Auction House Discussion

I've been playing WoW for a decent amount of time since I stopped playing Minecraft, but oh boy, I was WAITING for this update. Do correct me if I'm wrong on any points, which I suspect I will be.

I already can say with absolute assurance that professions will be a massive source of income and will revolutionize the economy, but only if there are more money sinks and challenges implemented. In Vanilla WoW, Alchemy and Herbalism themselves are about the two most valuable professions any player can have, especially one with high mobility skills and equipment, and potions will always find a market, no matter if they are for PvP or PvE. Potions and Flasks can be spammed in raids and dungeons if the challenge becomes insurmountable for either the Tanks or the DPS, and certain Engineering items are absolutely invaluable for gaining the upper hand in a gank or a duel.

However, from what I've seen, there are no great difficulties that can't be overcome without the use of professions in Wynn. There are some instances where professions will definitely be useful, but not to the point that it becomes necessary (at least in the current game). There also is no great PvP scene that requires the use of professions, as it seems horribly imbalanced in favor of some classes.
The reason potions and professions are so vital in WoW is that certain tasks become insurmountable without the extra bonuses that you gain from certain food items and buffs. Mobs in Molten Core can one-shot any DPS class with a ranged Fire Blast if they gain too much threat, but such a case could be prevented with either a Greater Fire Protection Pot on the DPS or a Rage Potion on the Tanks to quickly spike their threat upwards. The same goes for mobs in Ahn'Qiraj, where many bosses simply one-shot you by being near it without the effects of a Greater Nature Protection Potion on you. In Wynn, the game will have to become more challenging in order to accommodate the power spike that many players will receive. Otherwise, professions will simply be seen as an expensive nicety that acts as a time-consuming money sink.

On the topic of a new Auction House feature, I would also say it's long overdue, but I don't blame the developers for not doing it sooner.
It would certainly be very interesting to observe how players would act on a WoW-like auction house with Wynn items. I would like to see price request threads be obliterated as a result of its addition since the price will be determined by the person who undercuts other players the most. Laissez-faire economies have been nothing but interesting to watch.
I would also like to see who would be able to corner the market first. Perhaps a new guild would arise from simply camping the spawn points for certain profession gathers? A mafia, you could say? It would not take long for their names to be cursed throughout the entire game.

 

One thing to keep in mind is that a similar/same mechanic from another game =/= have the same expected outcome/impact to this one. Different developers have different takes on various tropes which can change the experience and how it is ultimately played. While usually I really like seeing players having a positive and welcoming outlook to the new features we worked so hard in adding, I do think you can give a little bit more credit and faith on wynncraft’s original expression on this trope that things can stand out on their own instead of like “this other game does it and it is good and have x effect so it will happen to Wynn as well”. We’ve done it before with the item system, surely we can do it with professions and crafting even if it may not be immediate! ;)

But that’s just my 2 cents on this, sorry for being too critical I know everyone is excited and all.

 

How do we know it's an auction house? Shouldn't we just wait a few days/ a few weeks to find out? Because I don't think it is. If it were,
1) Why would they keep it secret? They showcased a whole bunch of other things that had been suggested (cooking/crafting/so on) very often, and the auction house is a common suggestion.
2) Given how complex an auction house would have to be, they could probably not just test it with only the ct. So why would they keep an auction house secret if it means it will be tested less and more buggy when released, than if they gave the HERO beta the option to test it?

 

It's obvious that the secret feature is jobs.
I lied!

 

If they would confirm that it is a auction house it would definitely have a huge impact on the market. People would make assumptions about how it changes the economy, some will expect a drastical price drop as many new items enter the market, other may expect a price increase because maybe far more players demanding items than selling them will enter... And if most people on the market act very different as a result of probably false assumptions, you could to some extend say that it brakes the market.

The thing is: They only need to test it for bugs, not for balancing. The "mechanic" of an auction house is pretty straightforward, they only have to make sure that a relative small UI and the aucomatic trading process itself works... which is very different from going through dozens of quests, hundreds and thousands of mobs and items and more, looking for bugs and especially trying to balance it all, which is a huge process that will actually never be finished. An auction house might be difficult to program, but if you are done, it will probably much "smaller" than more content-heavy things.
I'm pretty sure that some long-term testing by a small group and maybe one or two days of beta-testing by players dedicated to break the system should be enough to find and fix the bugs. Yes, it needs testing, but far less than any feature which is not just an "comfort function" and actually adds new content.

