Comments on: How many tradeskills must a man walk down?

By: Tesh

Tesh — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 15:23:39 +0000

Agreed. It seems an obvious item shop angle; not necessary, but fun. One more reason I think they don’t understand the business model.

By: spinks

spinks — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 04:24:10 +0000

That decision quite surprised me. If I was running a F2P game, I’d make it possible for people to have lots of tradeskills and then sell loads of ‘tradeskill helping items’ in the item shop!

By: Tesh

Tesh — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:40:13 +0000

A tangential thought: Allods Online only permits one tradeskill per character for a good chunk of the game (the quest to earn the right to another one is more of a pain than grinding up an alt in some ways). I’ve not spent a lot of time tinkering with the Auction House there, but as a Herbalist (gatherer profession), I don’t usually bother putting my stuff on the market, and I can’t use it. It’s just more vendor trash. That’s not helping the much-vaunted “player economy”.

If I had at least two skills, one gathering, one production, I’d be far more likely to gather, produce and then sell the produce on the AH. Maybe I’m just weird, though. Point being, artificial constraints to force interdependency on the market isn’t always the right way to go.

If I could have every tradeskill, like I could in Runes of Magic, I may well find myself being far more involved in the player economy. I know I do in Puzzle Pirates, where I can do any shop job, only limited by my own skill and interest.

By: Tesh

Tesh — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:35:33 +0000

Which neatly increases sub time. No need to sell profession expansions when people are already paying for them.

By: Koch (Aszune)

Koch (Aszune) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 07:57:33 +0000

To answer the original question: I’d learn all of them on my “main”. The time saved after getting a new piece of gear alone would be worth it – I mean, you need to log in your bank alt no 1 to send gems to your jewelcrafter, cut them, send them to the main, log in bank alt no 2 to send enchanting mats to the enchanter, log in the scribe to make a scroll, log in enchanter to produce the enchant and send it to your main … GAH. Obviously this could be a lot more organized with suitable stockpiles on the appropriate characters, but all those alts need to make some money as well.

Obviously the benefits would come in handy – and even if the benefits were removed there are still the passive ones. Back in TBC I found it very useful to have both weaponsmithing and engineering on my warrior, in WotLK it changed to a more general Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting. I fear each current iteration (that has bonuses – even if those are limited to BoManufacture items) will just mean there are two “optimal” tradeskills.

By: spinks

spinks — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:00:00 +0000

Or just don’t give abilities from tradeskills at all.

By: khoram

khoram — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:54:52 +0000

there’s an easy solution to that, though, while still opening up all tradeskills to each character; you only get the ability benefits (extra gem slots, +sta, etc) from the first 2 skills you max or get past a certain level. After that, you get the skill but not the benes from the other skills.

By: SlikRX/Balthazario

SlikRX/Balthazario — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 02:01:22 +0000

I don’t want to have to level all the tradeskills so I can min/max my abilities. The extra gem slots for BS, and the slight extra stamina for mining is nice as it is. But having to level ALL of them (or most of them) to maintain parity would just be too much work.

Also, with the whole gearscore BS going on, I can just see it now in trade: “must have 6,500 GS and be 475 in all tadeskills”. (assuming this would happen post Cata)

As it is now, having 2 maxxed professions gives you a nice bonus or two, but not THAT huge of a bonus for regular players. But, if you would compare (theorycraft) what you could get with all of them, I’m pretty sure the sum would be significant enough that it would become nearly manadatory for even “hardcasual” raiders.

Ick.

By: Ysharros

Ysharros — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:03:06 +0000

I might not have nearly as many alts if I could take more than one tradeskill on each.

That is all.

By: khoram

khoram — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:16:51 +0000

“The answer is because trade skills made up part of your character’s role, so historically players were nudged towards keeping that quite narrow.”

Except that in older MMOs like UO and EQ, there were no restrictions on trade skills at all. Many people in EQ became grand masters in all available trade skills. WoW was one of the first to really restrict players in the hopes of encouraging interaction through interdependence between players. It doesn’t really work though, since the same people who would have just leveled every skill up on one character to be self-sufficient just make alts, as you mentioned.