My T-5 harvesting stats. And my opinion

[zaneluke]

<span style="font-size: small; font-family: comic sans ms,sand">I</span><span style="font-size: small; font-family: comic sans ms,sand"> was in a T-5 zone last night and harvested for 2 hours. I harvested 2430 items. 24 rare items. 4 Ebon,2 rhod,6 pelts,4 roots,2 rubies,4 cedar,2 loam. What will i do with them? My lev 40 carpenter will use them, and i will trade the rest for mor rares that he can use. I view this change in drop rate to be one of the best things to happen to the game in a long long time. I think it have a negative effect on lots of crafters that have put tons of time in to thier skills and have a huge hit on thier current inventory. But, dedicated crafters are not the majority of players in this game. I think they do play a vital role, but maybe this will get them away from the crafting station and out in the environment. Thus adding to the adventuring population, which is sometimes lacking. Prices of adept III spells and mastercrafter armor will come down. Peope will be able to afford nice house items to off-set status costs in nice homes. I have also noticed that since more people are out harvesting now the prices of raws has also taken a nosedive which will in turn drive down prices of other common crafted items. Folks, you have just been given some extra free time to go out and quest in this awsome game called Everquest. </span> <span style="font-size: medium">Thank you vey much. Zaneluke 70 Mystic/70 provisioner Bliz 70 Warlock/40 Carpeter.</span>

[Calthine]

You saw that it's getting tweaked, in that other thread devoted to this topic, right? <a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?start=105&topic_id=374729�" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...29�</a> Mine tonight:  1 hour in Sinking Sands, two rares.

[Spangles]

<p>I went out harvesting in TS last night for Tier 3 raws, since I recently respecced from Armourer to Alchemist and was preparing for the grind from Lvl 20 to 30.  In the two hours I devoted to harvesting I collected 7 Jaspers, 5 Palladiums, 4 Loams, 5 Steel, 1 Dandelion and 1 Pelt.  I only found two Sparkling Materials.  I ignored the wood and bush nodes totally (hehehe).</p><p>Personally, I think this will have a negative impact on the game and the market in the long run.  Why?  Rares are not rares any longer - they are Uncommons.  There are so many out there now that pretty soon everyone and his dog will be running around in Mastercrafted or better armour, with full sets of Adept 3 spells.  If they don't twink themselves by buying the rares cheaply on the market they can simply spend a little while running around harvesting to find the ones they need.  As a result, Adept 1 spell drops will only really be useful for transmuting and I doubt most people would want to splash out lots of plat for a M1 upgrade from a freely available Adept 3 version of the spell, unless they are going for major uberness and raiding.</p><p>On the positive side, at least I can expect to get lots of "First Pristine Bonus" from all the people asking me to make Adept 3s for them now that it is so easy to find rare loams. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[zaneluke]

I fully understand that there are two sides to the fence on this. But i honestly think this will push more people out into the adventure world to adventure. I think this will hit the bots. I think this will make the game more enjoyable for the majority of the games population. I think this will hurt the full time crafter. They need to change the game up in my opinion. I think it is dying. Im sorry but if I log into a zone during prime time friday night (pm EST and there is one person in the zone, you have a problem folks. I love this game and think it is hands down the best one out there, But it is dying and needs some sort of injection or it is going to turn into a 6 server game for a very small close nit community.

[Jrral]

<cite>zaneluke wrote:</cite><blockquote>I think this will hit the bots. I think this will make the game more enjoyable for the majority of the games population. I think this will hurt the full time crafter. </blockquote>You're right on the first two, but I don't think it'll hurt full-time crafters. It'll hurt those crafters who buy their rares off the broker and put their items up on the broker, and it'll hurt those who spectulate in the market by buying low-priced goods expecting to be able to resell them for a higher price, but it won't hurt crafters who craft to customer orders as they come in (especially those who work on a customer-supplies-rare basis). I was out last night in Feerrott and seeing what's become my normal rate: 6-8 rares per hour of dedicated harvesting. An hour and a half got me 2 of the 3 ebon my warden'll need for T5, and the 4 rhodium my mage needs for her last T5 Ad3s (that's the first time I've pulled more than 1 rhodium in an evening).

