i bet if he had been giving away something useful, like curatives or kirigami or a candy, it would have been snapped up. Trades are not made equal and this is known. if anything, keeping a limit on which trades people can have keeps the discrepancy - choose what will sell (consumables) or what if crafty and fun but no one needs to buy it (food, furniture).
While I'm not well-versed in trades enough to offer much of an opinion on the rest of it: why would you name a languages skill/miniskill 'lingualism'? It's not, at a glance, a word in English. Why not Linguistics, or possibly just Languages?
Instead of making you lose all proficiency for flexing trades, you get 1 free trade flex per weave. Any additional trade flexing costs you 10% loss to that trade. I think this is something people like me, who have a ton of trade skills, could live with. I don't mind being locked into 2 active trades at once so long as I can still use trades I've worked RL years for.
That looks like it would let you maintain 12 trades with a single slot as long as you switch one per day and craft one thing from each of them once you do so? In theory, with a second slot you'd be able to maintain all 16 we'd have after the overhaul even with that loss because you could have the remaining four on a three-day rotation which would be enough to recoup the 10% loss.
Given discussions about consolidating the trades which could leave us with just 13 trades after the overhaul, you could maintain all of them without loss by having one in your second slot and rotating the other slot daily. Which seems like... you just need to top up one thing in a shop each day and there is no negative.
Remove the combat relevant trans skills and unlock all trades.
Give all the tradeskills an active skill that that lets them
bless other players (Perhaps a bonus to aligned class/tradeskills ie.
warrior forgers).
Players get to choose one (+1 with artifact) tradeskill to specialize in. Respeccing has the same cooldown as classflexing.
Perhaps this spec choice also confers other benefits (faster
harvesting, etc)
Flexing out of your spec doesn't remove it. It's just an inactive bonus.
The gist of it is: Everyone gets something like oldschool coal runes which allows them to grant a temporary buff to their allies for a comm outlay, but they can use whatever tradeskills they'd like to craft whatever items.
While I'm not well-versed in trades enough to offer much of an opinion on the rest of it: why would you name a languages skill/miniskill 'lingualism'? It's not, at a glance, a word in English. Why not Linguistics, or possibly just Languages?
By the way, linguistics is the scientific study of how languages work, not learning new languages. The best way to upset a linguist is to confuse the two.
If you're going to remove aethertrade, I propose that the NPC that you'll be introducing be the next goop trader.
Every day, they will ask for a certain item(s) from a particular trade and once you fulfil that order, they give you goop as a reward. Then allow players to decide, regardless of what trade skill they have, to choose what to do with the goop, do they purchase scarves, candies, or artifacts.
For example, today NPC asks that he needs a chair (should be public design, not made by private cartels) to fulfil an order for their clients. Everyone can now look for artisans and the artisans themselves can work on the items, there's your engagement. The goop reward will be lower, perhaps half of what a unique tailoring item would give so that it won't be flooded.
Next day, NPC ask for a set of swords of this design so forgers have a chance to work and earn, then so on and so forth.
This way, this can probably solve player engagement, the feeling of the importance of that trade, and some sort of sink on commodities.
Please make magic tomes and philosopher stones items that anyone can buy from the crafter and use. Can remove the charge from the tomes and reduce the stone's sip bonus if needed, but I am very attached to my stone, it's a really neat item that just screams alchemy is cool.
i bet if he had been giving away something useful, like curatives or kirigami or a candy, it would have been snapped up. Trades are not made equal and this is known. if anything, keeping a limit on which trades people can have keeps the discrepancy - choose what will sell (consumables) or what if crafty and fun but no one needs to buy it (food, furniture).
Sure, kirigami and wetfold both look like more effort than they're worth to stock when they appear to be quite readily available. Seeing a similar look with curatives, some of the shops I'm popping into are individuals variety shops that are covering a decent selection of needs.
The latter also isn't a given, ease of switching limits the capacity for people to carve out a niche. Personally, when we didn't have skillflexing and if you wanted to change trades you had to completely forget the skill to learn the new one (With the costs that involves) I was actually an artisan and that was actually useful because other people did take consumables/etc and I helped fill that gap for making furniture and instruments. Which also made a bit more money cause people were more appreciative of being able to get their thing crafted tbh
Please make magic tomes and philosopher stones items that anyone can buy from the crafter and use. Can remove the charge from the tomes and reduce the stone's sip bonus if needed, but I am very attached to my stone, it's a really neat item that just screams alchemy is cool.
I'm kinda wondering if those bonuses could actually be migrated to guilds somehow, might be with a guild skin but could be a neat way to repurpose stuff.
I think this overhaul has a lot of good ideas. However, there are also some things that I think should be changed/amended or I think they will become overall detrimental. Here are some things that I think should be reconsidered/ changed:
- I don't think we should limit the players into a maximum of two trade skills at a time.
I have multiple trades active, not because I want to make a profit out of them, but because it's easier for me to design things for the trade skills that I know. Relying on another player to make something I designed is not quite the same as making something I designed myself when it gets approved. Not because I want to profit from it or anything, but it gives me that dopamine rush like I worked on something and now I have the end product in my hand (if that makes sense.)
You need to have the corresponding trade skill active to see your design submission in the city cartel, which is very useful if you need to correct something when the trademaster makes a human mistake.
One suggestion I have is not have a limit to the number of trade skills that you have, but you can only be proficient at two of them (I would much rather this proficiency aspect be not there at all, but if you must keep that aspect in the game, then this would be so much better for designers).
I think we have a diverse and fascinating array of trade skills available to us (even you, jewellery) and trying to limit us to just 2 of them is not fair. There is also trades which have mechanically next to zero use but I love the flavour, and I believe these trades will suffer if we are forced to pick and choose which trades to keep. Artisan is one of my favorite trade skills, but there would be no incentive for me to keep Artisan if I have to be forced into keeping Cooking (tied to my character rp) and bookbinding (the only thing that makes my shop not run at a complete loss).
This brings us to...
- Nerfing cooking by removing things to Brewmeister
I believe that this is a terrible idea. First point, "Brewmeister cartels" do not exist in the game and currently all the drink designs are submitted through Cooking cartels. This change will need a lot of overhaul wrt city cartels and such, and I think it's not as simple of a change as it might seem at first glance.
Then there is the thing where us cooks have become attached to certain drinks that we have made or incorporated the drink making as part of our character rp, and the limiting of 2 trade skills plus the splitting of cooking will force us to choose Cooking and Brewmeister as our trades and shut us out of all the other trades.
Cooking is as such not a profitable trade, we only make profit through purity dust and health and balance platters (which don't really have that many customers tbh). Nerfing it even further is not the best idea imo because most of the cooks in game (who rp as cooks) don't take Cooking for their mechanical benefit or profit aspect, but for the rp aspect. Cutting off half of that rp aspect is just frustrating.
I think Brewmeister is a useless skillset as it is and it should be nixed, and its current skills added into Alchemy. I think that merging trades instead of splitting it is the better way to go.
- I don't think Herofete should be removed from Cooking. It is a group buff that is never exploited and is just a fun rp thing in game, I don't know why this one gets the axe.
- I don't like the idea of mobs not dropping gold. One of the complaints that true newbies had was how hard it was to get gold from bashing, with all the competition. If you limit gold generation to quests and shopkeeping, I don't think it is good to newbies.
Not everyone is interested in shopkeeping, and you had already said that one of the main purposes of this overhaul was to let the people who don't want to participate in economy suffer because of it. I don't think shutting out other avenues of income is going to accomplish this goal, it will only have the opposite effect.
I remember at one point we wanted to increase Prime bashing and not just have bashing be limited to linking in Astral. I think this gold drop change is contrarian to that goal.
If newbies have to rely on quest turn-ins, then those quests are going to get swamped by people and it is going to be much more difficult to generate gold.
- I do actually like removing aethertrading, because that was what led to the abysmal prices of sugar and salt in the first place (and it led to a domino effect which has resulted in the pervasive commodity scarcity that we have). However, aethertrading is currently the only way that newbies have access to goop, and goop is important to get bashing and combat essentials.
