Fuck Profession Speed Bombs

Dude did you ever spend more than 1 minute gathering? This is absolutely fucking not how tools work, tools do not lose effectiveness when their durability decreases, that feature got removed ages ago before the hero beta even ended, and you do not fucking lose your tool when the durability runs out, you can repair them with scrap.

 

Quick question, what’s the best way to get ingredients for jeweling from level 1 to 10? I can barely find any, even after opening loot chests.

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Oh, thanks for the info.

 

Use spider string from nivla forest until level 30

 

Thanks!

 

Besides the ingredient pouch, these don't help with the underlying problems mentioned in the thread:

From this thread, it seems that people don't really use Hunted Mode and when they do, they wear untradeable items. Which defeats the whole risk of losing your items. Beyond that, some people can't do Hunted Mode yet because they haven't completed the quest or the Eldritch Outlook. Regardless, professions were added before Hunted Mode, so professions weren't intended to be done on Hunted Mode. They expected players to pick up professions right away, not after they already beaten the game. So saying just to do Hunted Mode isn't viable for everyone.

I don't know what to say to you if you think the grind just isn't bad. Nearly everyone says it is, and that's why people heavily rely on bombs.

You don't want them to get rid of bombs, yet you insist that they deserve it. What about the people who can't afford bombs or aren't willing to and can't find a server with one? Like you said, professions take a long time, so you're going to have to be always hunting a server with a bomb active. Do they deserve the rewards of professions more versus someone who did buy and use bombs? It's just pay to win. Moreover, why should they have to find a server with one? It's the same criticism with xp bombs when they affected quest xp; you only wanted to do them on that server at a specific time. Which is unfair to others, and it ruined the enjoyment of the quest. You didn't address any of this, yet it has been brought up countless times.

Okay, I just want to get this out of the way. I'm not telling you can't enjoy professions. I'm glad you do, and I don't mean that sarcastically or anything. I just wish myself and others in the community could too.

I don't like this high and mighty attitude that somehow you're a superhero just because you grinded for hours, and because most others aren't willing to do so, that makes you better than them and professions can't change.

Professions were designed to fix the economy. They were not intended to be used just by a few individuals because the economy isn't only made up of them. They were intended to be used by everyone, and are thus susceptible to change by EVERYONE. If lots of people find issues with the system, then it is broken! Saying just not to play them does not improve anything about them.

Just because fetch quests were optional did not make them any better. They sucked, so they fixed them like Spider Cave.

Grinding is just grinding; there is no actual skill involved besides testing how much time you're willing to waste. It's not like dodging and learning a boss's attack or solving a puzzle or completing parkour. It's the same, simple, monotonous task, over and over again. Grinding numbs your senses while the others engage them. Just because a game is 2,000 hours long does not mean it's a good game. Quality is better than Quantity.

That's the problem; the amount of work you have to put into the system isn't worth it. Since ingredients were nerfed and few people actually use professions, no one knows how much better crafted items are compared to regular items. And no one wants to craft 50 million useless items just to craft a few hypothetical good ones that have no market, require constant repairing, and maybe nerfed. Even Salted said himself that crafting isn't worth it in the lower levels compared to the higher levels.

A large chunk of the profession economy is already reliant on ingredients. If you check the front page of the trade market, you'll mostly find regular items, powders, and a bit of scrap and ingredients. And even less crafted items. Out of the first 2 pages of the trade market, I only found 3 threads about professions, and even then they mostly focused on ingredients besides one.

Trading and rivaling regular items were the whole point of profession system and the reason why it was so tedious! If most people are just trading regular items, then it failed!

 

In Guild Wars 2 there are crafting professions similar to wynn’s professions, but one of the most recent additions was higher level cooking (400-500 if anyone knows what I’m talking about). It can be grinded through just straight crafting but the devs there added a sort of quest? system where you go around the world and cook for master chefs and basically further your cooking skills. Basically, it gives a fuckton of cooking xp when finished. Although GW2 is not particularly grindy in the traditional sense, this idea of an alternate path is viable. I think Wynn should take a page from other mmos.

