[Suggestion] Further Crafting Tree QOL Enhancements

Credible_Joe · March 12

Medicinal use is a too valuable to pass up on any character, and I don't think it should require leveling up Alchemy to acquire. Honestly, the same could be said for the equivalent provisioning passives. I say we move it into the Craft tree (provisioning can go into Fitness). There are several reasons this would enhance my experience

EDIT

People aren't reading the discourse, so here's a TL;DR

No new or added Craft points or stars
Medicinal Use displaces Rationer in the Craft Tree
Rationer goes into Fitness
The passives would be made root stars, available as early as possible, requiring the minimum champion point investment to acquire about halfway into gear cap

Roleplay
- With the upcoming characterization updates (as well as the few that are already present), investing into Alchemy for a passive that's too valuable to pass up would open up dialogue that's not appropriate for characters that I don't see as alchemists. Ditto for provisioning.
- Yikes, everyone is fixating on this. It's subjective and not my sole motivation for this post. There's no need to explain headcanon to me or insinuate that I only want this for my own personal roleplay. QOL is the only important factor here.
QOL
- Leveling alchemy isn't all that difficult, but it is expensive. Ironically, potion solvents between minimum and maximum level sell for the most, as they don't stockpile in everyone's inventory like natural / clear water and tears of lorkhan do. It's not prohibitively expensive, but still irritating tracking down the guild traders with the leveled solvents you need for your alchemy power leveling.
  - Also, doing this for every alt is wildly time consuming compared to assigning account-wide champion points.
  - I'm going over the rebuttals, and I can't find any math to suggest otherwise. No matter how easy leveling Alchemy and Provisioning is, unlocking these passives once per account is an order of magnitude faster and easier than grinding out two skill lines on every character.
  - Besides automatically having access to these on every alt, the only difference would be for fresh accounts that would unlock these around C60 - C90, as opposed to... Whatever the minimum level you'd get from grinding Alchemy + Provisioning, plus the skill points required for three maxed out passives. 9 Skill points? That's wildly expensive for fresh accounts.
  - Lastly, we need to remember that Champion Points apply to sub-50 characters unless explicitly stated otherwise. So after hitting the threshold where these can be slotted immediately, new alts will automatically have access to these passives by default, without ever even having to interact with an Alchemy Lab.
Champion Point Sink
- While the Thief tree refactor makes Crafting points much more valuable I found I didn't have enough for all the passives I want, and at the same time only use three equip slots. This... Doesn't feel right. I love having all the crafting stuff as gimme's, but spreading out our points like that make for some tough decisions.
- I say we make Liquid Efficiency an equip star again, and add Medicinal Use as the gimme.
  - Everybody disliked that
  - No new craft points. Make Medicinal Use a root star.
- While we're at it, lets fold both of the provisioning passives into the Rationer star, and move that star into Fitness. Put it on The Warrior's mouth. Medicinal use can go where Rationer used to be.
  - It was pointed out that these need to be available as early as possible, prior to gear cap at least. I agree. So we'll shuffle some stars around and make both Medicinal Use and Rationer root stars so they're available prior to C160
  - Technical breakdown of minimum champion point investment:
    Credible_Joe wrote: »
    As for the numbers, directly replacing Rationer with Liquid Efficiency would put the minimum point investment for all three levels at 65.
    10 - Breakfall
    
    15 - Wanderer
    
    10 - Steadfast Enchantment
    
    30 - Medicinal Use (formerly Rationer)
    
    I do think players should have access to this prior to gear cap, so we could always make it a source star. That'd reduce the minimum champion level to 90 from 195.
    
    For the new Fitness star, we could give it any value we want. I say put it on The Warrior's mouth and make it a source star, so we can start on it right away.
    
    Gourmand and Connoisseur provide 20 minutes with three skill points each, total of 6 skill points. Kind of awkward... The full buff of Rationer + Gourmand + Connoisseur is 50 minutes for both food and drink. So, easy: 50 points, chunks of 10, 10 minutes per chunk. 20 (at a CP total of 60) gets you the equivalent of both craft skills, and the rest is extra. Presently, we need a minimum of 75 to even start investing in Rationer.

