Does Funcom consider tradeskills to be working as intended?

[Berkut]

I am curious as to whether FC considers tradeskills to be pretty much what they want, or whether they think they are horribly broken.

Coming from DAOC, the AO tradeskill model is horrible. In DAOC, tradeskills have their own set of problems, but there is a real economy around them. After the very beginner levels, there is no real reason to buy stuff from merchants anymore. Everything you need is better and cheaper from a player, if not from a quest.

In AO, my first character is now level 40 (I know, I am still a total newb) and other than getting help with implant assembly, which isn't really a tradeskill anyway, I have had no need to buy *anything* that any player creates.

It seems like maybe at the very high end there is more, but that means that you ahve to get a tradeskill character up into the high end before he can start making any money to fund his tradeskilling.

Am I missing something here? Is this just the way it is in AO?

Berkut

[___________SUPERSLAG]

well the tradeskill dept imo still needs alot of help the last patch helped it some - adding armor/nanos/treat labs etc..

but as for buying anything somone makes - well it is better to just make/assemble them for people for the time/cost of the parts does not make that too profitable. The weapon making system in ao is half broken and needs alot of love. ... but Time will tell where ao wants to take to tradeskill area of the game.

[_____________Pays007]

they could be worth a little more exp too. To go from level 171-172 im going to have to do 25,000+ ql200 and up tradeskill steps. Thats not even a third of what i'd need to level from 199-200

[Mercatura]

Imho, tradeskill xp should be something like:

Item QL * Title level * 20

Its really not a lot of xp given the time and cost involved...not to mention lack of demand. Even If you logged at a carbon rock location and just made blank crystals for xp, it would be worse than the slowest mission.

[AtomicRabbit]

heh only thing that has lower xp for time spent is killing grays for 1 xp a pop.

[Elbo]

Originally posted by SUPERSLAG
well the tradeskill dept imo still needs alot of help the last patch helped it some - adding armor/nanos/treat labs etc..

but as for buying anything somone makes - well it is better to just make/assemble them for people for the time/cost of the parts does not make that too profitable. The weapon making system in ao is half broken and needs alot of love. ... but Time will tell where ao wants to take to tradeskill area of the game.

I disagree. With a QL119-120ish nano Costs around 400-450K Yet if you get the disc (free) in a mission the cost of making the disc is about 2K.

As for selling the "crap" discs. I've been looking at it... 30K for a disc yet when my trader sells the nano it sells for 150K. Making it costs about 2K so for 2K I gain 120K. I consider that a decent investment. With the time it takes to cut a pack of rocks and put together a pack of nanos you can complete 1 pack of rocks and then 1 pack of nanos before your maestroes wear off. Funcom should extend maestroes to 1 hour. This would help those of us who master the skills involved for high level creations.

[Animosity]

haha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
haha
hahahaha
Mhhahahaha
hahahahahahahaha
haha
hahahahahaha

haha

If you really want to make Tradeskill IP points worth it, set some of the NPCs on missions to buy things that only Tradeskills can make.

Make it that any new item coming in (except for phat boss lewt) requires tradeskills to make. It would be cool if tradeskillers were necessary at all lvls.

as it stands, its a waste of IP to invest in tradeskills unless in a title cap, or making stuff for characters half your level.

[AtomicRabbit]

I think they should just take the xp off doing the tradeskill items, change it to tradeskill points. Have the points go to a item like a token board, 10k points = 1% to all trade skills. Maybe have the higher boards add to intel or something. Would at least make it feel like you are earning a bit more than some cash (That is if they actually feel like paying you.)

It would at least give people that do tradeskills a little bit of a extra reward for puting the IP in the skills. I think the top board having 10% added to all trade skills would be the max, it would allow people with 1000 in trade skills to be able to earn the board and be able to do the 200+ items easier (I am sure there will be more than a few programs as time goes on).

[Mercatura]

By the time you can actually afford to dump IP into tradeskills as a trader (title5 cap) you can selfcast Maestros without drains.

[____________Garamond]

You know. I've been doing tradeskills since level 5. I love doing it. I put almost all my points in tradeskills. The wonderfull thing is I can still solo missions my level. Why? I have a robot. Perhaps that's the equaliser between the trader and Engineer. I can use my points to do something I enjoy and still be able to go out and earn money.

Heck. Maybe I can't do this at higher levels but I've went up 3 different levels from tradeskills alone. Alot of times I go up half a level with tradeskills and then finish it in a mission.

I'm level 53. yeah I'm not all that high yet. I don't care. I enjoy working in the workshop makeing junk.

Are tradeskills broken. Yes. It is insane to have the collective parts cost more than the finished product. They fixed nano creation. The community as a whole just has not realised it is cheeper to buy nanos from a player now.

There are several things we can make that can't be found. treatment labs and restoration kits spring to mind. Again I don't think the community realises it is there. Whenever I advertise this stuff they are blown away that I can make something like that.

Heck I'd venture to guess that 25 precent of the playerbase doesn't know about Plasma. I'll venture a guess that 75% of the playerbase doesn't know we can refine jewlery.

Hlaf of the problem is the players are used to going to buy things. They are used to tradeskills getting no love from funcom.

With this newest armor thing players are starting to come out of their shell. It is unfortunate that funcom made the PPPE so rare.

Yes Tradeskills need love but I think it is our responsibility to bring the bvenifits of tradeskills to the community.

We love it. Lets show them why they should care.