Why are there no trade skill fixes in this patch?
There are a lot of issues with Trade Skills. The only thing that this patch does is supposedly make Carbonrich rock more readily available, which is great. I have wasted a lot of time looking for these buggers, but what about the other trade skills?
The costs involved in making stims and treatment labs are far too high. In fact, it costs ~50k to make a stimulant Regeneration kit that has 7 charges and only increases health and nano by ~200 points each. Compared to the standard store bought ones with 5 charges at similar QLs, which only cost a few k max. And the treatment kits, which also require high priced components to create. The best I've been able to produce was a QL 62 treatment lab, whcih required 256 Phar skill, and ~50k CR. I have found noone willing to spend even 50k on one of these after I've made it, and that's how much it costs to make it. The capabilities of these kits are fine, no complaints, but the costs are rediculous. How can Funcom expect treatment and stim kit creation to be taken seriously? Atleast, with implant creation, you can get paid by other players, which offsets the lack of decent xp a little, but here is a situation where there is very little benefit for any group other than docs to invest in a trade skill, and only for their own use. Not for profit, which is what a trade skill is supposed to be for, right?
Please Funcom, I exhort you to look into these issues. I don't want to wait another two weeks or more before these things are fixed.
"MUCH" MORE XP for trade skill participation. I get 1010 xp max for making QL 200 implants. Where's the justice in this. That's ~1k xp per slot on a QL 200 IMPLANT! so, ~3k total for making the HIGHEST QL Implant available in the game. How much xp do I get for killing the Highest LVL MOB? I know that if I kill a lvl 150ish MOB at ~lvl 89 I get ~50k xp. Some make the argument that if people got more xp for doing trade skills then everyone would stop killing. Sure, If I got 50k xp per QL 160 implant I could see that happening, but that's not what I'm asking for. Maybe just 3 or 4 times as much as what is currently given, and that's really not a whole lot when you think about it. It would still be easier to lvl going team hunting for high lvl MOBs, but atleast
it would make it a little more worthwhile.
"MUCH" Lower cost for trade skill parts. It's bad enough we have to invest IP into them, why make them even less attractive by having such high prices. Ultimately, the costs of fabricating useful items, using trade skills should come out to ~ 75% of what it costs to buy the item from a shop, based on QL. So, if a QL 100 store bought Treatment lab costs 1000 CR, the parts necessary to make a QL 100 Standard Treatment Lab should amount to no more than 750 CR. How else will anyone make any legitimate CR off of trade skills?
Please, before you knock what I'm saying, or call it whinning, consider the following:
1. Who makes your implants?
2. Who will make your nano crystals?
3. Who will make your treatment labs, and stims?
Those who participate in trade skills are the ones who will provide you with most of your QL 126+ equipment. The easier it is for them to do their job, the better it is for everyone. We spend a great amount of time getting very little xp, providing others with the items they need to do missions and hunt effectively. I have spent weeks in Nano programming mode. Programming at 700, and the most xp I've gotten in those weeks never even amounted to 100k xp out of ~800k to lvl. Yet, I can lvl once a "day" (in a couple of hours) in a team. Please Funcom DEV Team, revisit your stance on trade skills. There are a lot of people who are quite eager to participate, but the high prices and lack of xp make it extremely unappealing to contribute to the trade skill community.