[Prrasha]

<cite>zaneluke wrote:</cite><blockquote> I think this will make the game more enjoyable for the majority of the games population. </blockquote>The problem is still that non-rare "rares" make Mastercrafted/Adept3 the baseline equipment.  No one remembers the comments about "getting the best gear in the game from digging in the dirt" that made the first cut at T7 mastercrafted completely useless?  Make rares common and that happens <i>again</i> for T8.  Sure you can go harvest up all the T8 rares you want this fall, but the gear will be useless compared to anything you're currently carrying. The game is supposed to be "risk versus reward". The only risk in the (PvE) game is the coin cost of armor damage and XP debt.  Coin cost is paid off by killing more stuff to make more coin.  XP debt is paid off by killing more stuff to gain XP. So the game is really "time spent versus reward." If you get more rares per time, the "reward" has to go down to keep the game balanced. If rares have become "common" enough that their broker prices have fallen 2x to 10x depending on rare and tier, one of two things has to happen. 1) the whole game has to be rebalanced around the idea that "solo content is for people in MC/Adept3" rather than "solo content is for people in handcrafted-to-weak-treasured/App4". 2) MC/Adept3 has to be rebalanced to be the equivalent of current handcrafted/App4. (And those will have to be rebalanced downwards as well.) I know, based on past experiences, which one will happen. So, if "the majority of the population" will be made happy by having Mastercrafted gear that isn't any better than what a soloable orc drops in the Commonlands, then yes, the end result of non-rare Rares will be a happy population.  I somehow doubt that this will make the population happy, though. The sooner rares get made at least "uncommon" again, the less likely the nerf bat will fall.

[FoxRiverRanger]

<p>I am a dedicated crafter.  I look forward to logging in and crafting and harvesting.  On those occasions that I feel like adventuring I will.  But if forced to abandon those aspects of the game that I enjoy the most, and find myself faced with nothing to do but group with you - I will choose the other option: log out.  Perhaps you have heard of that, those who do are not available for adventuring either.  </p><p>Parsing of my store log shows I have interacted with over 4.000 unique characters via the broker, and countless more by trade and commission.  Every time they carry one of my crafted items into battle they are benefiting from my playing a dedicated crafter.  With how many characters have you grouped?  I am confident that I have interacted with more characters as a crafter than you ever have as an adventurer.</p><p>This game provides a rich interactive world where players can choose to pursue separate goals and exchange the rewards earned by different activities.  The player who only logs in at his guilds scheduled raid time and never PUGS, are they your next target?  What about the player that only solos or duos with a real life friend?  Attempting to trivialize every alternate activity (crafting, harvesting, soloing, raiding) to force all players to run with the 'majority crowd' and play the game in the manner you think most enjoyable will only drive people away.  A rich and varied world will attract more people than a scripted game that forces everyone to pursue the same activities in the same gear.</p>

[Jrral]

<cite>Prrasha wrote:</cite><blockquote> The problem is still that non-rare "rares" make Mastercrafted/Adept3 the baseline equipment.  No one remembers the comments about "getting the best gear in the game from digging in the dirt" that made the first cut at T7 mastercrafted completely useless? 1) the whole game has to be rebalanced around the idea that "solo content is for people in MC/Adept3" rather than "solo content is for people in handcrafted-to-weak-treasured/App4". 2) MC/Adept3 has to be rebalanced to be the equivalent of current handcrafted/App4. (And those will have to be rebalanced downwards as well.) </blockquote>For the first, the dev responsible for that comment doesn't work for SOE anymore. And if you hadn't noticed, Mastercrafted/Adept3 <i>is</i> the baseline for soloing and grouping anymore. Yes, you can solo old-world solo content in handcrafted. You'll want to be careful of whites, but you can do it. Go into the EoF zones, though, and blues and high greens will eat you for lunch if you try them with handcrafted/App4 gear. For heroic content, even with a full group of 6, I'd be wary of anything higher than green if the group was wearing handcrafted. I don't see dropping Mastercrafted down to current handcrafted's level without also dropping handcrafted's effectiveness and rebalancing all EoF content to the new levels. I don't see them rebalancing all content down far enough to make handcrafted standard solo gear, not with the sheer number of people wearing Mastercrafted or better now, so you'd end up with Mastercrafted <i>still </i>being standard solo gear.

