Best Of

Please just remove Brewmeister at this point rather than gutting Cooking. Keep the drinks for cooks, Brewmeister is already a lot of combat utility under the shoddy disguise of being a bonafide tradeskill. Hate the idea of losing out on proficiency by being a flexer, I invested credits so I wouldn't need to rely on other people because of the problem created by limited tradeskills in the first place - feels like a slap in the face on that note. Also how are comms from a designer's perspective going to work when it scales on proficiency?

My tam is 100% for trade swapping.

Also remove brewmeister entirely, it's lacklustre. Split it between cooking (drinks/teas/malts) and alchemy (magicink), seems much better than preserving a very blah trade already, and solves the mess of cooking cartels.

Edit: Also tinkering, just merge it with enchantment. Let's be real, both brewmeister and tinkering were the ugly cousins of alchemy and spellcraft.

Lorecraft is going to feel pretty empty as is. If we're gutting Brewmeister of its flavour already, and those who are brewmeisters now can be lorecrafters instead, why not just gut it entirely?

-Lump all amalgamating skills in Brewmeister back into Lorecraft
-Anyone with Brewmeister gets Lorecraft for free

Cooks get to continue to make drinks, but will need to get prepared leaves and malts from lorecrafters still (unless that will come from agriculture instead?). Seems reasonable for maintaining trade reliance and not weirdly dividing food and drink trades entirely.

EDIT: Or hey, just do away with lorecraft at the same time too. There's no reason for a specialisation when there's no specialisations - just put all the remaining amalgamating skills back into alchemy, done.

Sorry more thoughts. I never change class and have no interest in doing so. Depending how this proficiency/costing plays out, this proposed change would make obsolete: My tam, my third trade, allllll the lessons from 6 other trades (i have 8) and all the trade artifacts that go with them. Add in the trade curios that boost production...this feels like a really big swipe at anyone who actually was already engaging in the market system. A lot of people who have multiple trades don't do it for mechanics and likely don't even bother in having multiple slots open for them, but those like me who had them to be self-sufficient or just indecisive in what craft they feel like engaging in at the time, now have to choose favourites.

Every other part of this proposal feels pretty good to me at a glance (except maybe removing gold drops entirely) but this not only stings personally but I feel like it will have the desired result. How many shopkeepers do we have out there, that are like me and have multiple trades they use to stock those shops? If we are nerfed, are there really that many other people out there willing to stock a shop with their wares? It's hard to find some trades already, like tinkering. Are there really that many tinkers who would willingly stay at that trade to stock a shop? Over other more creative crafts? I know currently I flex it to access the enchants people need. But if they're going to be available in NPC shops anyway, why bother having it? I suspect current shopkeepers who like to flex trades will be hit, and everyone else who never cared anyway will continue not caring because they can just buy what they need from Trader Bob.

What is the incentive for non-creative trades? People wanting unique things will be able to access them in those player-run shops - awesome, but why have alchemy, or herbs? I know a lot of my shop-keeping gold comes not from anything creative but from people who can't find avaricehorn or regulators. Obviously it's hard to know without knowing what the NPC shops sell for but if they're not -significantly- higher there's still no way to make a profit, with now scarcity items always being available.

I'm a bit upset but I hope I'm still making sense. This feels like a backward solution and a big nerf to my enjoyment of shopkeeping. I tend to stock things to fill a need. 99% of my designs are public or in the city cartels - which would be readily available also. So even the trades that are creative likely wouldn't generate income for me unless i start filling my private cartels, which generally are designs only for myself or family, private for that very reason. Please rethink the trade limit/proficiency aspect. Cut the huge lesson costs to make them accessible, strip out the buffs, leave them as fun perks to have if you enjoy making things without having to grind to be -good- at something you transcended already.

Uilani said:

Here is an alternative proposal to the "losing all proficiency if you switch" issue. 

Have only 2 skills active at a time (as before) but also have the ability to lock the proficiency of 2 skills. In this scenario, you don't lose proficiency in these 2 skills even if you switch out of them back and forth. You cannot gain proficiency in the skill you switch to as one of your actives, not unless you choose to abandon proficiency of the skill you have it locked to at the moment.

That way you could still switch out and make the things you need, but not lose your proficiency to do so. The things you made in the skills you have 0% proficiency in would still be worse than if someone specialising made them, of course, and if possible it would be a good idea to seek out a specialist to help you with the more difficult/advanced things you wished to make. You would not be forced to rely on that though. 

TBH all of these changes will make life hell for noobies or those who aren't already geared up with all the arties.

I don't think forced guild participation is a good idea at all. Yes it's unfortunate that guild populations are very feast or famine, and yes, it's unfortunate that there's a pool of people that opt out of guilds entirely, but tying mechanical benefits behind guilds so that players feel forced into a guild for those benefits wouldn't necessarily create more guild engagement, it'll just mean that the apathetic people are apethetic but with overhead now.

Synl said:

Will I be annoyed that I am more visible and thus more susceptible to being 'bothered' while out and about in the world? Yes.

Is that worth it to potentially increase the game's retention? Yes.

In my opinion, it's kind of a self-fulfilling situation too. The fewer people have gems, the more visible those few people are, the more likely they are to be "bothered". On the flip side, having everyone visible without location also means it's that much easier for you to find people who might be able to help you too.

One thought I had regarding aethertrading and the need for new characters to be able to get goop (gnome weapons for instance are pretty much essential). Rather than trying to find a way to fit in goop generations, maybe all existing ASHOP goop costs could be converted to credits and leave goops as a skin transformation only mechanic. Or even just axe goop entirely and use credits for skin transformations.

I'm not even a cook for money, I just like to make stuff and give it to people