The only thing to consider after all that is if it's feasible to add a way to reset our skill progress. Getting [Alchemist] dialogue prompts in places like Ald Isra and Stone Garden on characters that only know the effects of the two cheapest flowers on the market is pretty jarring. Maybe some kind of prestige system? That's a discussion for a different topic, but it's one way to get our skill level back down to 1.

Anyway, that's what I've got for this post. Thoughts?

Monte_Cristo · March 13

It would free up a skill passive slot for an alchemy hireling

DenverRalphy · March 13

I'd rather spend a few skillpoints than need yet more CP points to distribute.

Also.. how long does it take to level up Alchemy? 10 minutes? And it's not THAT expensive.

[edit] And forgive me for being blunt. But I really don't care that anybody would see it as innappropriate for a character. If a person wants to RP a character that wouldn't be an Alchemist, then they can RP a character who doesn't get the benefits of an Alchemist.

Kittytravel · March 13

We just buffed the green tree to be more useful and now we want to nerf it?

Just level Alchemy. This is probably by far one of the easier ones in the game to level crafting wise. As for your points...

If you don't want to roleplay an Alchemist, then don't. Don't pick the choice. Don't mention you have the skill. No one will know except you, that's why it's Roleplay.

The green tree already has an abundance of useful options now that the limitation of slotting has been removed, I'd rather not see it get bogged down again with "must take" choices like the one you are proposing.

Tatanko · March 13

I have a ton of extra skill points, but despite being max level I cannot fill out the green tree entirely. So for me this would be a downgrade.

Credible_Joe · March 13

Kittytravel wrote: »

We just buffed the green tree to be more useful and now we want to nerf it?

Just level Alchemy. This is probably by far one of the easier ones in the game to level crafting wise. As for your points...

If you don't want to roleplay an Alchemist, then don't. Don't pick the choice. Don't mention you have the skill. No one will know except you, that's why it's Roleplay.

The green tree already has an abundance of useful options now that the limitation of slotting has been removed, I'd rather not see it get bogged down again with "must take" choices like the one you are proposing.

Tatanko wrote: »

I have a ton of extra skill points, but despite being max level I cannot fill out the green tree entirely. So for me this would be a downgrade.

To clarify, the total number of Craft Tree points wouldn't change. Fitness would get one new star (Rationer), and most of us should have fitness points to spare for it. Medicinal Use would be the non-equip star and displace Rationer. Also, If we're saying that liquid efficiency is a must-take, I disagree. It effectively gives you 1.1x potion uses. Saves some gold, but doesn't affect your DPS or sustain the way medicinal use does.

But if that's a deal breaker, sure, make them both non-equips. Either way the number of craft points wouldn't be changing. Just Fitness.

Regardless, I get that most of us aren't so strict with the characterization and roleplay, but telling me to ignore it isn't constructive. I've been ignoring it, and it's been bothering me enough that I made this post. If every character is a master alchemist, what's the point of adding extra dialogue options?

If it's not a factor for you, that's fine. It is a factor for me.

I am interested to know at this point how people use their Fitness points. I have 38 extra presently out of 600. I'd use a new points sink in Fitness.

wolfie1.0. · March 13

Credible_Joe wrote: »

Kittytravel wrote: »

We just buffed the green tree to be more useful and now we want to nerf it?

Just level Alchemy. This is probably by far one of the easier ones in the game to level crafting wise. As for your points...

If you don't want to roleplay an Alchemist, then don't. Don't pick the choice. Don't mention you have the skill. No one will know except you, that's why it's Roleplay.

The green tree already has an abundance of useful options now that the limitation of slotting has been removed, I'd rather not see it get bogged down again with "must take" choices like the one you are proposing.

Tatanko wrote: »

I have a ton of extra skill points, but despite being max level I cannot fill out the green tree entirely. So for me this would be a downgrade.

To clarify, the total number of Craft Tree points wouldn't change. Fitness would get one new star (Rationer), and most of us should have fitness points to spare for it. Medicinal Use would be the non-equip star and displace Rationer. Also, If we're saying that liquid efficiency is a must-take, I disagree. It effectively gives you 1.1x potion uses. Saves some gold, but doesn't affect your DPS or sustain the way medicinal use does.

But if that's a deal breaker, sure, make them both non-equips. Either way the number of craft points wouldn't be changing. Just Fitness.

Regardless, I get that most of us aren't so strict with the characterization and roleplay, but telling me to ignore it isn't constructive. I've been ignoring it, and it's been bothering me enough that I made this post. If every character is a master alchemist, what's the point of adding extra dialogue options?

