buck thing to fix in tradeskilling. Other stuff that I think is off (not much use for prestige abilities in ToV content, PvP herbs, no purple slots & "meh" stats on crafted equipment except the new charm, weaponsmiths having 5 greatswords and nothing for the other 22 classes, new notebooks not actually being notebooks) are changes that require a lot more developer work, and affect my overall game a whole lot less. This affects every 95 crafter in the game every week (either by making it less fun when they do it, or by affecting their decision on whether to do it or not... or, if they don't find any difference in "fun", by taking up time they could be doing other things), and requires the devs to back one change (or four identical changes; 1/recipe) out of their revision-control system.

This is a stupdendously-great hill to die on.

Actually, I would be pretty happy if it was the exact way it was. I think most other people would as well. I know the reality of the situation and I accept it. That's not indifference. True indifference would be me not even bothering to post here, like when that fighter revamp stuff was going on.

You know the reason as well as anyone else. Stop denying it. We've never had the opportunity to earn adventure currency through crafting, so there's really no point in trying to compare to anything we've done before. The extended combine fits the rules just fine.

Your agenda is pretty clear to everyone. Every other post you make is always about making things happen faster or be more convenient, whether you're bugging the devs for progress potions for SC or chiming in to get PORTraits to work for visitors or in guild halls.

You're leaving out a whole subset of people, the ones that don't post on here. The ones that heard crafters were getting a crap ton of etymas for very little effort and were not impressed. The ones that complained. The ones that forced the devs hands to do something. They did. The option to revert just isn't there, period. Quit asking for it, because it will definitely come with a reduction in the reward.

And, I'm not indifferent. I care about this staying the way it is, because 1) it's NOT a big deal, we all do boring stuff sometimes to get stuff we want, and 2) the alternative does not make me happy.

Again, I agree, they could have been more imaginative about HOW to extend the time it took to do this quest, but they didn't have the resources for that, so this is what we got. Take it or leave it, the alternative is worse, IMO.

You are looking at rewards and loot while my agenda is game mechanics and playstyle. I think that might be why we butt heads all the time lol. I was referring to how combines work lol I couldn't care less what the reward is.

And my answer to that is still in my long reply to Deveryn, up above.

The devs can use that same logic, and not cave in to the "tradeskillers have it too easy! nerf them!" folks.

Do we really think they're happy with this change? They're all still sitting there going "it takes an hour to do the adventure weekly and only 5 more minutes to do the TS one! It's not enough! Nerf it more!" Caving in to the "nerf the other guy" crowd is one of the poorest choices an MMO developer can make. It's even against the forum rules to call for nerfs here, for Brell's sake! (Which is why your "silent subset" is silent... if they posted here, their posts would get removed. Should the devs be making changes based on requests that would be forum violations? Certainly not.)

I can't believe that would be a valid part of the dev's decision, at all. Even if it was a knee-jerk reaction to such nerf-callers that caused this change... now rational, cooler heads can remove it safely.