What I was thinking is that from lvls 100 to 130 or near that range, you can do tasks and such that mirror an apprentice under a master to become the ultimate professional professionist. It would help take away the monotony or gathering then crafting then wondering why the fuck are you doing this for hours on end with little gain.

The rpg aspect would be like: you’ve learned as much as you can on your own, now master them under a real master.

And mini quests don’t count as they are a one time thing.

Just my 2 cents on this.

TL;dr As many of you were probably saying up there add alternative path to just straight grind. It’s still grind but more engaging for the average player.

correct me if I wrote or assumed something wrong

 

I do realize that low level crafting items aren't useful except for specific things (speed run the game).
What I meant was using the materials that you would use to level up in some way other than crafting hundreds of items.

 

Oh, I gotcha. That would help too then.

 

Let me attempt to provide a general opinion representing most of us prof tryhards.

Spoiler: Prof Tryhard Introduction

A "Prof Tryhard" is defined as having done at least 10 hours of professions on 1 class. We have a community of prof tryhards in this discord server if you so decide to check it out.

Spoiler: Bombs

Most of us, if not all of us, have reached to a point where we rely on bombs in order to make gains in professions. I do agree it is almost like pay to win, so I suggest these changes to bombs:

• Remove speed bombs halving all material costs. This is the major flaw that causes these bombs to become pay to win.
  • Instead, lower the material cost by at least 25-50%, say from 12 wood + 6 string for a lv 90/100/103 bow to 8 wood + 4 string.
  • Since removing speed bombs halving all material costs will make speed bombs nearly worthless, increase its value by:
    • Extending the duration from 10 minutes to 20 minutes, and/or
    • Lowering the cost of purchasing speed bombs to the same price or lower than profession xp bombs.
• Make both speed and xp bombs affect more than 1 world. Since most of the time, only 1 world has these bombs, the server often fills up quickly, denying access to many other players who want these bombs. I suggest making these bombs affect at least 2 worlds.
  • When the bomb is thrown, a GUI screen pops up, displaying all other online worlds. The bomb thrower than chooses another world(s) to throw the same bomb in.

We are the ones usually buying these bombs, and we would love it of these changes were implemented. I believe that many of us, including me, bought these bombs simply to have fun in huge prof parties, even if some of the people in the parties don't use these bombs. The community aspect is huge here, and I would like to believe that this may have played a role in an increase in prof parties over the last few weeks (we are in profession hell part 31, with a streak of at least 1 continuous hour of prof parties everyday for the past 18 days).

Spoiler: Professions in General

Sure, there are some flaws in professions, but as many other people have already stated, if you don't like professions, you don't have to do them because it is optional. We tryhards chose to do it because most of us have nothing else to do (yes wars and guilds exist but we get tired of them too).

There is no one easy fix for professions. What I, and most of us tryhards, DO NOT SUGGEST is making professions a lot easier to grind for. Here's why:

• Professions is a great way to make money, similar to lootrunning. As the #1 woodworking player, I made STACKS of LE just crafting and selling these weapons to the blacksmith. Each weapon I make yields me about 115 emeralds. Even at low levels, you can still make about an EB per craft.
  • You can also gather materials and/or ingredients to sell to players, providing an alternative method for money making.
  • You can also craft items for players as a commission. Yes, you can still make a buttload of money doing this.
• Professions provide an alternative, cheaper means for getting a "mythic". Even if you pay a player to gather materials, ingredients, and craft a weapon for you, it would only cost at most, 1 stack of LE. This is a lot cheaper than most endgame mythics, which range from 0.5 to 30+ stacks.
• Professions provide a time sink for bored/interested players like us. Making professions a lot easier to grind for will mostly remove this time sink, to which inevitably, most of us would then quit after some time.

What should be done then?