Therefore, if you are going to remove aethertrading, I think you should also couple it with other goop generation avenues for newbies in game. Maybe it can be incorporated into daily credits. Maybe newbies can gain goop for getting a level instead of credits. Or perhaps quest completions can yield goop. Some avenue that encourages people actively participating in the game.
These are the suggestions I have, if I have any more, I will edit and add them!
EDIT: This change is also going to nerf Catalogues big time if we are limiting people to 2 active trade skills and discouraging trade flexing. It's already hard enough trying to find tattoos through a catalogue because so few have it active, as well as trying to look at some private cartel designs that you no longer have access to. You can only search catalogues if the person has that trade skill active.
EDIT2: I really like the farming mechanic, but I think it should be introduced as separate from trade skills, with trade skills already having limits. Personally, I think it should be a general skillset that you can gain proficiency at only through practice, and leave it at that.
If you are going to introduce Linguistics for language (another good idea. I never understood having to learn bookbinding to learn a new language or tying language to race, especially as it logically should make sense for you to for example learn Dracnari if you have lived in Gaudiguch for centuries.), I think this should also be a separate skill from trade skills. Either a general skill or an artifact skill.
You are startled as a lemon meringue pie bounces harmlessly off you after being thrown at you by Mysrai.
I'm not sure if you meant this as a good thing or bad, but essentially, yes. Those of us that have worked RL years to gain multiple trades don't want to lose all that hard work. It also would allow for anyone to maintain 3 trades without losing proficiency. I don't like proficiency overall, but if it's the way we're going, I feel like it needs to be looked at as losing a small amount to change trades. A good point I heard from someone else was just because I bake a cake doesn't mean I forget how to water my plants. So just because I decide I want to make a set of weapons for a novice, doesn't mean I should forget how to sew that same novice a set of clothing. That's my take on it.
Instead of making you lose all proficiency for flexing trades, you get 1 free trade flex per weave. Any additional trade flexing costs you 10% loss to that trade. I think this is something people like me, who have a ton of trade skills, could live with. I don't mind being locked into 2 active trades at once so long as I can still use trades I've worked RL years for.
That looks like it would let you maintain 12 trades with a single slot as long as you switch one per day and craft one thing from each of them once you do so? In theory, with a second slot you'd be able to maintain all 16 we'd have after the overhaul even with that loss because you could have the remaining four on a three-day rotation which would be enough to recoup the 10% loss.
Given discussions about consolidating the trades which could leave us with just 13 trades after the overhaul, you could maintain all of them without loss by having one in your second slot and rotating the other slot daily. Which seems like... you just need to top up one thing in a shop each day and there is no negative.
I'm not sure if you meant this as a good thing or bad, but essentially, yes. Those of us that have worked RL years to gain multiple trades don't want to lose all that hard work. It also would allow for anyone to maintain 3 trades without losing proficiency. I don't like proficiency overall, but if it's the way we're going, I feel like it needs to be looked at as losing a small amount to change trades. A good point I heard from someone else was just because I bake a cake doesn't mean I forget how to water my plants. So just because I decide I want to make a set of weapons for a novice, doesn't mean I should forget how to sew that same novice a set of clothing. That's my take on it.
It goes against the stated goals with a minimum 2-3 commands a day that you could alias (track to crafting room, switch trade, craft item). For context, I also have nearly all the trades which I got because of excess lessons and convenience. As proficiency decay is yearly not monthly, your suggestion would allow for anyone to maintain 12 trades without losing proficiency not 3.
Arguably the counter to the point about baking a cake seems like... a professional baker is very likely going to be better at such than a professional tailor. The tailor might be able to bake a cake, but it's likely going to potentially take them longer, not going to be as good, etc.
Being proficient across all trades seems to be the equivalent of simultaneously being a professional Chemist, Brewer, Bookbinder, Chef/Baker/Pastry Chef/etc, Blacksmith, Gardener, Jeweller/Lapidarist, Tailor/Costumer/Cobbler/etc, Tattooist, and... two other equivalent careers for enchants and poisons.
Whereas suggestions around being able to craft from trades without proficiency while only having two "proficient" trades allows the Tailor to bake a cake, just not as good as the pro.
Hey there! Tikki here! So, just running through some various opinions on my part. I'll also note that I'm writing this as I read, so if I miss anyone making similar points or addressing said points or if some things may seem a bit disjointed, I apologize!
- RE: Trade Proficiency: So much nope in this. Limiting the amount of trades players have already feels horrible in and of itself, but throwing in the idea of Proficiency just feels punishing. I love crafting, I love picking up new crafts, it's something Tikki does for reasons in character and as I only currently have 3/4 slots, I switch fairly often between certain ones to take care of certain tasks. It feels nice because multiple times I've had Luce or someone ask me 'Hey can you do this?' because, even if they may have that skill themselves, either they're not flexed into it, or they want Tikki to feel happy, since that's one of the big things that makes them smile, helping others.
I'm sure that the idea behind Proficiences and limiting the amount of trades people have is to make it so Frank who has Cooking and Artisan would go and ask Steve who has Tailoring to fix up his suit or Cromzlor who has Jewellery to make him a ring. Which is a good concept, wanting to increase crafter to crafter engagement. The theoretical execution here though feels incredibly punishing and disheartening to people who have picked up more than two tradeskills for this very exact same reason. If the idea is to get people to engage in the economy and engage with other traders, I can only speak for myself when I say that this is making me want to do the exact opposite and just not bother with Trade at all. Especially the idea of an upkeep. Not only from a point of 'People sometimes can't get on every day', there are times when people just can't manage to get on for weeks. I know if I was busy enough where I couldn't get on and came back to not knowing how to even fry an egg, I would be incredibly upset.
I can tell the heart was in the right place with this, ala wanting to try and get people engaged, but to me at least, it feels disheartening, punishing, and pushes me away from wanting to do tradework. I do not support nor do I think this part of the purposed Revamp should be a thing.
- RE: Trade Restrictions: This is a wonderful idea! Letting folks be able to choose from more trades will open up more opportunities for players to engage. Especially when it comes to trades that were locked by City v Commune. With my opinion of disfavour towards Proficiences, perhaps the bonus instead could be having things crafted by those specific classes last 10% longer before decaying for example?
-RE: Trans Tradeskills: I have mixed feelings on this. On the one hand, okay sure. On the other it does feel kind of punishing as well. My biggest one for example, I love using Herofete, it's not a 'for me' kind of thing, I do it for other people, I do it for RP purposes over Combat, because Tikki likes feeding folks. I don't think that trans-items/skills should be removed at all. I don't personally think that they're so much what makes people pick a tradeskill, so much as they're what make people feel like Transing a tradeskill is worth it. Taking that out, to me, feels needless.
-RE: Aethertradering Oh good golly do I not like this one either. To an extent I do agree! People do often select specific trades because they can aethertrade while others can't. I can see that as a problem. But rather than making the wholesale solution 'Remove them' how about instead: 1) Have the existing traders accept more types of items that seem appropriate! (For example, Gioia accepting Brewmeister or Alchemist items) 2) Keep the limit of 1 trade per weave per person, but instead of having them vanish after 3 trades, perhaps have somewhere set up to be an Aethertrade-Hub, where the traders reside so you don't have to hunt them down all the time. If you're still wanting to keep them only showing up at certain times though, it'd be easy do just have them close up shop for a little while and then announce they're back open like the do now for when they show up!
Obviously just suggestions and I'm sure someone smarter than me could point out faults. But I do think that it would be an easier/better idea than trying to add in new traders for each craft. It'd be easy enough (from an IC standpoint, idk anything about programming it) for the Gnomes to say 'Hey we're opening a shop and broadening our horizons so you can too! We now accept <etc. etc.>'.
RE: Trades and Shops: Also another fantastic idea! Having ways for more traders to be able to hock their wares even when not online is great! I'd look forward to seeing how that manifests ICly. Magical wands that lasers a tattoo on your arm? The possibilities on that are endless.
RE: Prospecting/Agriculture Yes please! These feel like wonderful ideas absolutely positively. Not only do I love these from an RP aspect (BEING ABLE TO MAKE MY OWN GARDEN OF FRESH FRUITS AND VEGGIES?! HOME COOKING?! AAAA) but being able to produce your own comms for yourself and for others is a beautiful beautiful thing. I'm passing over the Proficiencey part, because as noted I'm very much opposed to the Proficiency idea as a whole.
