The new TS sig line might be a lot of things...

... but fun it is definitely not.

The second step had me rage quit yesterday, the first time I've done so since 2004.

I'm sorry devs the questline is a PITA, and to top it off you didn't add recipes to replace most of the important purple runes with orange ones.

It looks like I'm going to be wearing my epic 2.0 belt for a long time to come. Sad really.

Oh and make the EMP things permanent... I zoned out of there yesterday and they went *poof* which makes my desire to do the timeline even less.

What I'm hearing is the the story is pretty good.

Gninja simply designed what Gninja knows/likes to design in terms of content. He's not a tradeskill dev (And before someone says it, no you're not going to get a tradeskilling dev).

The quest rewards were terrible for crafting gamers. No furniture/neat nick-knacks, no tradeskilling stats, no interesting recipies, and let's not forget that, similar to class rebalancing, communicating that pack ponies and guild harvesters would not in fact be upgraded to current content was "overlooked."

Well, and the bugs.

I think a lot of folks would have tolerated the bugs and content design if they had gotten meaningful crafting/deco rewards.

I like a good story as much as the next guy, but when the raid developer is forced to do the tradeskill timeline, then Norrath is going to H E double hockey sticks in a handbasket.

I like gninja and I know he tried, but seriously, what this has to do with TSing is beyond me.

Yup. I do give Gninja a lot of credit for at least trying, and I do believe he did his best.

The failure lies at the feet of management.

You can see the raid mentality in the sheer amount of dets that occur while you are crafting. It's one right after another. I take back the EMP(D) statement though, after I crafted 10 more, I found the 8 I had left from yesterday.

I do suppose the crafting bag was a decent reward.

In fact, I think these guys could learn a lot from ESO about how to incentivize subs and cash shop revenue without resorting to coercive or p2w mechanics.

Over there, stuff is not cheap, but, they are always offering new and fresh things for people to buy that are cool, and the mechanical short cuts in the cash shop are merely alternatives that are convenient and can't be used to make your characters more powerful.

Convenience + fluff, but not p2w.

For example, their bottomless, account wide crafting bag had my sub the moment i learned about this feature.

P.s. kind of a de-rail. Apologies.

I'm not a TS fan.

Was forced to level up for epic 2. But I can say I really enjoyed the KA and ToT TS timelines. The story in parallel to the adv timeline was nice. going to the goblins instead of the iksar and trying to find the adventurers was nice idea.

Also, a lot of crafts to do. Yes you may run around, but you had to craft a lot. harvest also, move, avoid mobs sometimes. But everytime u had craft to do to be able to pass those mobs.

so it really felt you were a master crafter and using your knowledge to fight enemies.

here, few missions, few crafts to do that take too long. torden is a pain, u need to run everywhere. And innovation could be nice, but u die too easily. First make the oil at the begining of the building not insta kill you. make it damage u enough so u can't run through it. But not insta kill you. I died just because I was too fast and got me so frustrated.
Or what you should have done is make us repair those stuff in order to be able to pass. But once repaired, or hijacked, we had no issue anymore.

crafting is always using wits to overcome a problem. it doesn't always feel that way.

but the worst for me are the dailies.
If somebody didn't like the TS sig line but still wanted the reward. He had to do it all. But once done I thought it would be over.
But NOOOOOOOO .. once done, the dailies .. are doing it all over again ! and I don't want to ! so I guess I'll never do it :/. I did it once .. and what did I get ? --> a ab mod infuser. WHY ? why that kind of reward in a TS quest ? give us something you cannot get from adventuring. Coins to buy furnitures, furnitures, books, crafting gear ... but no infuser ...

and it's when u realise people don't want to do it again that it may be a fail :/

as a last note, Devs did work. you see there is work and thought behind it. They wanted to release something nice. But as somebody stated, it's not a tradeskill story. because the guy who did the signature line doesn't understand tradeskillers. but I wonder if he ever asked tradeskillers what they like ? what they enjoy in those quests ? Was there communication ?
He is a Dev, he knows his job. But tradeskill isn't adventuring. U need to relearn stuff. and especially what is fun to the people u design it TS and raiders don't necesarrily see fun the same way

Well after more deaths than I've had since learning the Heroic zones in KA, I finished the first part (when I wrote second part in the OP I meant the second step in the first part Security Measures).

And when I finally broke down and used the wiki (something I dislike doing, I like doing quests on my own) and saw what was in-store for the next part of the quest in Bastion of Thunder I told my friends "Had enough for today!" and logged out.

These are not nearly as bad as most people make them out to be. I've died a handful of times, but a little patience goes a long way. I know that's in short supply some times, people want to get in, get out, and not pay attention to things going on around them. I'll say even the few times I died, it was because I thought I could beat a pather or slip through to avoid waiting the next cycle. Maybe I have more practice with this from a long standing tradition of having low level crafters in high level zones harvesting or doing TS quests, but I really didn't think these were that much harder to do than prior ones.

I don't see an issue with the new TS questline really. Yes, it sucked the first time when learning it but then we figured things out and it was kinda fun. Quest #1 and #4 could have been written better though. They were a pain. However . . . .

My wife and I have all 9 tradeskillers. We left the game years ago when the level cap was 95 for both. We came back a couple months ago. I have 12 characters, 9 of them are 95/95 ( Adventure/Tradeskill ). My wife has similar. We spent the last few weeks getting all of our crafters to 100 preparing for the TS questline.