If it's not a factor for you, that's fine. It is a factor for me.

I am interested to know at this point how people use their Fitness points. I have 38 extra presently out of 600. I'd use a new points sink in Fitness.

That puts you in the 1900's in cp roughly. A good portion of the playerbase isn't likely in that area. Which means that depending on where you imply it should be put you will need a good amount of cp to unlock it.locking it out for many players that likely need it for content.

Meanwhile l, right now can max out alchemy at level 3 and put points into it after a few skyshards and quests.

That's a massive scaling jump, and only benefits players with spare cp and no gold or mats. That's not exactly a large percentage of the player base. Yes newer players won't really need the passive for a while, but it sure helps once you start working on your cp and the cp grind moving that back to probably 1000 or 1200 cp is just going to lose those players faster. It's far easier to grind the mats or gold needed to level the skill.

As for mat prices, they been in the tank for a year and with anniversary event on the horizon it's not likely to go up. So leveling the skill is at the cheapest and fastest it's ever been.

If it's not in your rp to be an Alchemist then just rp that it's either an Uber common skill or you have an enchantment you bought that gives you that skill. You have the option to RP around anything, or how do you explain that swinging a Greatsword with more effort RESTORES stamina? Or a mount that you can pocket summon and is hydrophobic even If it's made of water? Or any of the other things that don't make sense in reality ( infinite respawns of everything, no children, no tiolets, no sleeping)

Credible_Joe · March 13

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

That puts you in the 1900's in cp roughly. A good portion of the playerbase isn't likely in that area. Which means that depending on where you imply it should be put you will need a good amount of cp to unlock it.locking it out for many players that likely need it for content.

Meanwhile l, right now can max out alchemy at level 3 and put points into it after a few skyshards and quests.

That's a massive scaling jump, and only benefits players with spare cp and no gold or mats. That's not exactly a large percentage of the player base. Yes newer players won't really need the passive for a while, but it sure helps once you start working on your cp and the cp grind moving that back to probably 1000 or 1200 cp is just going to lose those players faster. It's far easier to grind the mats or gold needed to level the skill.

As for mat prices, they been in the tank for a year and with anniversary event on the horizon it's not likely to go up. So leveling the skill is at the cheapest and fastest it's ever been.

If it's not in your rp to be an Alchemist then just rp that it's either an Uber common skill or you have an enchantment you bought that gives you that skill. You have the option to RP around anything, or how do you explain that swinging a Greatsword with more effort RESTORES stamina? Or a mount that you can pocket summon and is hydrophobic even If it's made of water? Or any of the other things that don't make sense in reality ( infinite respawns of everything, no children, no tiolets, no sleeping)

y'all need to ease off on telling me how to rp. I guess I shouldn't have mentioned that part at all; but I did pretty clearly state that it would enhance my experience. Explaining headcanon to me over and over again, or pointing out the many silly gamified aspects of ESO isn't gonna do much for that. I'm glad it's not an issue for the rest of you, so lets focus on the aspects that are less subjective.

As for the numbers, directly replacing Rationer with Liquid Efficiency would put the minimum point investment for all three levels at 65.

10 - Breakfall
15 - Wanderer
10 - Steadfast Enchantment
30 - Medicinal Use (formerly Rationer)

I do think players should have access to this prior to gear cap, so we could always make it a source star. That'd reduce the minimum champion level to 90 from 195.

For the new Fitness star, we could give it any value we want. I say put it on The Warrior's mouth and make it a source star, so we can start on it right away.

Gourmand and Connoisseur provide 20 minutes with three skill points each, total of 6 skill points. Kind of awkward... The full buff of Rationer + Gourmand + Connoisseur is 50 minutes for both food and drink. So, easy: 50 points, chunks of 10, 10 minutes per chunk. 20 (at a CP total of 60) gets you the equivalent of both craft skills, and the rest is extra. Presently, we need a minimum of 75 to even start investing in Rationer.

Trust me, I'm not saying we should gate this behind hundreds of champion points. I was just curious to know that if Fitness got a new star, how many of us would immediately be able to sink points into it. That in no way excludes new players on their first character from these stars. Just before and just after half way to gear cap is a very reasonable point to get these passives.