RE: Specific Changes I'll try to bullet point my takes on this that I haven't already addressed in other mentions, such as disliking the idea of removing Trans Skill Items/Abilities such as Herofete, or my dislike of Proficiency. So I won't be hitting every single point brought up in each list.
- Bookbinding: I do like the idea of divorcing languages from Bookbinding to be a Miniskill, it opens up being able to learn new languages to anyone. However I haaaate the idea of putting it behind a gate of credits. Think of, for example, someone who wished to play a character that was raised by a race different than their own, and they ICly knew the language. But they can't afford the 250 credits to actually speak it. Yes 250 credits isn't that much time OOCly, but for some people it's a long time ICly doing work that they'd much rather be RPing. I don't think that putting it behind a credit wall is good or fair.
- Cooking: Piping Kits is a fantastic idea, Shulamit's original proposal for them was brilliant.
- Enchantment: I support the idea of adding a way to enchant through shops. My hope though is that the idea mentioned with specifically enchanted Cubes isn't to do away with the 'Neutral' cubes that we can use to recharge, but simply be an additional use to them for shops.
- Forging: The idea of being able to pad and add weapon/armour enchantments via shops is a good idea yeah.
- Jewellery: Oh golly yes, please let 100% Powerstones be riftable. That's a brilliant idea. I support the engraving services as well, of course.
- Tailoring: Splendours for everyone feels neat! I support the idea of the tailoring services via shops as well. Embroidery Kits is also an fantastic idea, thanks again to Shulamit for the original proposal.
- Tattoos: I support the idea of being able to do tattoo armour on anyone and sell tattoos.
- Tinkering: I support the mini repair services, and of course, see Enchantment for the same opinions lol
Hopefully I've not been to confusing on my wording or anything, I'm aware that sometimes I can ramble. But, all in all there are some very good ideas in this proposal, but also some very terribly painful ones that I cannot support or agree with. Again, apologies if I'm parroting anything anyone else has said or if something I said has already been addressed, I wrote this after reading Orael's initial post, but before reading the rest of the posts here.
A professional baker doesn't lose all their skill because they sewed up a hole in their pants, and become a completely inept baker in an instant, either. They also don't lose all their skill at baking when they pick a bit of mint off the plant in their kitchen. The mechanics presented make no real sense at all on a foundational level - you can't just lose all your knowledge simply by doing something else for an hour or two.
With that said, a lot of the point of this is to encourage players to go to shops and buy from other players, is the sense I'm getting from what Orael has been saying on Discord. So why not just focus on making shops themselves more appealing? If it's easier to buy from a shop than to flex and hunt down the commodities yourself, you probably will. Forget the whole proficiency thing and cap entirely, and focus on the shop aspect.
Some ideas in this regard:
1) Making owning a shop easier. Reduce the costs of buying a shop, auto link city shops to the aetherplex, etc. Go all in on making shopping convenient.
2) Goop aethertrading is going away. So - bring in goop sales at shops. Let shop owners set a goop:gold rate (like 50:1). If the shop owner sets that rate and have an item they are selling for 200 gold, I could choose to buy it with goop. This bypasses the goop transfer fee (a benefit for me as the shopper).
3) Goop generation was being discussed as a bonus for completing dailies, etc. A little extra alternative input into the system. This would be nice for people saving up, and also for people to be able to go shopping at shops with their goop.
Basically, the point is to improve shopping rather than to nerf having the trades themselves. By focusing on making the shopping experience more convenient, you achieve much the same end effect but without actually taking anything away from players.
--------------
My biggest issues are:
1) The proficiencies,
2) The lowered cap on # of trades;
3) The removal of some of the trade items (such as magictome).
#3 has been discussed on Discord and could be fixed by simply making these items tradeskill items instead- someone can make the item and sell them for others to use, instead of being self-only.
In addition to the prior, Esei had an idea of being able to allow your shop to send a cut of what it sells to the designer. Basically it would function like this:
1) Buying from the shopkeeper in a shop sends gold to bank accounts, not to the stockroom floor.
2) The shop owner can say like, "5%" or whatever of the cost goes to the designer of the designs they picked.
3) If so set, the gold is split as appropriate between the two accounts.
This would be another incentive to point people towards using shops, if you want to give recognition / payment to the person who actually put the creativity into the thing being purchased.
Something I mentioned on discord but I think is worth bringing up here is how this system will encourage metagaming alts to get around the trade limits. This could be done in a way that isn't directly against the current rules at the moment.
For instance, if I own a shop and I have cooking and bookbinding. I could have my friend stock it with jewelery and enchantments. But then I could have my friend's alt also stock it with tailoring and forging items.
Another example is if I own a shop with my cooking and bookbinding and my friend has their shop with jewelery and enchantments, we could make a deal that I have my alt stock their shop with herbs and alchemy if their alt stocks mine with jewelery and enchantments.
I can pretty much guarantee a large amount of this will happen.
Sorry for the double post but another thought I had is differentiating between the creative trades and the profitable trades. May take refinement on deciding which trades are under which category.
But for instance having one slot for the profitable trades (herbs, the two new ones, and possibly alchemy and/or enchantment?) while not restricting the creative trades.
Sorry for the double post but another thought I had is differentiating between the creative trades and the profitable trades. May take refinement on deciding which trades are under which category.
But for instance having one slot for the profitable trades (herbs, the two new ones, and possibly alchemy and/or enchantment?) while not restricting the creative trades.
Aet does this and it seems to work. I don't think it'd be a clean split for us but we'd probably need to shuffle generic necessities and the like into "profit".
Like... the buff from origami (reworked into a generic comm), dust from cooking, instruments, etc. You might need to do something like... forging becomes two, one that creates generic weapons/armour/etc and one that basically lets you sorcelglass that stuff with creative trades designs.
I can honestly say I'm not a fan whatsoever of these changes. I despise grinding. There's a reason I sell credits as opposed to grinding for gold. I have no desire to shopkeep to earn gold, stocking and pricing is busy work I have no patience for.
If I take a break for a month, few months, etc, I come back and my proficiencies have decayed and work that I have done is taken away from me. Five bucks says an artifact will be introduced to negate this. I will just automate the process of gaining proficiencies, literally turn it on, and essentially afk in my manse while I watch Netflix. Player engagement, this is not.
I currently have seven trades I've picked up in order to assist others, as well as to have a few bonuses from those trades, forging as a warrior being a major one. That's going to be 8,575 lessons I'll need to have refunded. I have literally no use for these lessons, and without a credit refund that's a pretty sour taste in my mouth.
Do I have better ideas? Unfortunately not. There's people who are a lot smarter than I am for that.
That being said, I have canceled my annual membership and will not be buying into any promotions going forward if this is the direction taken. IRE listens to dollars, and mine are going to speak.
Just to toss in my two cents here as well, these changes seem not only unpleasant for crafters and designers, but really convoluted as well. I had to read the initial post several times just to understand what was going on, and I'm still pretty sure I'm still missing a point or two.
Speaking just for myself, creating designs and sets of designs, and being able to craft all those designs myself is really important. I worked hard to be able to have four active trades and others that I can switch between as needed, and it seems like a slap in the face to have all that taken away, refunds or not. Additionally, a very high percentage of those designs are all in family restricted cartels, so this would mean I would either lose access to most of them, or have to invite other crafters to private cartels every time I wanted a new bed.
As far as proficiency goes, I really hate the idea that (even after I decide which of my beloved trades I have to give up on) I'm going to lose access to a large majority of my good designs, all of which tend to require rare or hard to get materials until I spend 20 straight days getting myself back to max through a system that's both grindy and time-gated.
I think the proficiency system does have some merit (and I love the concept of families getting bonuses for literally anything at this point), but it should be something that begins once you trans the skill. After that point, sure, toss in some grinding and time-gates and make it a sort of 'crafting endgame' where the very best crafters make longer lasting items with higher prestige or any number of neat bonus effects (maybe you can craft things with extra enhancement slots, or add ambients, or maybe you get access to rare and previously unknown materials). What it shouldn't be is something that takes us way below what we're currently capable of doing just because we're not grinding every day.
