Title Caps on Tradeskills?!?!?!?!

[thresholdrpg]

Ok...... It is bad enough that Funcom lied about the whole "you don't have to level to do tradeskills!" and "you can level without killing" stuff.

But then to make tradeskills have title caps?!?!?!? Sheesh. It is hard enough to play a character focused on tradeskills as is (like nano programming for example). But now you not only have to suffer through tedious killing just to do tradeskills, but when you hit your title cap, you have to level and NOT EVEN ADVANCE THE TRADE SKILLS WHICH ARE THE WHOLE REASON YOU ARE LEVELLING IN THE FIRST PLACE!

[Provisioner]

Technically, they didn't lie about being able to level from tradeskills alone. You can, and I've done it.

However, it is insanely boring and not what I had expected from Anarchy Online.

As most trade skill items are useless, and the demand for the "good stuff" exists in the materials, NOT the finished product, really, it's all muddled.

For example, you can walk into a shop and buy carbonum plating, but need to have a CL 60 alt run a few hundred team missions just to get the PPPE to make anything of it. Of course, you could always buy it, but that's just silly (I saw one going for 100 million the other day - for a QL 60 item!).

Anyway, yes, you can level off tradeskills (not suggested). Max your "Mechanical Engineer", "Electrical Engineering", "Nano Programming", "Field Quantum Pysics", and "Computer Literacy" (not all required for the basic steps, but all needed to be a good Nano Program Builder). Implant the hell out of these skills, and get the basic items that buff them. Buy your tools.

Now, go out to a 25% zone (!) that contains carbon-rich rocks, and have fun clicks a million times.

At level 150, it takes roughly 13 million to level. Doing missions, that's about 370 kills (assuming 35k a kill - excluding the rewards and such). Now, doing "carbon mining" thats:

QL 150 Rock - Step 1 - 750 xp
QL 150 Rock - Step 2 - 750 xp
QL 150 Rock - Step 3 - 750 xp
QL 150 Rock - Step 4 - 750 xp

For a total of 3000 xp per rock. The time it takes to locate the rock that is of decent QL is about the time it takes to kill 1 or 2 mobs (...and there's likely more risk in hunting carbon than there is doing "City of Home" missions). With quick fingers, I can usually locate and process two rocks a minute.

With that in mind, it'll take roughly 73 hours of full play to go from level 150 to 151 "doing trade skills".

Unfortunately, the QL of the rocks only go up to QL 250, and most the the ones you find are in the QL 125-150 range, so most of the time you'll be getting lower xp than this.

If I wanted to go from 150-200 by "doing trade skills", my estimate is that it will take roughly 10,000 hours of game time. And that's just 150-200...I can't image starting at CL 1!

Remember, the QL of the rocks don't improve much, nor does the xp gained from each, but the xp requirement for your next level increases geometrically.

Personally, I'd rather not dedicate my life to these skills in this manner, even though that's why I played this game in the first place...

Yes, it sucks.

Provisioner

[______________Saruzi]

When they brought this forum into existance I propsed raised xp for Tradeskills. Is needs to be raised, at least to an equivalent of 10-35% of a mob killed of the same lvl. Make a ql 140 item for 11k xp isn't as bad as it is now.

[Provisioner]

...and just to show you a PPPE going for 100 mil:

http://forums.anarchy-online.com/sho...threadid=42447

Sad, really, that the TOOLS are worth this much...

Provisioner

[SmenGromit]

Provisioner wrote:

"Sad, really, that the TOOLS are worth this much... "

I paid 4-5M in the shop at level 70 to get my nano creation tools. I did not mind, since they were one-time investments; expensive at the time, but I was buying quality tools.

I would like it to be similar for the armor PPPE's - expensive, but not ridiculously so.

Sidenote: Ironically, when the cost of making nanos was reduced in the recent patch, the value of my quality tools was reduced to 2% of the original investment.

Provisioner wrote again:

"Spoken and written when you chose a profession for your character:
Trader: The trader is the most trade-skill oriented of all professions."

Conversely, it is also the most pvp-oriented of all professions. Strange, that.


Smen

[ethernal3]

Originally posted by Provisioner
Technically, they didn't lie about being able to level from tradeskills alone. You can, and I've done it.

However, it is insanely boring and not what I had expected from Anarchy Online.

As most trade skill items are useless, and the demand for the "good stuff" exists in the materials, NOT the finished product, really, it's all muddled.

For example, you can walk into a shop and buy carbonum plating, but need to have a CL 60 alt run a few hundred team missions just to get the PPPE to make anything of it. Of course, you could always buy it, but that's just silly (I saw one going for 100 million the other day - for a QL 60 item!).