• Add actual quests that require players to have a certain level (or even better, none), that give a certain amount of xp to a bunch of professions. For example, completing the Dogun quest part 3 gives you say 50000 xp in woodworking and weaponsmithing professions since you are crafting a weapon in that quest.
  • Add entirely new quests, or add them to existing quests like the example above.
  • Do not make the required skill to start the quest be over lv 80.
• The miniquests are great. No changes here except add 4 miniquests for lv 100. Most of us find it weird how it stops at lv 90 when there's still dern materials to go for. That said, don't make these miniquests for lv 100 give a crazy amount of xp like the level 90s do.
• Daily objectives that require gathering/crafting should give some amount of xp. Nothing crazy, maybe like 25% of a level for levels under 50, and decrease it over time to just 5-10% of a level at lv 100. Only give xp to just one profession, preferably the profession that you worked on the most that finishes the objective.
• Increase xp earned for gathering lv 80s and 90 materials by 1-5%. Yes it is a small number, but achieving level 100 should be an actual achievement one grinded for.
• My opinion: DECREASE xp earned for gathering lv 100s and dern materials by 5-10%. Many of us were surprised how the 1.19 update essentially doubled the xp earned per gathering when you include hunted mode.
  • Anything past lv 100 should be purely optional, and those that want to achieve lv 132 on anything should work hard to get it. Able to gather dern materials? Well, you earned it, and if you play your cards right, you can earn a lot of money gathering these materials, maybe even more so than lootrunning at times.

Also, not criticizing you Theeef, but why is it that you always make threads containing rants at 4am? You should really get some sleep before posting to get your points straight as I had a hard time believing you.

Edit: Suggestions in an actual thread here.

 

If you are seriously that bored just play another game then or just play a new class and solely grind mobs. Or find every legendary or mythic like Putrid. Or run LI over 250 times like YYGaymer. There are ways one can still grind without forcing everyone else to.

 

There's 69 comments and I like messing around with perfect numbers

 

Boredom is only part of the reason why we do professions, the main reason is that we find professions interesting/we want to make reliable money.

On another note, would you rather buy an item someone crafted for you with no customization from you, i.e. you don't provide the recipe/ings/mats? Or would you rather buy an item based on your own customization? Hence, why simply buying a crafted item doesn't work most the time anymore, people want their own customizations.

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Brb, turning my reply into legit suggestions instead of in a rant thread here.

 

That's the problem we are trying to solve; there's no market for them because people would rather make it themselves it based off of their own customization. And they're forced to anyway because crafting levels prevent players from crafting items in their current level range without crafting a bunch of unwanted items below their level. So it discourages people to do professions.

If the whole point of the all of this tediousness, backtracking, and grinding is to encourage trade between players and fix the economy and it doesn't, then there is no reason for this tediousness, backtracking, and grinding. As simple as that.

 

(TL;DR at the bottom)
While I haven't been grinding professions in Wynn (or playing Wynn itself very much) recently, I did happen to play the economy update beta and criticised it a lot for this sort of thing. By keeping track of updates, I can see little has changed other than removing the additional step of needing to run to a special refining station after you'd collected a small portion of the items you actually wanted; and making a separate inventory for ingredients. These are steps in the right direction, but they don't solve the core issue with crafting:
Crafted items are not worth the time and effort put into them. The grind to make usable crafted items is unrewarding and bland.

The above point is why I actively seek to avoid crafting altogether. They provide no visible benefit in the early game at all, and it's a huge investment for the future that doesn't pay out until you're already maximum level.
The main issue is still durability. While I can see it being important to balance out the power or strong weapons, armour and accessories, it falls flat on it's face when the actual power of the crafted item can barely match a normal item, much less a unique item. Why bother spending the time leveling up your gathering profession, collecting 3-star materials - which takes thrice as much time - and then spending the time searching for the perfect ingredients to make an amazing weapon and then spending the time to make sure your crafting profession is high enough to craft an item at your current level to get the best use out of it, when you could instead spend about a minute running though a cave, collecting the Tier 3 loot chest and finding a far better unique weapon for your level? Or, even a legendary that can carry you for 10 or more levels? Hell, why not spend the time grinding mobs to gain levels and skill points, unlock quests and unlock new weapons that are even better than the ones on the level previous?