And, just to prove I'm not entirely negative, I do like the removal of restrictions, the updates to shops and what you can sell, and the additional tradeskills (even though Kailanna would never stoop to mining or working a field.)
Here are my lingering questions. As tone and intention don't come over well in text, nothing should be construed as being accusatory, or reflect my opinion on anything, just things I don't understand or need clarification:
The removal of aethertrading will eliminate a significant amount of goop in the system. You folks probably have a better idea how much than we do. In that vein,
Will artifact/skin goop costs be looked at, and possibly adjusted?
What will happen with candies? Some of the buffs are important/tertiary to other design goals, e.g. GK/EZ
The removal of sticky goop means what, exactly? Does it get converted to not-sticky, or is it going to be converted at some rate to another currency?
Will valuation be removed, or is there some other plan for that mechanic? (Asked by Ashira)
More on the subject of artifacts,
What happens with trade curios? (I'm sorry, is that what a crucible curio is? Not sure)
What happens with trade artifacts?
Is there any thought to cost-adjusting tam and like artifacts. Classflexing is not nearly as important as tradeskill flexing.
If powerstones are riftables, will powerplex jewels be looked at in terms of their cost?
Similar to the last point, what will happen with powershells?
Trade/skill specific questions:
The justification for removing poison resistance from Nekotai was that it was already too hard to apply poisons, but ultimately the skillset got to keep the free swallow on Scorpionspit. With Immunity being removed from Poisons, isn't there justification to envoy a return to immunity on the Nekotai skillset? There might be other examples, but what thought has been given to how the economy/trade proposal affects combat skills?
Will there be any skillset compensation for monks losing the mechanical benefit of tattoos? (Don't hit me with the delete monks comments pls)
What consideration is made for skills whose wares aren't purchased on a regular basis? Artisan seems to suffer tremendously from these changes, because nobody is going to use their trade slot, or kill their proficiency in order to rarely sell someone a weapon rack, a chest, or an instrument. Forging, Tailoring, and Jewelry seem to suffer from the same problem to a lesser extent.
There's too much reading for me in comments for early morning but if you're going to remove Magic Tome, please at least code in Libram to be used by AC to replace magictome.
Edit: Disregard someone told me it's already working
Having read these changes, I found them to be quite disagreeable almost universally. The primary question I found myself asking over and over is "Who wanted any of this?" And I found the answer on virtually all the points you cover in your revamp to be "Nobody." Perhaps you are more out of touch with your player base than you realize. Allow me to cover a number of objectionable issues I found in your proposal:
"Trades no longer have a lesson cost. Lessons will be refunded." Why? Having to "learn" a trade is reasonable and investing in a trade was sensible. Just the same, whatever, I guess. But the idea of maybe allowing people to trade back for credits seems preposterous, I think at the bear minimum you should be prepared to refund people a considerable amount of their credits since these trades (and their considerable lesson investments) were not cheap to acquire for many of us.
"Players will be able to select up to two trades. One trade inherently..." yada yada yada. Refunding the skills is good, capping at two trades seems weird - if people want three and want to use 70m essence or 2k credits to get their third why block it at all?
Proficiency. I'm not even going to quote anything on here, because the idea as a whole is terrible. This is probably one of the most egregious pieces of work on here. Trade proficiency is dumb and the anti-player sentiment wrought throughout the garbage setup for it that you've outlined is personally offensive. "Let's get ride of lessons in trades, oh but don't actually get rid of them, instead we'll shift them to this transient piece of garbage skill I've come up with and they'll be wasted the moment a player decides to try any other trade." I'm here to inform you that the result of this will not be engagement, like you seem to think, but abandonment. Nobody wants to put resources into something they can't utilize regularly. Regardless of your stated "benefits", that system harms the player and the economy far more than it benefits.
"We will be removing all trade restrictions." Excellent. This should have been done 15 years ago. It makes zero sense that someone can't pick up a specific trade just because they're not tied to a specific class. This is OK.
"We will be removing most trans trade items." Why? You state mechanical benefits, OK. These mechanical benefits are mild at best, and haven't had a major impact where one of us has gone "If only Zagreus didn't have that damn TOME!" In other words, in real world use, they're negligible at best, so it seems like more work than is necessary to remove items or benefits which provide nice quality of life changes (like the tome for instance, which is so great because it's an efficient way to house one's scrolls). This one seems like a low impact change, but one that also doesn't actually need to happen at all. Sometimes things are different and offer something that somebody may want but they'll have to give up something else they want. That doesn't mean the system is imbalanced, it means there are more than one desirable trade item, so people have to make a damn decision as to which to get. The difficulty of choice is a good thing.
"Every trade skill will have a way to sell their goods or services in a shop." Excellent. Like eliminating class barriers before, this should've been done a long time ago.
Prospecting / Agriculture - This, right here, is probably the only change I ever heard anyone in game and out actually clamoring for - the ability to generate comms. I don't know enough on your intended systems, but these right here are the things that people wanted, not any of that other junk (and it is junk).
Individual skill looks:
Brewmeister - Removing a lot of skills here, any particular reason why you're removing the ones you've listed besides your blanket statement earlier (which hasn't been uniformly applied in your own writeup)?
Cooking - Why remove herofete at all? You stated before that things that provide benefits to others will remain, herofete specifically is designed around benefitng a large group of people (and specifically can't be used outside a group except under specific circumstances). That doesn't make any sense. Drinks removed to Brewmeister, sensible.
Enchantment - Disagree with removal of trans-skill. All changes related to proficiency, which should be deleted from this proposal entirely. Allow spellcrafters to turn their enchants into motes for selling in shops which the player can buy. Once a player buys a magical mote, they can use it to cast the enchantment on their weapon one time, at which point chaotic energy dissolves the mote as the enchantment is transferred to the item in question.
Forging - Master armor removed. I disagree with this, as I do with the removal of any of the trade mastery benefits. Everything else seems to be centered on proficiency, which again, should be deleted. For padding/armor enhance make them available in the form of forging kits which a blacksmith can make for specific enhancements and padding. In game the user receives a kit which "includes all the necessary tools and magical items" to install whatever they want on their own armor. They pop off to the respective forge and use their kit and voila - see a small line of themselves carefully following a set of instructions to install their upgrade.
Herbs - Disagree with removal of trans-skill. More of the same.
Jewellery - Disagree with removal of trans-skill. Make a Gnomish engraver, user puts in x amount of gold and their piece of gear, engraver spits it out.
Poisons - Disagree with removal of trans-skill. Delete proficiency.
Spellcraft - Disagree with removal of trans-skill.
Tailoring - Splendor for anyone? What's even the point of trans'ing the skill then? All the tailoring skills should be applicable through a shop. Make a sewing machine item to allow padding/therm/depad/knots/mending. They all require the same basic thing, so might as well make it simple and efficient for players. Get rid of proficiency, such a dumb idea.
Tattoos - Disagree with the modification of the trans-skill. Sell tattoos in shop on transfer paper, allow players to spend a resource to get them applied (maybe a small gold or power cost). Do not make these tattoos lesser than their tattooist given counterparts - if a trade can sell something in the shop it needs to be the exact same thing you can get from the tradesperson. Splitting like that is a poor idea and will quickly result in the same issue we already have now once people realize it's a waste of their gold. Instead, make it more costly to apply shop given tattoos, so people can still seek out tattooists if they want to save on their resources.
Tinkering - Disagree with removal of trans-skill. Gnomish mini-whizzer machine, a small gnomish machine consisting of a number of clockwork arms with various tiny tools which you place your miniature in and the requisite gold.. Once activated, player sees a neat little line describing the little arms of the machine moving around and patching this, repairing that, so on and so forth. Spits out repaired miniature to player once done and dumps gold in storeroom.
Let me finish by reiterating how terrible your "Proficiency" idea is. Do not apply that to trades. It is not a good system, it is not a welcome change, it is not desired, it is not helpful. Let me further reiterate that, of all these changes, the only ones I've ever heard players talk about are: removing class limits on trades, introducing means of generating commodities so as not to be so reliant on legacy systems.