- We first saw it in Detlas, the main trading hub. And it also seems to be in the other major towns.
- Its stationary and belongs to a building. Along with the first point, it probably means that it is some sort of shop or service. An auction house is the only shop I could think of that is important enough to be teased and implemented this way while being so standalone that it can be cut out from the beta.
- The things I already explained, why it needs much less testing and just makes sense to be kept secret.
- The whole update is about the economy and encouraging player trading by specializing on certain professions. And an auction house has been requested for so many times. It just makes sense to add it this update.
Of course we can never be sure, maybe its something completely new that no one has even thought of, but with all these hints pointing into this direction, an auction house just seems very, very likely.

 

Well I heard that potions and scrolls were bad from @Nepeta Leijon and a few others, but they said they were in the early game, which ties into my gripes with food and the whole crafting system.
This is a level 1 recipe with no ingredients:

And this is food "upgraded" with eggs. It was the only ingredient that I could find and gather enough of it (even though chickens dropped more emeralds than eggs...). The pigmen on the emerald trail barely drop meat and fireballs, and the meat is level 11 anyway.

I had to spend almost 3 hours gathering resources, backtracking, refining, alongside my 2 other professions. And I didn't even get to level 10 food crafting, or to level 10 of any crafting profession because the food profession was draining my resources for the others. I know the crafting level xp got buff, but I still have to craft a bunch of useless items just to get to the next recipe.

And I could've just saved all that time by not even leaving Ragni and buying a level 5 potion that heals more and has a way shorter cool down time than my best food for just 3 emeralds.


So now I just have a bunch of useless food in my bank that I can't sell and I'll never use. Sure, the endgame food, potions, and scrolls might be godly, but it's not worth it when I have to grind and gather so much, and I know I can just make it through the game just fine without them. And that's why most people don't want crafting levels: it forces players to make a bunch of useless items. I know there needs to be a sense of progression, but not like this. Even if you buffed all the early crafted items, it still wouldn't fix the problem because you don't need a build until level 90 and you can get regular items way easier via loot chests, killing mobs, and doing quests. Heck, while I was trying to craft spears and gather resources 2 days ago, I ended up getting 8 different spears from just killing nearby mobs before I was finished crafting a single spear. And most of the crafted ones were worse than the 8 I got.

 

While these do seem to counter the point that food and scrolls are bad, it betrays itself. The combat level for both of these is level 102 - Past pretty much all maingame content. This is like showing a Mythic to say that a class's weapons are strong. Yes, they can get this strong, but this is the ultimate end to it. In normal gameplay, food and scrolls aren't nearly this powerful and are extremely grindy. Getting all your mana back in a single hit or doubling your health with bonus damage may seem strong, but players can only get this after they've spent hours and hours crafting and grinding infinitely just to get to it. You can't get these right off the bat.

 

Not to mention that players would have already beaten Qira and possibly most if not all if LI by level 100. Which at that point there isn't really any challenge left...

 

If that really was the case, and this is just to let players beat everything unopposed, this makes the whole crafting system seem scarily like Draconic Evolution. You have a grind a ton at the start, but at the end, literally nothing can kill you and you can oneshot everything.

 

Well that doesn't sound fun either. :/
The whole point of Qira and LI is supposed to be a challenge. That's what makes them fun or at least exciting. What's the whole point of doing them then? Sure, you get godly items, but if you can just kill everything easily and nothing can kill you already, what's the point then of getting stronger items?

 

Well, thats a overall problem of the system, implementing it parallel to the already existing system of obtaining regular items it will either end up useless and just a fun side-activity or as a "the longer you grind the more OP you become". But just comparing crafted food, scrolls and potions to crafted equipment, they seem quite interesting to me, because they don't replace your regular items but instead come on top of your your already existing stats allowing you to exceed the limitations of current builds. Thats basically what makes mythics so strong, having a Lament instead of Nepta allows you to exceed the limitations of building with Nepta by a good amount of mana steal... and potions do basically the same. Just like Lament "upgrades" a Nepta build with more mana steal, a poition can upgrade an existing build with additional mana steal. Of course they are far from being worth as much as mythics, but they have a similiar advantage, just with some more limitations. And they don't need to be one of these OP potions like Salted showed, if something like this is possible to get, something like ~8 mana steal or +4000 health should be relatively easy to obtain. 4000 health... Thats like wearing Leo (with a little bit less health but no -spell) as a second chestplate.
Im not saying that they are worth the effort of grinding the required skills and going through the whole gathering and crafting process while the options the game already gave you before 1.18 are good enough, but compared to the other professions they seem quite useful to me. At this point I would definitely focus on these three professions.

