You forgot d) hunt level 1 spiderlings and sell spiderling silk

The interesting thing about d) is that it has zero risk too.

Yes, there were some items that a minor profit could be made from,
and the devs were concerned that folks like IGE could either write
a bot or (more likely) hire cheap foreign labor to exploit those
items as a cash cow, so they changed it such that no tradeskilled
item sells for more than the cost of the parts.  (It might even be
that nothing sells for more than the sales value of the parts, I'm
not sure.)  If you want to reap profits, make items players want
and sell to them.

The point of selling back to merchants (for things that players don't
especially want) is to recoup most (but never all) of your costs when
training up your level in a tradeskill.  This encourages players to
practice with recipes that are close to their current skill level, so
that they fail less often.  E.g., the pieces for a Golden Peridot
Bracelet (triv 186) cost 21pp, and the bracelet sells back for a shade
over 19pp.  Paying 2pp per practice attempt isn't bad; but on a failure
you lose the full 21 (unless you get lucky with the "salvage" AAs).

The tradeskill that got screwed by this change was Pottery, because most
of its recipes take two steps: make an unfired whatsis, then combine it
with a firing sheet in a kiln.  The unfired items already had next to
zero resale value to NPCs, and they didn't think to change that.  So now,
you combine some expensive ingredients on the potter's wheel and get an
unfired thing that's worthless.  And if you then fire it in a kiln, the
resale value of the final item follows their general rule so it has to be
worth less than the unfired item (plus the firing sheet).  This means
that most pottery practice involves making things and throwing them away,
losing all the money involved whether or not you succeeded.

    -- Don.

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-- Sukrasisx, Monk 57 on E. Marr       Note: If you reply by mail,
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Well, that's quite an over-exaggeration, but it does illustrate a design
decision with which I, for one, agree. Otherwise, money would be coming out
everyone's ears.

Huh. I never much got the idea that they encouraged botting. It always just
seemed more to me like a choice the players made themselves. The macro
system in place seems pretty consistent with most other MMORPG's where
functionality is concerned. In fact, they intentionally prevented recursive
macroing, so I wouldn't say they encourage botting, especially where
tradeskills are concerned.

<mary@perfect.com> wrote:

And you feel, for some reason, that if tradeskills were profitable, there
would be less incentive to create macros for it?  I won't say you're wrong.

I'll say you're 100% unquestionably wrong.

Now if you would like to start a different (that is the key word) topic on
the subject of macroing and how to combat it, feel free.  But macroing would
be used with the current implementation whether it was profitable or a money
sink but required.

Give enough time and skill, a bot can be made that plays any game in
existence, in its totality and as good as an average player.  That's a silly
argument.