Kephera demipower will need to be looked at, as currently it boosts your armour to 22% if you have the trade. Which is a mechanical benefit. Also, it's a stealth nerf to acrobatics monks who will lose the extra armour they get from master tattoos (if this is intentional, that is cool, just want to make sure it's intended).
I have not found any support for the majority of these changes outside of the rebuttals posted here. I see discord servers flowing with opposition to these changes on a whole. That worries me.
I come away asking myself: Why are we taking lessons out of an IRE system? Lessons have been a fundamental currency across all the games that meant permanency and a sense of achievement and completion.
I echo the "Who asked for these changes?" I echo "Most of these changes do not support the community, and do not encourage new players or content-creating alt characters."
As a new player just shy of a year, I can't say any of this encourages me. I am often away for travel and do not log in every day. Sometimes I go 10 days without being able to sit down to play because work, holiday, or my family are foremost. Yet, I invested in a yearly subscription upfront in order to learn 5 trades and a second class to facilitate my RP prop creation. Tradeskill designing is content creation and a means of meaningful interaction with characters. (Like coming together to source rare comms!) Being told that I -must- make time or else, does not encourage me to invest myself more.
Well I can't edit my original comment any longer, so here's an update:
What consideration is made for skills whose wares aren't purchased on a
regular basis? Artisan seems to suffer tremendously from these changes,
because nobody is going to use their trade slot, or kill their
proficiency in order to rarely sell someone a weapon rack, a chest, or
an instrument. Forging, Tailoring, and Jewelry seem to suffer from the
same problem to a lesser extent. - On this, I heard on the discord that forgers are making picks for the new trades, e.g. Are there other similar solutions?
New questions:
Will there be any kind of compensation or adjustment for situations like Kephera? (As Nikka mentioned). Does their bonus stay, or if it gets removed, what do they get in exchange, if anything?
What effect will the shop overhaul have on stock size?
I like most of these changes. I think there's some clarification that could help sell it. I think it was mentioned that 'grinding to upkeep proficiency' = practicing the trade once a year? That seems reasonable and removes the thought of 'grinding'. Make one weapon a year, one ring a year, etc.
As long as we are refunded *credits* and not *lessons*, I have no real gripes here.
In relation to divorcing trans abilities from trade skills, how is this going to affect armour? Splendours give 16%, Master Tattoo Armour gives 18%, and Master Armour (plate, etc) gives 25%. Are those going to get reduced to the lower versions of Great Robes at 12%, Tattoo at 14%, and Forged at 20%? Also aethersuits granting whatever your highest armour ability is (ie if you have both Tailoring and Forging transed, you get the 25%).
So, like, I'm not exactly a huge fan of the proficiencies concept either.
But.
I feel like people are knee-jerking over it and perhaps considering parts of the proposal in a vacuum.
Proficiency isn't necessarily going to stop you from swapping around trades as you like - it's just going to make it more expensive to do so (generally via commodity costs, but in the case of herbs it would be time to invest in harvesting, etc).
If you have to drop and swap, it's totally doable. But if you really care about making as much money/profit as possible, it is going to give you pause for thought. Those willing to make the sacrifice and stick to their trades of choice only will harvest the benefit of competitive edge in producing profit, but people who just want to casually make their own stuff aren't stopped from doing that. They just won't make as much bank with a shop, and someone who wants to really roleplay merchant/shopkeeper will be inclined to look for those who are most proficient and build a proper network.
We don't know how commodity costs or whatever will scale, so it's hard to judge whether or not the difference will be too punishing. We have room to spitball thoughts over that if we care to.
It should also be pointed out that removing aethertrading is part of this proposal, and that would free up a lot of stress on the current rate of commodity consumption. If that goes through, then the biggest commodity sink per year will easily be research upkeep unless commodity costs scaling to proficiency is truly dramatic.
People really only care about aethertrading as a means for obtaining goop, from what I've seen. No one appears to actually be attached to the refinement process and the mechanics behind it - just the end reward of goop or aethergoodies you don't want to melt down. If we come up with some other means of getting those, like a secondary daily system, then that just sorts itself out, yeah?
Then agriculture and prospecting gets added on top of that, so hey, might have some potential.
I think there's also one unexplored avenue here - the potential for wanting tradespeople with low proficiency versus high proficiency.
---
Let's consider jewelery, for example. Right now jewelers don't really make much money by actually making and selling jewelery - they get it from gemcutting (this might be liable to change if enchantment motes are added and people can slap them on whatever finished jewelery pieces they like, but that's another discussion entirely). High proficiency jewelers might get more than 3+ gems per gemcut even without the hammer (hammer itself might need to be changed tbh, it's too OP) while the lowest proficiency only ever gets one variant of cut gem per gemcut. HOWEVER, they have a much, much higher chance to roll for sulfur or salt. Now, if aethertrading goes the way of the dodo this might seem useless, but there's still a chance to implement some other item or object that can utilise them - at this point, a high proficiency jeweler who really wants more salt and sulfur might be inclined to seek out a low proficiency jeweler to trade with, rather than dropping their proficiency to do it themselves. Good? Bad? I'm unsure, but as a flight of fancy it seems like it could be potentially interesting.
Could apply similar features to obtaining tawdry and lower grades of bad prestige of clothing in tailoring (though, again, if mob drops disappear entirely then no one might want to beg, then who cares about tawdry clothing?)
Perhaps another alternative is we might look to ship proficiency - while I don't like ship proficiency either, it has a more interesting sliding scale sort of mechanic, wherein you can globally amass X% of proficiency across chair, turret, and grid, but getting too high across all three might ultimately result in decay in one. That said, ship proficiency also has an artifact to negate that penalty entirely, so I am very sympathetic to those who cynically wonder how long it would take before we end up with an artifact that ignores trade proficiency.
I feel like there are ways to do this right, but also lots of ways to do this wrong, and the vague nature of the proposal in its current condition makes it easy to run away with every last potential negative endpoint.
Is there really no way to bend this to make it work? I feel like there might.
Also, regarding artisan as pertains to Tau's concerns:
My own suggestion would be to have proficiency gain related to commodities being expended. In the currently proposed system, I feel like building a throne should make you hit max proficiency for the day all at once. It's expensive. Furthermore, there should never, ever be a circumstance in which crafting several plain wooden stools should gain you more proficient than building an actual throne, RNG be damned.
Comments
Given discussions about consolidating the trades which could leave us with just 13 trades after the overhaul, you could maintain all of them without loss by having one in your second slot and rotating the other slot daily. Which seems like... you just need to top up one thing in a shop each day and there is no negative.
- Remove the combat relevant trans skills and unlock all trades.
- Give all the tradeskills an active skill that that lets them
bless other players (Perhaps a bonus to aligned class/tradeskills ie.
warrior forgers).
- Players get to choose one (+1 with artifact) tradeskill to specialize in. Respeccing has the same cooldown as classflexing.
Perhaps this spec choice also confers other benefits (faster
harvesting, etc)
- Flexing out of your spec doesn't remove it. It's just an inactive bonus.
The gist of it is: Everyone gets something like oldschool coal runes which allows them to grant a temporary buff to their allies for a comm outlay, but they can use whatever tradeskills they'd like to craft whatever items.Every day, they will ask for a certain item(s) from a particular trade and once you fulfil that order, they give you goop as a reward. Then allow players to decide, regardless of what trade skill they have, to choose what to do with the goop, do they purchase scarves, candies, or artifacts.
For example, today NPC asks that he needs a chair (should be public design, not made by private cartels) to fulfil an order for their clients. Everyone can now look for artisans and the artisans themselves can work on the items, there's your engagement. The goop reward will be lower, perhaps half of what a unique tailoring item would give so that it won't be flooded.
Next day, NPC ask for a set of swords of this design so forgers have a chance to work and earn, then so on and so forth.
This way, this can probably solve player engagement, the feeling of the importance of that trade, and some sort of sink on commodities.
What do you guys think?
Edited for corrections.