The point of leveling up a crafting profession is to allow you to make higher level - and thus better quality - items. So that begs the question, when do you actually craft the items instead of just grinding to make it stronger? This goes in tandem with the fact that a cornucopia of identifiable items already exist that are far better than almost all crafted items - and lack durability too so can be used indefinitely. If you choose to keep grinding your profession to attempt to make something amazing at your current level, you'll naturally level up while gathering ingredients and all the other, unique items at your level will keep outclassing your crafted item until you eventually hit the profession cap. There's no reason to actually craft something with good materials, because it ends up being burned as just grinding fuel - and then in a few levels the 3-star ingredients you save to make a 'special item' will become obsolete because they're weak compared to your current level! Furthermore, if you decide to dedicate yourself to crafted items and use whatever you can make - even if it's a few levels lower than your current - you'll constantly find far better unique items with far more (and better) ids on them that just make sense to take over your crafted one. There is no winning in professions unless you want to grind to the highest possible level - nor is there any reason to save high level ingredients until you hit the max level range because they simply don't last.

But lets say you do put in the effort to grind up to max level, through a ton of menial, repetitive gathering and ingredient hunting. You get to the max level in your profession, and you're given access to create items on-par with Mythics, with the potential of making them better. Yet, despite this, the curse of durability strikes again, as well as the diminishing returns of high-level items. Why bother spending the time going out and gathering 3-star materials to make the very best specialised piece of equipment you can when a mythic is only slightly worse, and doesn't have durability and is far more recognisable on the market? In the time you spent grinding out those crafting levels to get up to mythic level, you could've probably found more valuable mythics - that again, don't suffer from durability and have a much more easily estimated value - by loot running instead. Not only that, but with the durability on your crafted mythic, you need to start exchanging items for scrap. Items that could've been sold for a (small) supply of extra emeralds that add up over time; all to sustain your crafted weapon that's only slightly better than a mythic. At high levels though, it doesn't matter if you have 80% exploding or 95% exploding, or +40% Health Regen or +47% Health Regen, because it makes such little difference when you're doing and tanking such high damage. Crafting a better-than-mythic item with +7% more spell damage than a regular mythic is really not worth the hassle of both grinding to the point you can craft it, and repairing it after every adventure.

At it's core, the immense grinding of professions is boring and unrewarding with nothing to break it up. At least grinding in herb cave/Temple of Legends (ToL) pre-gavel, grinding in frozen heights/demon cave pre-corkus, and grinding in turtle pond pre-economy had a chance to get a rare reward to break up the immense monotony of killing mobs over and over again for experience. In Herb Cave and ToL you had a chance to get one of the most powerful pieces of armour in the game - Stalagmites, Crystal, Adamantite or Blue Mask. In Frozen Heights and Demon Cave, you had a chance to get a rare legendary or a powerful mythic, and the same goes for Turtle Pond in Corkus (with a slightly better chance for mythics). What do you get from the constant grind of gathering and crafting? The occasional tier 3 material that gets eaten up for 10 more XP and nothing else, and a useless item that's far worse than a normal of it's same level you just throw out, scrap or sell for a tiny amount of emeralds. No 'Legendary Fishing Rod of Poseidon' that gives you a chance to get +3 extra fish when you fish, or 'Possessed Woodcutters Axe' that gives you a speed buff when you chop down a tree; or even a special modifier when crafting an item that could give it extra IDs not from your ingredients or even a major ID. Just bland materials over and over again and useless crafted items that just get burned for XP so you can potentially craft something slightly better than an item 10 levels ago.

TL;DR:
The immense grind of professions to make items is not worth it when a unique item can be gained in a 10th of the time and is 10x more powerful - and doesn't suffer from durability either. Professions offer such a little advantage over loot running that they may as well not exist; and the constant monotony of grinding offers no reward apart from very slightly better materials and ingredients that - in the grand scheme of things - make no difference (compared to loot running which has a chance for you to hit it big and find a legendary or a mythic, something that can never happen with grinding professions until their endgame).

 

If you're doing it to pass time, why use Prof bombs?

 

lmao people in this thread

 

You have honestly summed this up perfectly! I couldn't have worded it better myself :D The only reason I do it is because I'm a completionist - I'm over level 100 in all professions, but I'm still levelling them up because it's more valuable to me to have high levels than to get any kind of mediocre item out of it.

 

Checkmate atheists

 

I find it amusing how this thread has 78 replies (not including this one) and none of them are from a GM/Admin. For a team that supposedly takes criticism seriously- This is one heck of a way to show it.