Return of Reckoning

Hello everyone,

I would like to open a discussion about balancing tradeskills, and ultimately incentivize more players to take tradeskills other than cultivating/apothecary. Right now the problem that I am seeing with tradeskills is that there is a massive disparity in terms of usefulness, profitability and convenience between cultivating/apothecary and basically every other tradeskill.

The amount of gold you can make from simply being logged in and spamming your miracle grow to make potions is far superior to having to commit time to farm talismans or potion mats with scavenging/butchering. Not only is it more profitable to sell cultivated potions for gold, it is far more convenient because you can do this while doing pvp, and you will never have to waste your time farming materials in pve to utilize your trade. It is literally free gold just for logging in and clicking a few times. Not only do you make more gold, in most cases you will also never have to buy anything other than armor potions so you can feel free to pop potions any time you are being hit without worrying about breaking your bank. For that reason I would also argue that this tradeskill balance issue crosses over into actual game balance, because you are at a disadvantage in pvp if you do not have potions. Not only is there an issue with the volume of potions available to cultivator/apothecaries, there is also a difference in the quality of potions available to them. Blue pots are in most cases too expensive for players to afford to buy consistantly, but they are readily available for people who make them, because of this cult/apo characters have an advantage in that respect.

The only other gathering tradeskill that can be used while you are in pvp is salvaging, and this will net you far less gold than cult/apo - certainly not enough to be frequently using potions. For that reason I also think that salvaging is not really worth taking on any character that you play for a long duration because - simply put - cultivation/apothecary is just better for a main character for all of the reasons that were previously brought up.

A simple soluion to improve scavenging/butchering would be to make dead players able to be scavenged/butchered in pvp. If i remember correctly, players were able to be scavenged on live, im not sure if there is some kind of client issue on RoR that prevents this but I think this should be possible. The loot tables for this should include things like armor potion mats or liniments for butchers and for scavengers players should drop fragments that are otherwise not salvagable from items, like armor frags, or perhaps just useful purple fragments on occasion.

Another solution that I would like to propose in order to balance the amount of players using talisman making would be to give talisman makers access to better talismans like attack power for gloves or crit for shoulders, or even just slight improvements to regular talisman stats. I would however still exclude talismans that change the mechanics of how a class is played like odjira did on live by giving a massive run speed proc. Another option could be to give a wounds bonus per talisman in use by a talisman maker like ~+4 wounds per talisman? This would help even the difference in stats between talisman/potion makers and would incentivize more people to use talisman making on main characters. This idea may have to be work shopped a bit because it would still be possible for super rich players to have access to the best potions, or if they have the time to afk-produce potions on an alt they could still spam potions as they normally would. With that being said I am still inclined to believe that this wont be the case, because there still needs to be time and gold invested in maximizing their stats, and unless you have thousands of gold or are able to spam potion making for a long time, you wont be able to have as many blue potions as someone who is consistantly producing them and you will run out.

I am interested to hear what the rest of you think of this, thanks for reading and for your consideration.

Sorry to necro this, but I think this should have been discussed.

1st of all, no to the increase in stats for talisman slots. That is exactly what the talisman does.

In live you could scavenge dead players' bodies.

The other proposals can be argued, yet you missed the most obvious solution for me: Make liniments, talismans, potions, etc... drop in PvP, and also the materials required with Bound on Pickup enabled. From all skills, but not top quality, just decent enough, so skill making still have their niche.

It can be argued that then people will not buy anything below perfect from Auction House, but that's in fact what happens right now, with anything below perfect staying there for ages waiting for a player desperate enough to buy it, which most of the times will not happen.

Just my 2 cents to a discussion that should have been taken more seriously.

Its more the lack of synergies between tradeskills, and the fact they are uneven in proportion (you have 2 crafting skills for 4 gathering skills, where it should have been 3/3 to begin with).

Lack of synergies means only 1-2 components specific to a given skill is a bad idea : As OP said, you do Cult+Apo, and you only miss armor and toughness components. Everything else (liniment as well, as all liniments are craftable from seeds) is available without the need for another skill.

Same way for Magic Salvaging + Talisman crafting, where you only miss armor components (and curios) from scavenging.
Dropping and destroying items is another topic, but with horrible drop rate for blue/purple items (even into dungeons instances, Gunbad drops nearly nothing aside constant blue jewels, sentinel blue items are not even lv40/200)...

But basically you get nothing from being scavenger or butcher, saving 2 components that only you can get.

It's not a good design IMO, and we need far more specific components to be tied to each skill.
Removing cross-skill components will make skills more synergic, or more helpful overall.

Magic powder from salvaging OR scavenging could easily be removed (You got it from both skills).
Some basic seeds could be removed as well (reducing the power of cultivator and strenghtening butcher), and liniment-specific seeds (like Nightshade) could be removed, and put on drop for butchers).

Allow scavengers to drop other fragments than main stats (like init, wounds, weapon skill, magic resistances, toughness) to be less dependant of the horrible lootrate (for instance I got around 1000 40+ champs kills, I may have got 1 or 2 blue item outside of dyes, and was not even items 40)...

There are many things to balance around here, and especially after reduction of blue/purple items loot chances.

Fenris78 wrote: Fri May 03, 2019 1:28 pm Its more the lack of synergies between tradeskills, and the fact they are uneven in proportion (you have 2 crafting skills for 4 gathering skills, where it should have been 3/3 to begin with).

(...)
Removing cross-skill components will make skills more synergic, or more helpful overall.

Magic powder from salvaging OR scavenging could easily be removed (You got it from both skills).
Some basic seeds could be removed as well (reducing the power of cultivator and strenghtening butcher), and liniment-specific seeds (like Nightshade) could be removed, and put on drop for butchers).

Allow scavengers to drop other fragments than main stats (like init, wounds, weapon skill, magic resistances, toughness) to be less dependant of the horrible lootrate (for instance I got around 1000 40+ champs kills, I may have got 1 or 2 blue item outside of dyes, and was not even items 40)...

(...)

I can see that point. Maybe reducing the skill to 2/2 or making the 3/3 more widely usable would have been great. I completely agree with that.

Still, my proposal is very, Very, VERY easy to implement, cause it doesn't mess up with any core system, nor with current level of skills that players have, just with drop/loot tables.