This last weekend we both burned through most of them. My wife leveled 7 crafters to 110 and I leveled 5 ( had other things to do ). This week we will do the rest. By this weekend we will have all 9 professions to 110. Once you learn the machanics, the questline if a piece of cake. Here's a couple tips:

1. The mobs in #1 cannot be killed and will most likely one-shot you. So, if you are a level 110 adventurer, it doesn't matter if you die? Take off 'everything" and keep it in your backpack so it doesn't get damaged. Run through in your undies. You get debt but you don't damage your gear. And the debt means nothing at 110. Also, once you get 1/2 way through and discover the center area, you can use death to your advantage. If you need to get to certain parts of the dungeon, just commit suicide and respawn closer to where you need to be.

2. Make about 30 EMD's and lay them out "everywhere" and kill everything as you go. Then, you can run around freely without fear. After the first or second time through, we didn't die at all on the others.

3. I think it was quest #3, make sure you have featherfall and "jump" from the top of the towers and glide all the way past the bridge. Saves a bunch of time.

4. No tips on #4 except take your time and dodge mobs.

The rest is just running around. Change to a AA config you spec'ed to run, harvest, and progress fast. We were burning through the questline to get the bag in a couple hours each character. Your mileage may vary.

Good luck and try to have fun. It's not that bad! And remember, the deaths in #1 CAN be used to your advantage.

Did he though? Did he say the pack ponies should be left alone and just updated. Did he push back when they added in the most ludicrous thing with you getting a quest from GUILD harvesters that sends you out and gives you coins for adventure? Did he when they made the end reward an upgrade to the tome that was earned via adventuring and has nothing to do with TS now. Did he do his best when they didn’t add orange rexipes in as you completed TS quests like they did purples instead of leaving them in as an RNG drop which oh by the way if you have Alt’s to ge then with you still have to do all 3 factions and sig line lol. Alt friendly right. So now my guild has all max tradeskillers and very few orange adorns on all the toons due to RNG. To be honest with you he probably didn’t push back. Feet of management is correct. They pretty much run wild and implement whatever hairbrain idea that pops up. Don’t congratulate them for trying when truely they did not. There was nothing fun or rewarding about this line but (before you say it doesn’t need done) you have to do it to earn an ADVENTURING charm lol.

Was 110 on 9 crafters before even starting the questline. Questline is easy. Not fun and not rewarding at all. BUT you have to do it to earn your upgrade TOME lol, which by the way you as a crafter can’t commission. Again. What other benefit comes from this line other than something for adventuring.

you have to. Or people won't even try anymore.

The question is more ... how will it be next time ? Will they rectify their rewards now ? will they add stuff in spring update ?

insulting people never helped

I've always seen the TS timelines as a relaxing FUN break from adventuring. This (while yes the story is well done) is neither relaxing or fun.

No, they will not rectify the rewards.

The rewards were not a mistake.

Bubble Gnomes.

yeah but they can add stuff on top of that .. or not. But insulting just worsen it. where there is hostility, there's no dialogue.

You have heard the phrase "Silence is golden"? Well, DBG should be extremely rich by now...

Well, insulting or offending are problematic ideas. You can take a position on anything, and sure enough, you will insult or offend someone who's identity is wrapped up in it.

In general personally attacking someone is not helpful. However, criticising an idea, argument, or behavior is fair game, even if it offends someone.

Regarding them adding stuff, I ask you to consider that the rewards were not merely the result of Gninja's area if expertise, but might in fact an intentional move to accommodate no future plans to support an independent tradeskilling game.

To check the plausibility of this argument, simply ask two questions:

(1) What would have to be true for them to support the tradeskilling game?
(2) Given what you have observed, what resource allocations best serve their interests 2 to 5 steps down the road?

I'm on my 3rd go around on the PoP TS Sig questline, it's not so bad in hindsight. My first time through, it felt like a chore but alts have made a quicker go of it.

My biggest disappointment of PoP tradeskills are my carpenter's terrible new recipes. There have been expansions before that felt underwhelming but normally it only involved 5 levels of recipes but within that, there would be something useful/pretty/unique. PoP is 10 levels of junk. The plants are the only saving grace but there is no furniture worth having. Why would I use rares to make rocks? Why would a carpenter make so many rocks/stones? I don't mind them existing but there should be at least a handful of recipes where you would consider using your valuable rares to craft. There is nothing in PoP that I would use in any of my 5 houses. I guess I could replace a few older plants...but beyond that....

The marketplace always has cute things. The ability to own neat items exists in the game right now but they want you to pay money for them instead of allowing you to craft them.

In Plane of Magic, I forget the name of the faction, but the one on the red platform. Some of those NPCs have amazing robes but the tailor who I spoke to yesterday lamented she has nothing remotely similar in her recipe books from the expansion. How is that? Again, the item exists, we just don't have access to it. Those robes are wicked cool. Would love to have one for my caster.

Lots of the things that EQ2 does really well aren't very unique these days. There are scores of fantasy MMORPGs to choose from but the aesthetics (even if dated in places) and the involved crafting/decorating system make it stand out to me as the game to keep playing. Hopefully, next expansion, the team takes the time to review how tradeskills were handled in previous expansions and create something new but something that feels like EQ2.