EQ Traders Corner
  


Fall 2005 Community Leader Summit Summary

SOE invited a little over a dozen community leaders from EQ, and about the same from EQII, to a community leader summit this past weekend. Due to there being sufficient coverage of EQ tradeskill interests by others (including Nolrog, tradeskill correspondent), I participated on the EQII side.

We were invited there specifically to provide input about the game, but before folks get too excited, and expect some huge list of discussion items regarding tradeskills, realize that the expansion, the combat/spell system changes, and things like the newbie experience were on the discussion agenda, with tradeskills being discussed at the end in an open discussion part of the session. This is not because tradeskills aren't important to SOE, but because there were so many other important things that have been happening with wide-reaching impact.

Tradeskills are something they feel are important, they do plan on giving them lots of attention in the coming months, but they're not boxing themselves in with definite word on all that's going to be done. They want to revamp and change tradeskills to make it so that refines take less time, and your attention is more focused on the finished product. Just how that will be done, however, is still under discussion, as there are many ways to approach it, and they're still seeing which one will work out the best.

There were some things that Beghn and the others were willing/able to reveal that are in the works, though, so it wasn't all "we can't tell you yet, but it'll be good." Again, no ETAs on these, but it will give you an idea of what they're working on:

  • Drinks aren't as popular as foods, overall, so they're looking into changing things a bit so that the drinks have things like INT/WIS on them, and the foods have the STR, AGI, etc. on them.
  • Player-made equippable (armor/weapon) sets are going to get some attention, so that they're aimed more at certain classes. For example, if there are priests and fighters able to wear plate in a certain tier, one set may be geared more towards fighter stats, the other set towards priest stats, and so on.
  • The tradeskill bug list is getting some attention, and while not everything that has been fixed is on the release notes for LU (live update) 14 yet, we should see quite a few things tackled. Over the next couple days, I'll be spending a few hours to merge our bug list with the sticky one on the SOE forums, and append in Beghn's comments, so folks can get a better feel for where we stand. I may have found someone to fix the art anchoring issues on those two maple (wall) shelves that have been bugged since before launch, too ...
  • One thing that's been a source of constant confusion for new players is when they're asked by the banker in their starting region if they are an artisan or an adventurer. This confusing "flavor" text is slated to go away.
  • The newbie tradeskill tutorial is going to get some reworking, so that it helps new crafters learn about tradeskill events and how to counter them, etc.
  • Edit: I'd almost forgotten - there'd been mention of new armor (and weapon?) looks. While there are no plans to go the EQ path of armor dyes, there are plans to do some things with how the various sets of armor look, so there's less "same old same old" feel to them at the higher levels. No ETA, but it is something they've got planned.

The general perspective at SOE on where tradeskill items should fall on the valued item scale goes something like this: bought items, normal tradeskill items, dropped items, player-made rare items. There are exceptions, of course, but players shouldn't expect that all their normal items will be hot sellers, nor that they should be able to compete with all the drops out there. (A bit of market research should help you figure out which items are marketable, vs. which are skillup paths to sell back to the vendors.)

Beghn expects to spend 3-4 months on making the entire tradeskill system more workable, including simplifying some things, fine tuning other things, and so on. My feeling from that time quote was that this is going to be a really intensive and time-consuming effort. While typically a programmer doing that much in-depth work isn't always available for regular comments and updates, we've got a request in for a few more updates now and then from someone at SOE, so that we know that things are progressing on the tradeskill front.

As mentioned above, I plan on putting several hours of work into the tradeskill bug report lists. It actually will take hours, not minutes, because I'll not only be merging lists from two place into one master list, but then adding Beghn's comments, where available, as well as splitting out into sub-lists those tradeskill bugs that require work from other SOE teams ... not everything that's listed as a tradeskill bug is actually handled by the tradeskill dev, and having things split out helps not only to educate the community about why some things have been taking a while to address, but also makes it easier to forward those issues on to the proper teams.

But first, I need to hibernate for another day or so ... I am one tuckered out redhead. So, who's got a nice comfy pack for me to nest inside of?

Created: 2005-10-03 06:11:49          
Last Modified By: Niami Denmother          
Last Modified on: 2005-10-03 06:32:05          

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