Ryzom

Frankly there are not enough people on the server in any specific realm that you will have enough people specializing in enough variety of armor pieces to put together very many suits past QL120 or so.

I seriously doubt the situtation will improve either. My guess is eventually people will start wearing mixed race armors and mixed stat armors because of this. It takes a huge amount of materials just to get through a single branch of the third tier crafting skills. I think someone estimated somewhere in the tens of thousands range. Heavy armor has 6 of those branches to go through past skill level 100. Thats pretty nuts.

If there were more people crafting in the game, I'm not sure this would be an issue... as it stands right now the situtation for people who stick with the game is going to get fairly desperate a couple months out from now.

I disagree with the OPs argument. To me, I view each subtree as an opportunity for a great source of skill points. Please don't change an entire skill tree because a few people are frustrated that they can't powerlevel.

Trust me, I've gone through sheer misery having to level earrings and rings at 85 exp per when you use grind mats 30 levels below your skill, but the 800 skill points I've gained since level 50 doing those two plans to 90 have paid for hp boost and a couple of ammo plans. Took an hour per level; you do the math on how many times I clicked 'take item' and 'craft item' before my fingers went numb.

But...what most non-crafters don't know is that you only need ONE subtree under the main tree leveled up to craft anything in the main tree at the higher level. That is, if you are level 110 in heavy armor boots and level 100 in everything else, you can attempt to craft level 120 armor. (For that matter, you could try to craft level 120 light armor even if you're at level 51 in it and 110 in heavy boots.)

Granted, the success rates stink when you're not leveled up in that particular subtree. But, assuming you don't want to spend 300k mats, this is the way to do it...you certainly won't fail 300k mats worth of times. And honestly, given how much they've pandered to harvesters with the instaregen (a huge mistake IMO) can you really say mats at higher levels aren't really going to be a problem? Furthermore, if you have mats its really not that hard to advance in the armor lines; when you have to spend 20-30 mats on an item, even when you're down a number of levels you still bang out like 2K exp per item. (Compare that to the misery of leveling low-mat requirement jewelry and you'll understand why there aren't a lot of jewelry crafters.)

I look forward to getting to the armor split precisely for the same reason I like the jewelry split - it will allow me to do things like take medium qual plans and other race plans so when I start harvesting in other lands I can actually do something with the mats. QL100 wondermats mean we can now level up to 130 easily, which should supply most people in the current environment.

What does need changing are crafter missions and raw mat prices. The crafting nerf this last patch was severe, subtle, and uncalled for. It needs to be fixed or there won't be any young crafters to do all this, nor will experienced crafters be able to pay for the grinding required. Both were just really, really dumb nerfs.

usinuk wrote: What does need changing are crafter missions and raw mat prices. The crafting nerf this last patch was severe, subtle, and uncalled for. It needs to be fixed or there won't be any young crafters to do all this, nor will experienced crafters be able to pay for the grinding required. Both were just really, really dumb nerfs.

Some facts about the missions to highlight this subtle and really dumb nerf!

2 missions that were in Crystabell in Tryker. These are lvl 50 crafting missions.

Pre patch:

Mission 1

5xql60 Hvy Vest
+5xql50 Medium pants

Mats required for mission 225 (allowing 20% extra for item degrades 270 mats)

Pay for completing mission 452k dappers.

effective value per mat 1670 (ql50 & ql60 mats required).

Mission 2

5xql65 long sword
+5xql60 hvy vest

Mats required for mission 240 (allowing 20% extra for item degrades 288 mats)

Pay for completing mission 557k dappers.

effective value per mat 1934 (ql60 & ql70 mats required).

exceptional return, maybe a little too high.

Now after patch 1 and patch 1++

First all the items require medium quality look!

but the return on these missions has been reduced to 50k each!

using the numbers above this values a ql50-ql70 mat at around 251 dappers.

The merchant will by default pay of 800 dappers per mat if sold direct and players are currently paying more.

So to do the mission, rather than a profit to re-invest in crafting or other things, it cost you 448k if you buy the mats, or if you harvest them yourself you will effectively lose 488k because you could have sold them to the shop.

This doesn't make any sense to me, not matter how hard I look at it positively.

Crafting missions were the only way to keep pace with the guild hunters without making everyone harvest.

Total streamlining could be a badthing making you lose of a hell of a lot of SP, but making the split latter could also be good because as it is atm is just stupid.
You can be lvl250 in one weapon.. which is cool.
You can be lvl250 in one school of magic.. which is cool.
You can be lvl250 in medium armour gloves.. plain stupid.

I'm one of the masochists who like the system the way it is, but I wouldn't complain if some of the crafting branches were made 'easier' just so long as some remained mind numbingly hard (yes, I'm a jewelry specialist). Mid-range armor and weapons seem like nice candidates for streamlining to me, though I do think they should get painful at the high end.