Bottom line: Leveling alchemy and provisioning is easy, but not nearly as easy as assigning champion points. Also, champion points are free. Sure, it would take a longer initial time investment to get these passives through champion points on a fresh account, but the time saved in the long run outweighs that work by an order of magnitude.

But hey, If everyone would rather grind out two extra skill lines on every alt instead of assigning points we have available account wide, I guess I'm the odd one out. If that's what the consensus is, I'll drop it.

Unless, that is... All y'all're water salesmen that don't want your racket to devalue.

VoxAdActa · March 13

There are already too many "must take" nodes in the green tree, and not enough CP to fill them all. You want to add more? So now I have to respec every time I'm going into content where I need a potion? I can already only do any two of fishing, harvesting, recipe/diagram hunting, stealing, or PvP, and you want to add another thing I'll have to respec for?

Just so you can RP in a very specific, niche way, which somehow overrides all of the other concerns of everyone else?

You can RP all you want, but you can't possibly expect to refuse to engage in game systems because of RP and still be given all of the benefits of engaging with those systems.

Jestir · March 13

The green tree can now be considered overloaded with high cost passives

It absolutely doesn't need anymore added

MaleAmazon · March 13

IMO no, but OP has a point. No, because the point of the Champion system is to diversify characters and customize them, so putting mandatory passives into them is just wrong (it is bad enough as it is). You have a point though, because these passives should just not exist in the current form.

ZOS have made it a point to improve the QoL for newer players (such as the mount speed change in Update 45), which is absolutely the right way to go, and to put passives like medicinal use behind what is actually a door to the endgame (yes, that is what the Champion system is) - no.

Designwise, passives are weird. They are a mix between mandatory and thus arguably should be removed completely, and a kind of progression reward - even though they don´t really involve thinking.

The Champion system was a big step in the right direction and it keeps going that way, but if anything, putting passives in there at all was not a great idea. I guess they were just put there because there was stuff in the game already, and that stuff needed to be put somewhere. They are like unwanted Christmas gifts you have to keep to be able to bring them out once every three years so as to not offend your relatives.

Really, they should be removed as often as possible.

It also makes the champion system kind of really confusing. The 'slottable and non-slottable' system is just awkward. If the system is there to diversify things, then by definition it needs to limit you. Having a reason to hoard points to put in the system is the way things go and I guess that is fine, but having you put these points into account-wide passives is not a good model. Having an armory system or a 'negative feedback' system where you could put in 100 hours of grinding in order to increase flame damage 0.21 % versus Ebonheart Pact Magplars would be a better use of Champion skillpoints.

ESO has a problem of sorts in that you have many passives that there is absolutely no reason not to take (other than RP as was pointed out), and two metric tons of skillpoints to assign. A lot are remnants from previous iterations of the design, and to be fair ZOS has been pretty good at moving and improving things. However, there is a lot of 'weird design fallout' scattered all over the place from the changes, like the brutality and sorcery damage buffs being separated, for no great reason, between magicka and stamina, while breach / resolve work on both and skills scale from max stats, not differentiating.

Personally, I am all for most of the changes, since they diversify building your character without sacrificing power (and that is objective truth). I can now actually use magicka morphs on a stamina character if the effects are useful, and not have to go 'this is a neat skill morph, but of course I live in the wrong part of Stamagickatown, so let´s forget it'.

But the plethora of skillpoints means there is no real choice, and IMO this makes for a lot of missed opportunities. Some examples of mandatory or quite useful passive skills:

-All racial passives (possibly the worst design choice in the game, bleh)
-All armor passives
-All class passives
-Continuous attack (I missed / forgot for years that this affected non-PvP, hah!)
-See the Unseen (really useful for that period of time when you are not swimming in aurbic amber)
-Gourmand
-Persuasive Will / Intimidating Presence (though if you use them, you miss out on some good quest content, but I don´t remember exactly what, so it can´t have been that good. It also means you don´t have to murder some people in the main quest.)
-Banish the Wicked

Unfortunately, with online games there is an incentive to put in fetch quests and lock QoL features behind walls, in order to artificially inflate playerbase statistics and have people pay to circumvent them. ESO is actually not a bad offender here IMO though.

As it is, there are so many skillpoints that these passives are a fairly minor inconvenience. They are basically the tutorial version of the Champion passives - you are to understand that there is a number that increases from time to time, and that you should spend that number on passives.