The latter also isn't a given, ease of switching limits the capacity for people to carve out a niche. Personally, when we didn't have skillflexing and if you wanted to change trades you had to completely forget the skill to learn the new one (With the costs that involves) I was actually an artisan and that was actually useful because other people did take consumables/etc and I helped fill that gap for making furniture and instruments. Which also made a bit more money cause people were more appreciative of being able to get their thing crafted tbh
- I don't think we should limit the players into a maximum of two trade skills at a time.
I have multiple trades active, not because I want to make a profit out of them, but because it's easier for me to design things for the trade skills that I know. Relying on another player to make something I designed is not quite the same as making something I designed myself when it gets approved. Not because I want to profit from it or anything, but it gives me that dopamine rush like I worked on something and now I have the end product in my hand (if that makes sense.)
You need to have the corresponding trade skill active to see your design submission in the city cartel, which is very useful if you need to correct something when the trademaster makes a human mistake.
One suggestion I have is not have a limit to the number of trade skills that you have, but you can only be proficient at two of them (I would much rather this proficiency aspect be not there at all, but if you must keep that aspect in the game, then this would be so much better for designers).
I think we have a diverse and fascinating array of trade skills available to us (even you, jewellery) and trying to limit us to just 2 of them is not fair. There is also trades which have mechanically next to zero use but I love the flavour, and I believe these trades will suffer if we are forced to pick and choose which trades to keep. Artisan is one of my favorite trade skills, but there would be no incentive for me to keep Artisan if I have to be forced into keeping Cooking (tied to my character rp) and bookbinding (the only thing that makes my shop not run at a complete loss).
This brings us to...
- Nerfing cooking by removing things to Brewmeister
I believe that this is a terrible idea. First point, "Brewmeister cartels" do not exist in the game and currently all the drink designs are submitted through Cooking cartels. This change will need a lot of overhaul wrt city cartels and such, and I think it's not as simple of a change as it might seem at first glance.
Then there is the thing where us cooks have become attached to certain drinks that we have made or incorporated the drink making as part of our character rp, and the limiting of 2 trade skills plus the splitting of cooking will force us to choose Cooking and Brewmeister as our trades and shut us out of all the other trades.
Cooking is as such not a profitable trade, we only make profit through purity dust and health and balance platters (which don't really have that many customers tbh). Nerfing it even further is not the best idea imo because most of the cooks in game (who rp as cooks) don't take Cooking for their mechanical benefit or profit aspect, but for the rp aspect. Cutting off half of that rp aspect is just frustrating.
I think Brewmeister is a useless skillset as it is and it should be nixed, and its current skills added into Alchemy. I think that merging trades instead of splitting it is the better way to go.
- I don't think Herofete should be removed from Cooking. It is a group buff that is never exploited and is just a fun rp thing in game, I don't know why this one gets the axe.
- I don't like the idea of mobs not dropping gold. One of the complaints that true newbies had was how hard it was to get gold from bashing, with all the competition. If you limit gold generation to quests and shopkeeping, I don't think it is good to newbies.
Not everyone is interested in shopkeeping, and you had already said that one of the main purposes of this overhaul was to let the people who don't want to participate in economy suffer because of it. I don't think shutting out other avenues of income is going to accomplish this goal, it will only have the opposite effect.
I remember at one point we wanted to increase Prime bashing and not just have bashing be limited to linking in Astral. I think this gold drop change is contrarian to that goal.
If newbies have to rely on quest turn-ins, then those quests are going to get swamped by people and it is going to be much more difficult to generate gold.
- I do actually like removing aethertrading, because that was what led to the abysmal prices of sugar and salt in the first place (and it led to a domino effect which has resulted in the pervasive commodity scarcity that we have). However, aethertrading is currently the only way that newbies have access to goop, and goop is important to get bashing and combat essentials.
Therefore, if you are going to remove aethertrading, I think you should also couple it with other goop generation avenues for newbies in game. Maybe it can be incorporated into daily credits. Maybe newbies can gain goop for getting a level instead of credits. Or perhaps quest completions can yield goop. Some avenue that encourages people actively participating in the game.
These are the suggestions I have, if I have any more, I will edit and add them!
EDIT: This change is also going to nerf Catalogues big time if we are limiting people to 2 active trade skills and discouraging trade flexing. It's already hard enough trying to find tattoos through a catalogue because so few have it active, as well as trying to look at some private cartel designs that you no longer have access to. You can only search catalogues if the person has that trade skill active.
EDIT2: I really like the farming mechanic, but I think it should be introduced as separate from trade skills, with trade skills already having limits. Personally, I think it should be a general skillset that you can gain proficiency at only through practice, and leave it at that.
If you are going to introduce Linguistics for language (another good idea. I never understood having to learn bookbinding to learn a new language or tying language to race, especially as it logically should make sense for you to for example learn Dracnari if you have lived in Gaudiguch for centuries.), I think this should also be a separate skill from trade skills. Either a general skill or an artifact skill.
Saran said:
As proficiency decay is yearly not monthly, your suggestion would allow for anyone to maintain 12 trades without losing proficiency not 3.
Arguably the counter to the point about baking a cake seems like... a professional baker is very likely going to be better at such than a professional tailor. The tailor might be able to bake a cake, but it's likely going to potentially take them longer, not going to be as good, etc.
Being proficient across all trades seems to be the equivalent of simultaneously being a professional Chemist, Brewer, Bookbinder, Chef/Baker/Pastry Chef/etc, Blacksmith, Gardener, Jeweller/Lapidarist, Tailor/Costumer/Cobbler/etc, Tattooist, and... two other equivalent careers for enchants and poisons.
Whereas suggestions around being able to craft from trades without proficiency while only having two "proficient" trades allows the Tailor to bake a cake, just not as good as the pro.
- RE: Trade Proficiency:
So much nope in this. Limiting the amount of trades players have already feels horrible in and of itself, but throwing in the idea of Proficiency just feels punishing. I love crafting, I love picking up new crafts, it's something Tikki does for reasons in character and as I only currently have 3/4 slots, I switch fairly often between certain ones to take care of certain tasks. It feels nice because multiple times I've had Luce or someone ask me 'Hey can you do this?' because, even if they may have that skill themselves, either they're not flexed into it, or they want Tikki to feel happy, since that's one of the big things that makes them smile, helping others.
I'm sure that the idea behind Proficiences and limiting the amount of trades people have is to make it so Frank who has Cooking and Artisan would go and ask Steve who has Tailoring to fix up his suit or Cromzlor who has Jewellery to make him a ring. Which is a good concept, wanting to increase crafter to crafter engagement. The theoretical execution here though feels incredibly punishing and disheartening to people who have picked up more than two tradeskills for this very exact same reason. If the idea is to get people to engage in the economy and engage with other traders, I can only speak for myself when I say that this is making me want to do the exact opposite and just not bother with Trade at all. Especially the idea of an upkeep. Not only from a point of 'People sometimes can't get on every day', there are times when people just can't manage to get on for weeks. I know if I was busy enough where I couldn't get on and came back to not knowing how to even fry an egg, I would be incredibly upset.
I can tell the heart was in the right place with this, ala wanting to try and get people engaged, but to me at least, it feels disheartening, punishing, and pushes me away from wanting to do tradework. I do not support nor do I think this part of the purposed Revamp should be a thing.
- RE: Trade Restrictions:
This is a wonderful idea! Letting folks be able to choose from more trades will open up more opportunities for players to engage. Especially when it comes to trades that were locked by City v Commune. With my opinion of disfavour towards Proficiences, perhaps the bonus instead could be having things crafted by those specific classes last 10% longer before decaying for example?
-RE: Trans Tradeskills:
I have mixed feelings on this. On the one hand, okay sure. On the other it does feel kind of punishing as well. My biggest one for example, I love using Herofete, it's not a 'for me' kind of thing, I do it for other people, I do it for RP purposes over Combat, because Tikki likes feeding folks. I don't think that trans-items/skills should be removed at all. I don't personally think that they're so much what makes people pick a tradeskill, so much as they're what make people feel like Transing a tradeskill is worth it. Taking that out, to me, feels needless.