[Oakum]

<cite>zaneluke wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I fully understand that there are two sides to the fence on this. But i honestly think this will push more people out into the adventure world to adventure. I think this will hit the bots. <b>They will just keep on harvesting although bots is probably the wrong word. They will just sell more rares to get the same profit.</b></p><b><p> I think this will make the game more enjoyable for the majority of the games population.</p></b><p> <b>Very debatable also. Some look at it as trivializing the tradeskill side of the game. If the goal is to make TSing easy for the I only want to adventure types then they should do the same for adventuring for the I only want to tradeskill types. </b></p><p> I think this will hurt the full time crafter. </p><p><b>Agree but its done now and probably wont be reversed. The full time crafter can now level a character in every TS now much quicker if they haven't done it already. </b> They need to change the game up in my opinion. I think it is dying. Im sorry but if I log into a zone during prime time friday night (pm EST and there is one person in the zone, you have a problem folks.</p><p><b>I do not think the game is dying. I think that it is the time of year when people are taking care of end of summer issues like preparing their kids or themselves for school or college. It has been that way every year as I remember in both EQ1 and EQ2. Also people are bored and waiting for the next expansion and raising alts and or taking advantage of the TS writ XP to level tradeskillers and get rare raws. </b> I love this game and think it is hands down the best one out there, But it is dying and needs some sort of injection or it is going to turn into a 6 server game for a very small close nit community. </p><p><b>I like this game too and it is in an end of summer/waiting for new level cap slump. The new trading card came will probably help with that as some people try to get decks for loot in order to build up xp potions ect for the next expansion instead of watching a TV show. If it was dying their would not have been a lag problem from people selling from more then one character for 7 days as there is now. </b> </p></blockquote>

[Juddge]

Game is not going any place. I don't know of any who has quit recently, but I have met in this past week about 5 new players and 3 returning players. I started an alt and for no reason on the noob island we grouped up and ran around killing stuff we could do solo anyway it was fun and we had a good time. I crafted them all lvl 2 MC stuff. We were at lvl 6 at the time. They all went around the newb island gathered found a few rares i switched chars and bought any we needed. Point is game isn't dien just yet its seems to me to be growing.

[Hellswrath]

The bit about the game dying is definitely just doom and gloom.  I have seen several people come back and none quit recently.  I agree that this is a bit of an "end of summer" slump in activity, though.  However, the point about rare availability needing to go down is correct.  The availability of rares needs to return to near it's original value.  The linked post earlier in the thread is probably where this discussion needs to take place, though.

[Mighty Melvor]

<p>What I've noticed the most is that the lower tiered rares drop like rain.</p><p>I'm a T7 harvester and rares in that tier are a tad higher but the adjustment has been OK from what I've seen.</p><p>The problem is the lower tiers.  I'm not sure how the skill curve works on lower tiers vs. high harvesting skills, but since the GU, I'm getting far too many rares.  I harvested Nek for an alt crafter of mine.  In a little over an hour I had 7 steel, 5 jasper, 4 palladium, 3 malleables, 2 dandelions, 6 fir, 4 cuiriboilli, 3 sparkling.</p><p>I'm sorry to sound selfless, but that is FAR TOO many rares in that short a span.</p><p>I'm hoping Domino can pull this tier vs. skill curve back a bunch.  As it stands now, the highly skilled players are raking in the lower tiered rares far too easy.</p>

[Raveller]

<cite>Spangles wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Rares are not rares any longer - they are Uncommons.  There are so many out there now that pretty soon everyone and his dog will be running around in Mastercrafted or better armour, with full sets of Adept 3 spells.  </p> </blockquote>HOORAY!

[Ruut Li]

<cite>zaneluke wrote:</cite><blockquote>I fully understand that there are two sides to the fence on this. But i honestly think this will push more people out into the adventure world to adventure. </blockquote> I bet you are wrong on that. If I dont feel crafting is worth my time because of way too low profit, all my 6 alts are fully twinked, all guildies alts are fully twinked, Im not gonna force myself to adventure just for the sake of having something to do in the game. I will log out. When I feel like adventuring I do so, when I feel like crafting I do so, and thats whats nice about the game: options. If one is taken away = less time online, not more "friends" for you to group with...

[Calthine]

So, and the baby just got me up at 3:30 am so I'm a wee bit foggy, because there are more rares in game you have less friends?

[Ruut Li]

<p> <span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: verdana,geneva">If its me you are talking to Im responding to op:s belief that when crafting is less desirable people will adventure instead. So there will be more people (I called them "friends" sry) to group with. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: verdana,geneva">No i dont think theres a relation between amount of rares and amount of real friends</span>..lol.</p><p></p><p>zaneluke wrote: </p><blockquote><span style="font-size: small; font-family: comic sans ms,sand"> I view this change in drop rate to be one of the best things to happen to the game in a long long time. I think it have a negative effect on lots of crafters that have put tons of time in to thier skills and have a huge hit on thier current inventory. But, dedicated crafters are not the majority of players in this game. I think they do play a vital role, but maybe this will get them away from the crafting station and out in the environment. Thus adding to the adventuring population, which is sometimes lacking. </span></blockquote>