Personally, I would defund all passives that affect player combat prowess (including all racial passives), and then refund them in a revamped champion system, while increasing the champion slots to something like 10 in each constellation. Then we would finally get proper character customization.

Class passives and passives like medicinal use can remain. They are a relics of a system that´s obsolete once you play long enough, but for newer players they can be fun.

Oh look, I made another wall of text.

Credible_Joe · March 13

I've edited the original post to reflect the discourse so far.

Credible_Joe wrote: »

Here's a TL;DR
No new or added Craft points or stars

Medicinal Use displaces Rationer in the Craft Tree

Rationer goes into Fitness

The passives would be made root stars, available as early as possible, requiring the minimum champion point investment to acquire about halfway into gear cap

I promise, I'm not suggesting we add more champion points to the Craft Tree. And no, this isn't exclusively motivated by my persnickety roleplay pet peeves.

I do like @MaleAmazon 's perspective on how it's pretty weird that a bunch of passives are mandatory to begin with. I don't think I would go as far as refactoring the Champion System again to resolve this, but it's true that things like Racial passives really don't qualify as a character choice.

Anyway, I've made my case as clearly as I can make it. If people keep telling me how to headcanon I'll fully write this off as a failure to launch.

Thanks for reading, thanks for the discourse and engagement.

AzuraFan · March 13

No, with the latest update, the green tree is expensive already. OTOH, my main has almost 200 unused skill points. It's really not that difficult to level up alchemy.

wolfie1.0. · March 13

Credible_Joe wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

That puts you in the 1900's in cp roughly. A good portion of the playerbase isn't likely in that area. Which means that depending on where you imply it should be put you will need a good amount of cp to unlock it.locking it out for many players that likely need it for content.

Meanwhile l, right now can max out alchemy at level 3 and put points into it after a few skyshards and quests.

That's a massive scaling jump, and only benefits players with spare cp and no gold or mats. That's not exactly a large percentage of the player base. Yes newer players won't really need the passive for a while, but it sure helps once you start working on your cp and the cp grind moving that back to probably 1000 or 1200 cp is just going to lose those players faster. It's far easier to grind the mats or gold needed to level the skill.

As for mat prices, they been in the tank for a year and with anniversary event on the horizon it's not likely to go up. So leveling the skill is at the cheapest and fastest it's ever been.

If it's not in your rp to be an Alchemist then just rp that it's either an Uber common skill or you have an enchantment you bought that gives you that skill. You have the option to RP around anything, or how do you explain that swinging a Greatsword with more effort RESTORES stamina? Or a mount that you can pocket summon and is hydrophobic even If it's made of water? Or any of the other things that don't make sense in reality ( infinite respawns of everything, no children, no tiolets, no sleeping)

y'all need to ease off on telling me how to rp. I guess I shouldn't have mentioned that part at all; but I did pretty clearly state that it would enhance my experience. Explaining headcanon to me over and over again, or pointing out the many silly gamified aspects of ESO isn't gonna do much for that. I'm glad it's not an issue for the rest of you, so lets focus on the aspects that are less subjective.

As for the numbers, directly replacing Rationer with Liquid Efficiency would put the minimum point investment for all three levels at 65.
10 - Breakfall

15 - Wanderer

10 - Steadfast Enchantment

30 - Medicinal Use (formerly Rationer)

I do think players should have access to this prior to gear cap, so we could always make it a source star. That'd reduce the minimum champion level to 90 from 195.

For the new Fitness star, we could give it any value we want. I say put it on The Warrior's mouth and make it a source star, so we can start on it right away.

Gourmand and Connoisseur provide 20 minutes with three skill points each, total of 6 skill points. Kind of awkward... The full buff of Rationer + Gourmand + Connoisseur is 50 minutes for both food and drink. So, easy: 50 points, chunks of 10, 10 minutes per chunk. 20 (at a CP total of 60) gets you the equivalent of both craft skills, and the rest is extra. Presently, we need a minimum of 75 to even start investing in Rationer.

Trust me, I'm not saying we should gate this behind hundreds of champion points. I was just curious to know that if Fitness got a new star, how many of us would immediately be able to sink points into it. That in no way excludes new players on their first character from these stars. Just before and just after half way to gear cap is a very reasonable point to get these passives.