-RE: Aethertradering
Oh good golly do I not like this one either. To an extent I do agree! People do often select specific trades because they can aethertrade while others can't. I can see that as a problem. But rather than making the wholesale solution 'Remove them' how about instead:
1) Have the existing traders accept more types of items that seem appropriate! (For example, Gioia accepting Brewmeister or Alchemist items)
2) Keep the limit of 1 trade per weave per person, but instead of having them vanish after 3 trades, perhaps have somewhere set up to be an Aethertrade-Hub, where the traders reside so you don't have to hunt them down all the time. If you're still wanting to keep them only showing up at certain times though, it'd be easy do just have them close up shop for a little while and then announce they're back open like the do now for when they show up!
Obviously just suggestions and I'm sure someone smarter than me could point out faults. But I do think that it would be an easier/better idea than trying to add in new traders for each craft. It'd be easy enough (from an IC standpoint, idk anything about programming it) for the Gnomes to say 'Hey we're opening a shop and broadening our horizons so you can too! We now accept <etc. etc.>'.
RE: Trades and Shops:
Also another fantastic idea! Having ways for more traders to be able to hock their wares even when not online is great! I'd look forward to seeing how that manifests ICly. Magical wands that lasers a tattoo on your arm? The possibilities on that are endless.
RE: Prospecting/Agriculture
Yes please! These feel like wonderful ideas absolutely positively. Not only do I love these from an RP aspect (BEING ABLE TO MAKE MY OWN GARDEN OF FRESH FRUITS AND VEGGIES?! HOME COOKING?! AAAA) but being able to produce your own comms for yourself and for others is a beautiful beautiful thing. I'm passing over the Proficiencey part, because as noted I'm very much opposed to the Proficiency idea as a whole.
RE: Specific Changes
I'll try to bullet point my takes on this that I haven't already addressed in other mentions, such as disliking the idea of removing Trans Skill Items/Abilities such as Herofete, or my dislike of Proficiency. So I won't be hitting every single point brought up in each list.
- Bookbinding: I do like the idea of divorcing languages from Bookbinding to be a Miniskill, it opens up being able to learn new languages to anyone. However I haaaate the idea of putting it behind a gate of credits. Think of, for example, someone who wished to play a character that was raised by a race different than their own, and they ICly knew the language. But they can't afford the 250 credits to actually speak it. Yes 250 credits isn't that much time OOCly, but for some people it's a long time ICly doing work that they'd much rather be RPing. I don't think that putting it behind a credit wall is good or fair.
- Cooking: Piping Kits is a fantastic idea, Shulamit's original proposal for them was brilliant.
- Enchantment: I support the idea of adding a way to enchant through shops. My hope though is that the idea mentioned with specifically enchanted Cubes isn't to do away with the 'Neutral' cubes that we can use to recharge, but simply be an additional use to them for shops.
- Forging: The idea of being able to pad and add weapon/armour enchantments via shops is a good idea yeah.
- Jewellery: Oh golly yes, please let 100% Powerstones be riftable. That's a brilliant idea. I support the engraving services as well, of course.
- Tailoring: Splendours for everyone feels neat! I support the idea of the tailoring services via shops as well. Embroidery Kits is also an fantastic idea, thanks again to Shulamit for the original proposal.
- Tattoos: I support the idea of being able to do tattoo armour on anyone and sell tattoos.
- Tinkering: I support the mini repair services, and of course, see Enchantment for the same opinions lol
Hopefully I've not been to confusing on my wording or anything, I'm aware that sometimes I can ramble. But, all in all there are some very good ideas in this proposal, but also some very terribly painful ones that I cannot support or agree with. Again, apologies if I'm parroting anything anyone else has said or if something I said has already been addressed, I wrote this after reading Orael's initial post, but before reading the rest of the posts here.
For instance, if I own a shop and I have cooking and bookbinding. I could have my friend stock it with jewelery and enchantments. But then I could have my friend's alt also stock it with tailoring and forging items.
Another example is if I own a shop with my cooking and bookbinding and my friend has their shop with jewelery and enchantments, we could make a deal that I have my alt stock their shop with herbs and alchemy if their alt stocks mine with jewelery and enchantments.
I can pretty much guarantee a large amount of this will happen.
But for instance having one slot for the profitable trades (herbs, the two new ones, and possibly alchemy and/or enchantment?) while not restricting the creative trades.
Like... the buff from origami (reworked into a generic comm), dust from cooking, instruments, etc. You might need to do something like... forging becomes two, one that creates generic weapons/armour/etc and one that basically lets you sorcelglass that stuff with creative trades designs.
Speaking just for myself, creating designs and sets of designs, and being able to craft all those designs myself is really important. I worked hard to be able to have four active trades and others that I can switch between as needed, and it seems like a slap in the face to have all that taken away, refunds or not. Additionally, a very high percentage of those designs are all in family restricted cartels, so this would mean I would either lose access to most of them, or have to invite other crafters to private cartels every time I wanted a new bed.
As far as proficiency goes, I really hate the idea that (even after I decide which of my beloved trades I have to give up on) I'm going to lose access to a large majority of my good designs, all of which tend to require rare or hard to get materials until I spend 20 straight days getting myself back to max through a system that's both grindy and time-gated.
I think the proficiency system does have some merit (and I love the concept of families getting bonuses for literally anything at this point), but it should be something that begins once you trans the skill. After that point, sure, toss in some grinding and time-gates and make it a sort of 'crafting endgame' where the very best crafters make longer lasting items with higher prestige or any number of neat bonus effects (maybe you can craft things with extra enhancement slots, or add ambients, or maybe you get access to rare and previously unknown materials). What it shouldn't be is something that takes us way below what we're currently capable of doing just because we're not grinding every day.
And, just to prove I'm not entirely negative, I do like the removal of restrictions, the updates to shops and what you can sell, and the additional tradeskills (even though Kailanna would never stoop to mining or working a field.)
- What happens with trade curios? (I'm sorry, is that what a crucible curio is? Not sure)
- What happens with trade artifacts?
- Is there any thought to cost-adjusting tam and like artifacts. Classflexing is not nearly as important as tradeskill flexing.
- If powerstones are riftables, will powerplex jewels be looked at in terms of their cost?
- Similar to the last point, what will happen with powershells?
Trade/skill specific questions:Edit: Disregard someone told me it's already working
- "Trades no longer have a lesson cost. Lessons will be refunded." Why? Having to "learn" a trade is reasonable and investing in a trade was sensible. Just the same, whatever, I guess. But the idea of maybe allowing people to trade back for credits seems preposterous, I think at the bear minimum you should be prepared to refund people a considerable amount of their credits since these trades (and their considerable lesson investments) were not cheap to acquire for many of us.
- "Players will be able to select up to two trades. One trade inherently..." yada yada yada. Refunding the skills is good, capping at two trades seems weird - if people want three and want to use 70m essence or 2k credits to get their third why block it at all?
- Proficiency. I'm not even going to quote anything on here, because the idea as a whole is terrible. This is probably one of the most egregious pieces of work on here. Trade proficiency is dumb and the anti-player sentiment wrought throughout the garbage setup for it that you've outlined is personally offensive. "Let's get ride of lessons in trades, oh but don't actually get rid of them, instead we'll shift them to this transient piece of garbage skill I've come up with and they'll be wasted the moment a player decides to try any other trade." I'm here to inform you that the result of this will not be engagement, like you seem to think, but abandonment. Nobody wants to put resources into something they can't utilize regularly. Regardless of your stated "benefits", that system harms the player and the economy far more than it benefits.
- "We will be removing all trade restrictions." Excellent. This should have been done 15 years ago. It makes zero sense that someone can't pick up a specific trade just because they're not tied to a specific class. This is OK.
- "We will be removing most trans trade items." Why? You state mechanical benefits, OK. These mechanical benefits are mild at best, and haven't had a major impact where one of us has gone "If only Zagreus didn't have that damn TOME!" In other words, in real world use, they're negligible at best, so it seems like more work than is necessary to remove items or benefits which provide nice quality of life changes (like the tome for instance, which is so great because it's an efficient way to house one's scrolls). This one seems like a low impact change, but one that also doesn't actually need to happen at all. Sometimes things are different and offer something that somebody may want but they'll have to give up something else they want. That doesn't mean the system is imbalanced, it means there are more than one desirable trade item, so people have to make a damn decision as to which to get. The difficulty of choice is a good thing.
