Hodgepodge Dev Q & A - November 30, 2005
Developers address some Bazaar and tradeskill issues in the Halfling Hodgepodge Q & A (as on EQLive).
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Can you add more searching options for the /Barter window? If there are more than 200 buy lines, you can't view them all. It would be nice if we could at least search by /Buyer name and see all buy lines posted by that buyer.
This stuff is technically feasible. When the feature was first designed it was assumed that, since you had the item, you'd be able to specify it by name when looking to see if anyone wanted it. More and more people seem to be doing vendor diving for barter buyers, though, which makes these requested features more useful.
Since we now have a button to turn on/off helms in options, why can't this be done for switching between tunics and robes for monks?
From a purely technical standpoint, these are 2 completely different things. Turning helms on and off merely is a flag to determine whether we should display the helm model associated with the item, or just display as if you weren't wearing a helm. This is why it didn't add helm graphics to helms that didn't already have them, as that would require going through all those items and specifying a graphic look. The tunic/robe thing would require adding a new field to the items specifying their "alternative" model, and a designer would then have to populate that field for everything. Why can't it be done? Well, it probably can, but it would take a lot more time than the helm thing did, and not just programmer time.
Will the Spell Research skill get a trophy, now that it's a "real" tradeskill?
One of the things that we've been discussing lately has been the possibility of extending the current line of trophies to be tiered, instead of just one trophy at 250 skill. The benefits of this would allow us to upgrade the trophies if / when we increase the tradeskill caps again, as well as reward those who have attained the higher skills with more stats and bigger modifiers. This extension would also include adding trophies for the skills that do not currently have any.
Seriously though for tradeskilling many classes are not able to forage which means you either make an alt or pay massive bazaar prices. Why can’t there be more recipies that contain vendor drop items at the higher skill levels?
Foraging is a beneficial skill that gives us a means of creating specific recipes aimed at a smaller section of the tradeskill community, however... It also should not be the gating factor for gaining skill points in any one specific tradeskill.
In many cases, the items that can be obtained via foraging are also able to be obtained via other means. This is a trend we plan on continuing as we move forward with as we introduce more recipes into the game. In the situations where a skill-up recipe does use foraged items, we'll make sure there's an equivalent recipe that uses a dropped counterpart.
Why don't (Trolls) have the ability to make some old world cultural armor like the crimson darkscale or the fulvous darksplint or the blackened darkscale armor which are wearable by Trolls but can only be made by Ogres.
This racial-gap in the 'old cultural' was one of the main concerns and causes of introducing the new cultural armor with Dragons of Norrath. We saw a number of gaps with the old cultural, as well as a need for upgrading the armor to something that more accurately reflected the content that players currently encounter in EverQuest. The new cultural fills in these gaps very well, so we currently have no plans to add any 'old cultural' recipes to the races that do not currently have it.
Is fletching going to be fixed for non karana followers and/or foragers?
We have several ideas on how to extend fletching beyond its current usefulness and limitations -- This includes adding additional means to obtain 300 skill for everyone, as well as adjusting the recipes which make it far too easy for certain races and / or classes to raise their skill. Without delving too deeply into the details, expect some changes in the near future (January / February timeframe).
Can we get some details on the plans to address the tradeskill issues with regards to skill up paths? Specifically, tailoring for non-karana worshipers and fletching for non-wood elfs or non-karana worshipers have nearly impossible skill up paths to 300.
This, much like the question asked above, is also on the board to be addressed by adding additional recipes as well as adjusting any of those recipes which are far too easy for certain races to gain skill with.