Anyway, yes, you can level off tradeskills (not suggested). Max your "Mechanical Engineer", "Electrical Engineering", "Nano Programming", "Field Quantum Pysics", and "Computer Literacy" (not all required for the basic steps, but all needed to be a good Nano Program Builder). Implant the hell out of these skills, and get the basic items that buff them. Buy your tools.

Now, go out to a 25% zone (!) that contains carbon-rich rocks, and have fun clicks a million times.

At level 150, it takes roughly 13 million to level. Doing missions, that's about 370 kills (assuming 35k a kill - excluding the rewards and such). Now, doing "carbon mining" thats:

QL 150 Rock - Step 1 - 750 xp
QL 150 Rock - Step 2 - 750 xp
QL 150 Rock - Step 3 - 750 xp
QL 150 Rock - Step 4 - 750 xp

For a total of 3000 xp per rock. The time it takes to locate the rock that is of decent QL is about the time it takes to kill 1 or 2 mobs (...and there's likely more risk in hunting carbon than there is doing "City of Home" missions). With quick fingers, I can usually locate and process two rocks a minute.

With that in mind, it'll take roughly 73 hours of full play to go from level 150 to 151 "doing trade skills".

Unfortunately, the QL of the rocks only go up to QL 250, and most the the ones you find are in the QL 125-150 range, so most of the time you'll be getting lower xp than this.

If I wanted to go from 150-200 by "doing trade skills", my estimate is that it will take roughly 10,000 hours of game time. And that's just 150-200...I can't image starting at CL 1!

Remember, the QL of the rocks don't improve much, nor does the xp gained from each, but the xp requirement for your next level increases geometrically.

Personally, I'd rather not dedicate my life to these skills in this manner, even though that's why I played this game in the first place...

Yes, it sucks.

Provisioner

Sadly, level 150-151 is what I would say "meager" xp required.. that's like what, 7 or 8 million?

Versus 70 mill or so required.. for all the last levels. Occording to your calculations it'd take around 730 hours to level once, so the last 15 levels take your estimated 10,000 hours alone.
~Chris

[________________Quad]

I have never like title caps on anything to begin with. Just a piss poor way of trying to bring some balance to the class's by limiting the nano line/equipment you can use.

The big arguement for them is that they (title caps) cause you to place IP in skills you wouldn't normally do. But I would still have preferred more flexibility in my char developement. After all its the journey thats important because once you hit lvl 200 everyone ends up being the "same".

Personally I would have enjoyed this game much more without Title caps. As an engineer I found it exceptionally frustrating having my TS and MC capped. Running around for 195 lvls looking for a MP to buff you just plain sucks. If I want to be a brainiac Engineer and max my TS and MC let me. I would also have rather seen you continously get IP points as you gain (and save) experience. Heck at lvl 181 I need 40 million exp to get more IP now. It would have been more interesting to me to complete a mission netting 1.5 to 2 million exp, go save it and now have another 5000 IP points to allocate. While this would help with the high lvl grind it wouldn't fix it.

Anyway I have grown pretty disgusted with my engineer. Not so much from his ability to do missions. Heck I can easily do solo Broken Shore mission at 50% all the way up to lvl 200. But that is just to boring for me to complete. He just doesn't really seem to fit in to game. To do any trade skill stuff you have throw in specialized implants and hunt down a trader/doc for the buffs. Whats the point ... so much hassle. And the experience for doing that is just pure crap.

For me I have grown tired of this game for now. I no longer have expectations they will fix many fundelmental problems. I hope Funcom did manage to learn some things from producing AO ... perhaps thier future endeavors will be better.

[________________Jica]

Originally posted by Megabio


Sadly, level 150-151 is what I would say "meager" xp required.. that's like what, 7 or 8 million?

Versus 70 mill or so required.. for all the last levels. Occording to your calculations it'd take around 730 hours to level once, so the last 15 levels take your estimated 10,000 hours alone.
~Chris

Well.. They might have thought it'd keep players in the game so much more haha.

I'm lvl 198 engineer and tired of xp-ing all the time. Been doing tradeskills mostly all day the past 2 months has made me about 5 mil xp only (except from getting extremely rich as well). I need 65 mil more to lvl! Would take me another 2 years most likely, but I could get them in 1 day doing missions.

I play because of the tradeskills mainly. Nothing is really wrong with them as they are. Of course it'd be nice with more xp per step at my lvl. But what I really would like is more additions to the tradeskill market; more stuff to build, make it a huge market of playermade items which are better than those found in all ways, and also add a subtext to each item made with a name of the crafter