- "Every trade skill will have a way to sell their goods or services in a shop." Excellent. Like eliminating class barriers before, this should've been done a long time ago.
- Prospecting / Agriculture - This, right here, is probably the only change I ever heard anyone in game and out actually clamoring for - the ability to generate comms. I don't know enough on your intended systems, but these right here are the things that people wanted, not any of that other junk (and it is junk).
Individual skill looks:- Brewmeister - Removing a lot of skills here, any particular reason why you're removing the ones you've listed besides your blanket statement earlier (which hasn't been uniformly applied in your own writeup)?
- Cooking - Why remove herofete at all? You stated before that things that provide benefits to others will remain, herofete specifically is designed around benefitng a large group of people (and specifically can't be used outside a group except under specific circumstances). That doesn't make any sense. Drinks removed to Brewmeister, sensible.
- Enchantment - Disagree with removal of trans-skill. All changes related to proficiency, which should be deleted from this proposal entirely. Allow spellcrafters to turn their enchants into motes for selling in shops which the player can buy. Once a player buys a magical mote, they can use it to cast the enchantment on their weapon one time, at which point chaotic energy dissolves the mote as the enchantment is transferred to the item in question.
- Forging - Master armor removed. I disagree with this, as I do with the removal of any of the trade mastery benefits. Everything else seems to be centered on proficiency, which again, should be deleted. For padding/armor enhance make them available in the form of forging kits which a blacksmith can make for specific enhancements and padding. In game the user receives a kit which "includes all the necessary tools and magical items" to install whatever they want on their own armor. They pop off to the respective forge and use their kit and voila - see a small line of themselves carefully following a set of instructions to install their upgrade.
- Herbs - Disagree with removal of trans-skill. More of the same.
- Jewellery - Disagree with removal of trans-skill. Make a Gnomish engraver, user puts in x amount of gold and their piece of gear, engraver spits it out.
- Poisons - Disagree with removal of trans-skill. Delete proficiency.
- Spellcraft - Disagree with removal of trans-skill.
- Tailoring - Splendor for anyone? What's even the point of trans'ing the skill then? All the tailoring skills should be applicable through a shop. Make a sewing machine item to allow padding/therm/depad/knots/mending. They all require the same basic thing, so might as well make it simple and efficient for players. Get rid of proficiency, such a dumb idea.
- Tattoos - Disagree with the modification of the trans-skill. Sell tattoos in shop on transfer paper, allow players to spend a resource to get them applied (maybe a small gold or power cost). Do not make these tattoos lesser than their tattooist given counterparts - if a trade can sell something in the shop it needs to be the exact same thing you can get from the tradesperson. Splitting like that is a poor idea and will quickly result in the same issue we already have now once people realize it's a waste of their gold. Instead, make it more costly to apply shop given tattoos, so people can still seek out tattooists if they want to save on their resources.
- Tinkering - Disagree with removal of trans-skill. Gnomish mini-whizzer machine, a small gnomish machine consisting of a number of clockwork arms with various tiny tools which you place your miniature in and the requisite gold.. Once activated, player sees a neat little line describing the little arms of the machine moving around and patching this, repairing that, so on and so forth. Spits out repaired miniature to player once done and dumps gold in storeroom.
Let me finish by reiterating how terrible your "Proficiency" idea is. Do not apply that to trades. It is not a good system, it is not a welcome change, it is not desired, it is not helpful. Let me further reiterate that, of all these changes, the only ones I've ever heard players talk about are: removing class limits on trades, introducing means of generating commodities so as not to be so reliant on legacy systems.I come away asking myself: Why are we taking lessons out of an IRE system? Lessons have been a fundamental currency across all the games that meant permanency and a sense of achievement and completion.
I echo the "Who asked for these changes?"
I echo "Most of these changes do not support the community, and do not encourage new players or content-creating alt characters."
As a new player just shy of a year, I can't say any of this encourages me. I am often away for travel and do not log in every day. Sometimes I go 10 days without being able to sit down to play because work, holiday, or my family are foremost. Yet, I invested in a yearly subscription upfront in order to learn 5 trades and a second class to facilitate my RP prop creation. Tradeskill designing is content creation and a means of meaningful interaction with characters. (Like coming together to source rare comms!) Being told that I -must- make time or else, does not encourage me to invest myself more.
As long as we are refunded *credits* and not *lessons*, I have no real gripes here.
So, like, I'm not exactly a huge fan of the proficiencies concept either.
But.
I feel like people are knee-jerking over it and perhaps considering parts of the proposal in a vacuum.
Proficiency isn't necessarily going to stop you from swapping around trades as you like - it's just going to make it more expensive to do so (generally via commodity costs, but in the case of herbs it would be time to invest in harvesting, etc).
If you have to drop and swap, it's totally doable. But if you really care about making as much money/profit as possible, it is going to give you pause for thought. Those willing to make the sacrifice and stick to their trades of choice only will harvest the benefit of competitive edge in producing profit, but people who just want to casually make their own stuff aren't stopped from doing that. They just won't make as much bank with a shop, and someone who wants to really roleplay merchant/shopkeeper will be inclined to look for those who are most proficient and build a proper network.
We don't know how commodity costs or whatever will scale, so it's hard to judge whether or not the difference will be too punishing. We have room to spitball thoughts over that if we care to.
It should also be pointed out that removing aethertrading is part of this proposal, and that would free up a lot of stress on the current rate of commodity consumption. If that goes through, then the biggest commodity sink per year will easily be research upkeep unless commodity costs scaling to proficiency is truly dramatic.
People really only care about aethertrading as a means for obtaining goop, from what I've seen. No one appears to actually be attached to the refinement process and the mechanics behind it - just the end reward of goop or aethergoodies you don't want to melt down. If we come up with some other means of getting those, like a secondary daily system, then that just sorts itself out, yeah?
Then agriculture and prospecting gets added on top of that, so hey, might have some potential.
I think there's also one unexplored avenue here - the potential for wanting tradespeople with low proficiency versus high proficiency.
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Let's consider jewelery, for example. Right now jewelers don't really make much money by actually making and selling jewelery - they get it from gemcutting (this might be liable to change if enchantment motes are added and people can slap them on whatever finished jewelery pieces they like, but that's another discussion entirely). High proficiency jewelers might get more than 3+ gems per gemcut even without the hammer (hammer itself might need to be changed tbh, it's too OP) while the lowest proficiency only ever gets one variant of cut gem per gemcut. HOWEVER, they have a much, much higher chance to roll for sulfur or salt. Now, if aethertrading goes the way of the dodo this might seem useless, but there's still a chance to implement some other item or object that can utilise them - at this point, a high proficiency jeweler who really wants more salt and sulfur might be inclined to seek out a low proficiency jeweler to trade with, rather than dropping their proficiency to do it themselves. Good? Bad? I'm unsure, but as a flight of fancy it seems like it could be potentially interesting.
Could apply similar features to obtaining tawdry and lower grades of bad prestige of clothing in tailoring (though, again, if mob drops disappear entirely then no one might want to beg, then who cares about tawdry clothing?)
Perhaps another alternative is we might look to ship proficiency - while I don't like ship proficiency either, it has a more interesting sliding scale sort of mechanic, wherein you can globally amass X% of proficiency across chair, turret, and grid, but getting too high across all three might ultimately result in decay in one. That said, ship proficiency also has an artifact to negate that penalty entirely, so I am very sympathetic to those who cynically wonder how long it would take before we end up with an artifact that ignores trade proficiency.
I feel like there are ways to do this right, but also lots of ways to do this wrong, and the vague nature of the proposal in its current condition makes it easy to run away with every last potential negative endpoint.
Is there really no way to bend this to make it work? I feel like there might.
Also, regarding artisan as pertains to Tau's concerns:
My own suggestion would be to have proficiency gain related to commodities being expended. In the currently proposed system, I feel like building a throne should make you hit max proficiency for the day all at once. It's expensive. Furthermore, there should never, ever be a circumstance in which crafting several plain wooden stools should gain you more proficient than building an actual throne, RNG be damned.