 

Meh, I'd just stick to weapons and armor because they impact your build the most and they are *somewhat* better than food, potions, and scrolls in the early game, so at least you have *some* motivation to go through all that time and grinding. Plus you can actually sell them, which you can't with food, potions, and scrolls. In the early game when I was trying to focus solely on crafting and gathering, it took me much longer to get enough emeralds to start identifying items compared to when I just didn't bother with crafting and gathering. So if you only do those 3, you won't have nearly enough emeralds to identify regular items without using your emeralds from your previous classes. Plus you'll have to craft a bunch of useless stuff before you can even think of using the good endgame items.

 

From what I've seen so far, the strength difference between crafted equipment and regular equipment seems to be smaller than between potions and nothing, which makes potions a little bit more useful.
That you can't sell them is a problem, but it's not like they are useless. Even a small bonus is better than nothing, while unequipped weapons are in fact useless unless they are sold. And about the money aspect: If I don't use crafted equipment, I don't need to repair them and can sell my regular items instead of scrapping them. And as far as I know, there are no other major costs involved in crafting, so the regular emerald cycle of earning money through the item buyer and loosing money through the identifier doesn't get changed.

 

That’s the thing; you do have something, not nothing: every health potion for most of the game and skill point potions. My main point is that you’ll probably get a lot more use of armor and weapons throughout the game, not just the endgame. Not to mention that these endgame potions and scrolls are probably going to get nerfed if people think skill point potions are too OP. Just imagine what a cata build could do with a couple of potions that gives them 4K+ health.

Again, like you said yourself these items aren’t worth the effort or time. You can survive just fine with regular items, even in the endgame.

Durability is surprisingly the least problematic aspect of crafted items from mine and Nepeta’s experience. Especially because you get a ton of useless and replicated items that you can scrap.

And you’re not taking into account that you don’t earn any emeralds from crafting potions, food, and scrolls and gathering. So yes, while you aren’t spending emeralds, you also aren’t gaining any. So if you want to identify an item because it’s better, you’ll have a hard time.

 

I wouldn't count health potions, as they are "just" a refresh while crafted potions are directly making you stronger. Skill potions yes, but I would see them as next to nothing, too weak, too rare and not near as flexible, didn't covering most of the stats at all. Potions and food open just so many new possibilities while crafted equipment is just redistributing stats compared to regular equipment. And about nerfing, everything will get nerfed if it is op, by this argumentation nothing could be called good, because it could get nerfed.
And yes, I don't gain emeralds through crafting, but like I said, through selling regular items, which should be still possible (correct me, if they removed or drastically nerfed it). Even if the amount of regular items is getting reduced, this also means that there is less to identify, so it doesn't matter.

 

Well I’d talk to Nepeta about the full details of potions.

Also, what are you taking about for skill point potions? You can buy them at shops or dungeons or find them in chests, and they cover every elemental stat and give you other benefits such as walkspeed and health alongside them. Plus most builders like Gigavern and YYGaymer have denounced skill point potions for being too OP.

Plus I already showed you what food is really like and Salted actually didn’t post any examples of good food, so I don’t know where you’re getting the idea that food is good.

Also, I don’t get what you mean by there can’t be good items if nothing is OP. Ask any item builder, there’s a fine line between something being good and something being OP. Yes, items can get nerfed, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t good items. It just doesn’t make sense.

Lastly, you barely get any money from normal and unidentified items, especially in the low levels. Not to mention that you’ll probably going to throw regular items away because of how much stuff fills your inventory in such a small time such as ingredients and refined and raw resources.

Anyway, we are getting a bit off topic here. If you want to discuss this in your thread in the Beta Feedback, just quote my reply in your thread.

 

selvut you’re a mod you’re not supposed to meme

 

Mods are memes

 

Wait, why can't you sell these?

 

Nope :-/