Bottom line: Leveling alchemy and provisioning is easy, but not nearly as easy as assigning champion points. Also, champion points are free. Sure, it would take a longer initial time investment to get these passives through champion points on a fresh account, but the time saved in the long run outweighs that work by an order of magnitude.

But hey, If everyone would rather grind out two extra skill lines on every alt instead of assigning points we have available account wide, I guess I'm the odd one out. If that's what the consensus is, I'll drop it.

Unless, that is... All y'all're water salesmen that don't want your racket to devalue.

OK I will set aside the rp elements. As for the racket salesman comment I have no skin in whether it's one our the other.

I am looking at it from a global approach.

I have 50 accounts. Of those I have around a dozen that are specially set apart to not interact with the other ones. They don't trade they don't sell, everything is done solo. I do this so that I can recreate and re experience that 1st time player experience as close as possible.

Based solely on that I can tell that in the early game excesss skill points come a lot sooner for intended game play than cp. Especially for newer players. For experienced players it's flipped since cp becomes available upon character creation. But the choices will be limited until more cp is earned.

TL; DR your moving what can be obtained in early game for new and low cp players to a mid to late game choice for very little to no benefit to those players.

wolfie1.0. · March 13

I guess as an alternative option, get rid of levels, skill points, and cp trees. then you just have cp points that you invest into various class and skill trees as you progress like skyrim had...

Credible_Joe · March 13

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

Credible_Joe wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

That puts you in the 1900's in cp roughly. A good portion of the playerbase isn't likely in that area. Which means that depending on where you imply it should be put you will need a good amount of cp to unlock it.locking it out for many players that likely need it for content.

Meanwhile l, right now can max out alchemy at level 3 and put points into it after a few skyshards and quests.

That's a massive scaling jump, and only benefits players with spare cp and no gold or mats. That's not exactly a large percentage of the player base. Yes newer players won't really need the passive for a while, but it sure helps once you start working on your cp and the cp grind moving that back to probably 1000 or 1200 cp is just going to lose those players faster. It's far easier to grind the mats or gold needed to level the skill.

As for mat prices, they been in the tank for a year and with anniversary event on the horizon it's not likely to go up. So leveling the skill is at the cheapest and fastest it's ever been.

If it's not in your rp to be an Alchemist then just rp that it's either an Uber common skill or you have an enchantment you bought that gives you that skill. You have the option to RP around anything, or how do you explain that swinging a Greatsword with more effort RESTORES stamina? Or a mount that you can pocket summon and is hydrophobic even If it's made of water? Or any of the other things that don't make sense in reality ( infinite respawns of everything, no children, no tiolets, no sleeping)

y'all need to ease off on telling me how to rp. I guess I shouldn't have mentioned that part at all; but I did pretty clearly state that it would enhance my experience. Explaining headcanon to me over and over again, or pointing out the many silly gamified aspects of ESO isn't gonna do much for that. I'm glad it's not an issue for the rest of you, so lets focus on the aspects that are less subjective.

As for the numbers, directly replacing Rationer with Liquid Efficiency would put the minimum point investment for all three levels at 65.
10 - Breakfall

15 - Wanderer

10 - Steadfast Enchantment

30 - Medicinal Use (formerly Rationer)

I do think players should have access to this prior to gear cap, so we could always make it a source star. That'd reduce the minimum champion level to 90 from 195.

For the new Fitness star, we could give it any value we want. I say put it on The Warrior's mouth and make it a source star, so we can start on it right away.

Gourmand and Connoisseur provide 20 minutes with three skill points each, total of 6 skill points. Kind of awkward... The full buff of Rationer + Gourmand + Connoisseur is 50 minutes for both food and drink. So, easy: 50 points, chunks of 10, 10 minutes per chunk. 20 (at a CP total of 60) gets you the equivalent of both craft skills, and the rest is extra. Presently, we need a minimum of 75 to even start investing in Rationer.

Trust me, I'm not saying we should gate this behind hundreds of champion points. I was just curious to know that if Fitness got a new star, how many of us would immediately be able to sink points into it. That in no way excludes new players on their first character from these stars. Just before and just after half way to gear cap is a very reasonable point to get these passives.

