Looking at ATS... do we get a respec?

[seedyman]

I took my first look at the test server last night, some of it's looking real nice. Seems like several NEW bugs have been introduced, oh well. But I also notced several rather profound changes in harvesting.

My question is: Are the people on the live servers getting any kind of chance to respend their harvesting points when/if these changes go live?

Additionally the current way of players reselling stuff seems like a really good start, but needs to be tweaked. I went to the melee weapons vendor and had to wait a pretty long time for the four-thousand or so player made daggers, and the other weapons, to load before the vendor list came up. I think there should be a way to only list certain quals and only certain things (e.g. q10 Daggers only, q20 pikes only).
People already know how long it takes for the mat vendors, who sell q50 mats, to have their inventory load. This is ten times worse, and hardly anyone plays on the test server. I played for an hour or two, and never saw another pc. (And I did /who from time to time)

[larsa]

I took my first look at the test server last night, some of it's looking real nice. Seems like several NEW bugs have been introduced, oh well. But I also notced several rather profound changes in harvesting.

My question is: Are the people on the live servers getting any kind of chance to respend their harvesting points when/if these changes go live?

Indeed, not only the harvesting skill tree but also the magic skill tree has been changed quite a lot. Always very problematic when core gameplay features are changed after a game is released - of course many of these changes had been requested by beta testers long before the game released, ah, well, water under the bridge ...

The harvesting skill tree seems more balanced on the test server - though it is still far from perfect (gentle extraction far too expensive with little benefit, higher grade prospections far too early, etc.). Harvesters will level slower with the new skill tree - and that's basically a good thing, however many of the existing high-level harvesters had quite an easy ride in the past weeks ...

Additionally the current way of players reselling stuff seems like a really good start, but needs to be tweaked. ...

People already know how long it takes for the mat vendors, who sell q50 mats, to have their inventory load. This is ten times worse, and hardly anyone plays on the test server. ...

Yes, the current vendor system on the test server is crazy, more or less unusable. Imagine a system where all harvested, looted and crafted items stay in the game for at least a week and every vendor carries 1000s of boots and daggers.

[seedyman]

Indeed, not only the harvesting skill tree but also the magic skill tree has been changed quite a lot. Always very problematic when core gameplay features are changed after a game is released - of course many of these changes had been requested by beta testers long before the game released, ah, well, water under the bridge ...

It's nice to see the changes are getting the attention, and the alterations are getting made. I just hope at least SOME respending is allowed. I worry, however, that if only harvesters(and mages) are allow to respec, that other people will complain that they should be allowed to as well. I don't advocate a total respending of SPs, or even for one skill tree, but that may end up being simpler for the DEVs.

I didn't play magic up much, but I noticed that one magic pack got me acid instead of heal.

The harvesting skill tree seems more balanced on the test server - though it is still far from perfect (gentle extraction far too expensive with little benefit, higher grade prospections far too early, etc.). Harvesters will level slower with the new skill tree - and that's basically a good thing, however many of the existing high-level harvesters had quite an easy ride in the past weeks ...



Yes, the current vendor system on the test server is crazy, more or less unusable. Imagine a system where all harvested, looted and crafted items stay in the game for at least a week and every vendor carries 1000s of boots and daggers.

Kind of like my abortive SWG experience... Every person who could make the lame starting pistol thought THEIRS was something special. It was impossible to find anything on the vendors because there were literally hundreds of carbon copy newbe pistols for sale, bad ones. There will always be people who want to try to make money off the unwary, and sell q10 daggers from store bought materials in such quantity that the better "quality" q10 dagger are hard to find. There just needs to be sorting and filtering available.

I would also suggest keeping more data in memory, if there weren't such a leakage problem already.

[khayne]

Sorting, Filtering, and an opt-out option to sell your items ONLY to the NPC are all needed. As it is now, anything you sell goes to the player sale list which on the ATS alone is way too full. Sad part is...whenever I get on it, I'm the only one on...but yet there are hundreds of useless grind items for sale already.

Haven't gotten a chance to check out harvesting changes yet, guess I'll have to go do that now.

[seedyman]

Sorting, Filtering, and an opt-out option to sell your items ONLY to the NPC are all needed. As it is now, anything you sell goes to the player sale list which on the ATS alone is way too full. Sad part is...whenever I get on it, I'm the only one on...but yet there are hundreds of useless grind items for sale already.

Haven't gotten a chance to check out harvesting changes yet, guess I'll have to go do that now.

Dang, I forgot to see if any of the "zero" stats of items actually had values yet, you notice?

[khayne]

I just checked and it seems none of the dodge/parry modifiers are in still as far as I could tell. Though I didn't have a chance to look at any REAL equipment.

As far as harvesting goes, it looks like it will be a LOT harder. First of all theres no getting away with the 2 step back harvesting to avoid the gas it seems. Also, on a more important note, you can no longer cycle modes. Though the only modes I saw were modes 11 and 14 so I don't know what that tells you... It seems that the mode MAY change after every harvested mat...like 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, but I wouldn't put a confirmation on that quite yet till some other people try it out, hopefully at higher levels than my character.

[bizango]

I was thinking about the huge number of playermade items being sold by vendors. As a programmer, I like to stress test my software before I release it. My guess is, the devs are stress testing the merchanting system with everything everybody sells to a merchant, then they can play with giving players opt-out, or even better, opt-in schemes.

[seedyman]

I was thinking about the huge number of playermade items being sold by vendors. As a programmer, I like to stress test my software before I release it. My guess is, the devs are stress testing the merchanting system with everything everybody sells to a merchant, then they can play with giving players opt-out, or even better, opt-in schemes.

Good thought, even with REALLY limited playerbase on the ATS, there's a shipload of utter poo for sale.

[ralgur]

So they're slowing things down for those of us who either weren't in beta, and thus learned all the "tricks" for leveling quickly, or chose not to burn our way through in levels.

The powergamers get to keep what they've done through exploits.

Yet again, a dev team decides to punish the many for the sins of the few.

/e hopes eq2 beta email comes SOON

[seedyman]

So they're slowing things down for those of us who either weren't in beta, and thus learned all the "tricks" for leveling quickly, or chose not to burn our way through in levels.

The powergamers get to keep what they've done through exploits.

Yet again, a dev team decides to punish the many for the sins of the few.

/e hopes eq2 beta email comes SOON

Huh?
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