Sippin wrote:
snailish wrote:
I agree, this one is long overdue.
The EQ model for tradeskills is one of the things most/all other games moved away from years ago. I still think regularly failing long-trivial combines is a bizarre structure to put on a system... not much of a "master" potter (or whatever) if you can't mindlessly make the simple stuff.
That's a wee bit of an exaggeration. It's hardly a regular thing to fail trivial combines. Yeah, it's annoying as hell when it happens but I'd say there's an element of realism to it. Even the greatest craftsman in the world can mess up on rare occasion. And that's about how often I see a trivial combine failure, i.e. rarely.
I don't want to open this can of worms, really I don't, but the insertion of this CARE BEAR handling of player "challenges" into EQ is one of the biggest things which distinguish "classic" EQ from today's "WoW-clone" EQ. I just wish they'd award special "badges" to anyone who maxed out tradeskills in the days when it actually took effort to accomplish it, especially back when most skills required pharming mats rather than buying them from in-game vendors. In those days a tradeskiller often spent more time pharming than combining.
Sorry Sippin, while in the big picture sense I agree that the oversimplification of the genre over the last 10 years hasn't been a good thing, this example will only be your Waterloo. EQ's system was stupid from the moment it was conceived. The only way EQ's system would make sense is if crafting was valued on par with combat but it has never been. The closest it got was during the Planes of Power era and even that wasn't really 'close'. EQ's tradeskill system is and always has been ret....err, "developmentally disabled". There is nothing you can make via a tradeskill that isn't trumped by a drop (and that drop became more and more common as the years went on). There was nothing challenging about EQ's tradeskill system. Drops for the better items were acquired, far more often than not, through combat (so they were incidental, not a focal point of gameplay) and required sometimes obscene amounts of suboptimal farming (velium mastodons are AWESOME xp, no?
) in order to get items for SUBCOMBINES
that could fail!
Basically what I'm saying is, just because you managed to get to the top in a godawful system, does not mean that system shouldn't be changed or made sensible. There were rich people in the USSR. Does that mean communism should've remained the order of the day? Fixing a moronic system isn't "dumbing down", it's fixing a moronic system. I apologize in advance for the aggressive tone but I have always despised EQ's tradeskill system. You wanna know how you can tell that it's really stupid? Name the one thing from EQ that nobody copied later on. It wasn't because they couldn't (ala City of Heroes' sidekicking mechanic), it was because it made zero sense to do so. EVE's entire economy revolves around industry and even THEY didn't use that idiotic system.
I also disagree with your assertion on how often trivial combines fail. I have three rogues with maxed out poison skills, the poison making AA skills, and maxed trophies and they fail about 6-8% of the time on combines that are 70 points trivial. And a master craftsman in reality never really fails because part of being a master craftsman is adapting to changing conditions (like issues with materials). EQ2's (old?) system is closer to reality in that respect. I know an old school blacksmith who is considered to be a master (he was featured on a
PBS NOVA special) and that's what he says (about blacksmithing). "You don't get to my level of expertise by panicking when the metal [on an alloyed scimitar I commissioned] bubbles".
Edited, May 2nd 2014 1:01pm by Remianen 
) in order to get items for SUBCOMBINES that could fail! 
But like my sainted mother used to say, "each to his (her) own"! 