Bottom line: Leveling alchemy and provisioning is easy, but not nearly as easy as assigning champion points. Also, champion points are free. Sure, it would take a longer initial time investment to get these passives through champion points on a fresh account, but the time saved in the long run outweighs that work by an order of magnitude.

But hey, If everyone would rather grind out two extra skill lines on every alt instead of assigning points we have available account wide, I guess I'm the odd one out. If that's what the consensus is, I'll drop it.

Unless, that is... All y'all're water salesmen that don't want your racket to devalue.

OK I will set aside the rp elements. As for the racket salesman comment I have no skin in whether it's one our the other.

I am looking at it from a global approach.

I have 50 accounts. Of those I have around a dozen that are specially set apart to not interact with the other ones. They don't trade they don't sell, everything is done solo. I do this so that I can recreate and re experience that 1st time player experience as close as possible.

Based solely on that I can tell that in the early game excesss skill points come a lot sooner for intended game play than cp. Especially for newer players. For experienced players it's flipped since cp becomes available upon character creation. But the choices will be limited until more cp is earned.

TL; DR your moving what can be obtained in early game for new and low cp players to a mid to late game choice for very little to no benefit to those players.

So... A few things.

50 accounts is wild. I don't think most people play like that. I certainly don't. But whether it's 50 accounts or just one, getting to a minimum of 90 champion points is not unreasonable. That's halfway to just gear cap, which definitely does not qualify as end game. And once that's done, you're done for the rest of the account forever.

Maybe you didn't see the added points to the opening post, but I'll say it again: the math isn't there at all to support the notion that grinding two skill lines ad nauseam is easier and cheaper than getting to mid-game just once per account.

Credible_Joe wrote: »

QOL
Leveling alchemy isn't all that difficult, but it is expensive. Ironically, potion solvents between minimum and maximum level sell for the most, as they don't stockpile in everyone's inventory like natural / clear water and tears of lorkhan do. It's not prohibitively expensive, but still irritating tracking down the guild traders with the leveled solvents you need for your alchemy power leveling.
Also, doing this for every alt is wildly time consuming compared to assigning account-wide champion points.

I'm going over the rebuttals, and I can't find any math to suggest otherwise. No matter how easy leveling Alchemy and Provisioning is, unlocking these passives once per account is an order of magnitude faster and easier than grinding out two skill lines on every character.

Besides automatically having access to these on every alt, the only difference would be for fresh accounts that would unlock these around C60 - C90, as opposed to... Whatever the minimum level you'd get from grinding Alchemy + Provisioning, plus the skill points required for three maxed out passives. 9 Skill points? That's wildly expensive for fresh accounts.

Lastly, we need to remember that Champion Points apply to sub-50 characters unless explicitly stated otherwise. So after hitting the threshold where these can be slotted immediately, new alts will automatically have access to these passives by default, without ever even having to interact with an Alchemy Lab.

And I don't know about you, but I've never had a surplus of skill points until after I did a full base-game skyshard run, usually after hitting 50 on any given alt. This is going through the base game adventure, too. If I'm missing out on a skill point source I'm not aware of, let me know. But it sounds to me like the skyshard run is the first thing you do, which is not how we can expect new players to start the game. I say champion points are much cheaper than skill points up until a character gets to a VERY late point in their adventure.

So... Factoring in a skyshard run on top of grinding out two skill lines on every new character... I don't see how it's even close to easier.

Not to mention, you said yourself that these passives are not useful for early characters.

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

That's a massive scaling jump, and only benefits players with spare cp and no gold or mats. That's not exactly a large percentage of the player base. Yes newer players won't really need the passive for a while, but it sure helps once you start working on your cp and the cp grind moving that back to probably 1000 or 1200 cp is just going to lose those players faster. It's far easier to grind the mats or gold needed to level the skill.

Bottom line: C90 is not the endgame hurdle it's being made out to be, one investment per account trumps grinding two skill lines per character no matter which way you cut it, and lastly: champion points are MUCH cheaper than skill points for new and rising players.

PS: Thank you for reading and replying. I'm changing the name of this thread to "[Suggestion] Further Crafting Tree QOL Enhancements." Maybe fewer people will respond to just the title.

Elvenheart · March 13

I have tons of leftover unused points for the blue and red trees so I wouldn’t mind if they moved anything to those trees, just not the green tree because that is a long work in progress (see my post in the recent thread about the green tree). 🙂