Fuck Profession Speed Bombs

Wait, what? Why are you guys shitting on Spider Cave? It's near EXACTLY the same as Mushroom Man and that quest's popularity depends on nostalgia and its iconic character, and old Mushroom Man was a NIGHTMARE, finding one of those mushroom mobs that had really weird spawn places was HARD (or you could go to Black Road but you'd probably get smashed) Mushroom Man was definitely in need of a revamp (even though we didn't exactly get a "revamp" just a slight polish to be easier) I mean, sure, they showed some love to Yahya's Lake/House, but damn, that quest is just as bad as Spider Cave (even though the old Spider Cave had some BROKEN spawn rates, like literally more than the spiders in Nivla Forest)

Edit: Also I'm 100th comment GIVE ME ATTENTION

 

i eat bees

 

Explain, I'll listen.

 

this thread has reached peak intelligence. i am gonna leave my opinions here.
professions are optional. if you don't enjoy grinding, don't do them. the powerful endgame crafted items I see as a reward for putting yourself through the struggle of grinding.
tool and item durability is far less bad than most people make it out to be. i suspect most people complaining just assume that it is bad, and don't regularly carry tools or crafted items around with them.
profession xp bombs are probably here to stay, but speed bombs can fuck right off. the idea of a grind isn't to be restrictive to only when there are bombs active. grinding should be able to be done at any time, and xp bombs can encourage you to grind more during a certain period, like combat xp bombs.
if you disagree with me, feel free to DM me in-game. i don't check forums often but i am interested to see some of the replies i get

 

I mean it was just the first example that came to mind. I do like the current Spider Cave, but it's not that much better like how Misadventure on the Sea was better than Sister City. I probably should have used Misadventure on the Sea as the example...

 

I do agree to some extent that professions are optional (and shouldn't be a priority too). But the thing here is that a lot of players want to create their own items and play professions and with how time-consuming professions can be it's discouraging to even start grinding.

Edit: From what I understand, the rewards are mostly when you get to level 80 or 90. Yeah, you get some very strong items but you already can use a normal strong item to beat nearly everything in the game.
But the exclusive IDs that are coming to professions are pretty motivating for me to start grinding. So I might start doing it next year when the next update comes.

 

If there's something we can all agree on though, is that I wish crafted items were more customizeable. Especially choosing your own attack speed. The whole system was marketed that you create your own custom items, but there's quite a bit you don't have control over :/

 

Yeah, that's probably the most important part of the whole crafting thing. It's not just about creating strong items, it's also about creating your own item.

 

the point of strong endgame crafted items is to be a REWARD for grinding. you shouldnt get them for free. i think the amount of grind required right now is perfectly reasonable, and you can circumvent it by just getting people to craft stuff for you

i agree with this point. crafting could definitely use some more work. however i believe that grinding gathering is just a fact of life you will have to get used to. it is not meant to be skill based. it is meant to give you rewards for putting in effort, those rewards being crafted items which could certainly use more incentive to use them, like identifications like loot quality which are a really good thing.
the skill in professions is meant to exist in creating optimal recipes. and if you say that you can just copy these recipes, the same can be said for strategies for fighting the eye, or beating LI in the shortest time possible.

 

For the past few days I've been thinking about ways to do just that.

For example, having the ability to choose the number of powder slots on your weapon/armor. From level 1 to 20, you can choose 0 to 1 powder slots, from level 21 to 40, 0 to 2 powder slots, from level 41 to 60, 0 to 3 powder slots, from level 61 to 80, 0 to 4 powder slots, and from level 81+, 0 to 5 powder slots. The more powder slots you have, the more your base damage/health is decreased. For reference, the Hive Weapons have the most powder slots of any weapon at 5, while Gravity and Neutrino have 5 and 6 powder slots respectively.

Or for choosing your own attack speed, choosing Very Fast or Very Slow decreases the ingredients slots by 1, and choosing Super Slow or Super Fast decreases the ingredients slots by 2.

 

i am interested as to which parts of this thread you are interested in promoting. is it something sensible, like making crafting more customizable or removing speed bombs? or are you just not willing to go through the grind of gathering to acquire crafted items, and that makes you frustrated?

 

But the fact that most people don't do professions, and the few people who do professions mostly use bombs shows that it isn't. You can't rely on other people crafting stuff for you because their crafted items don't really have a market. I showed that in one of my responses by mentioning the trade section on the forums and the trade market in-game.

Don't just take my word for it either; one of the people who use and like professions even admitted it.

But it doesn't. Again, that's like saying grindy fetch quests like Sister City and the Tower of Amnesia were a fact of life and therefore they shouldn't have been changed. Grinding in small doses is fine, but when there's no alternatives to it and that's the bulk of the game, it chases away lots of other people.

The difference though is that actually doing the dodge patterns for the Eye or beating LI is harder than just messaging and using Wynndata. And I don't how optimal they can be; I see a lot of people struggling to create recipes in the Crafted Recipe section on the forums nowadays. Like recreating Spring.

 

I didn't mean that it should be easy to get or make very strong items, my point here is that professions should be accessible for the general players. Professions were requested by a lot of players in the past (one of them is me) but they made it very time-consuming.

I'm not sure how but making a feature that was requested by a lot of players behind a wall of grinding isn't that good.
Again, I'm not saying remove the grind. But make it more accessible for players.

 

again, my response to this will remain the same: if you arent willing to go through the struggle of grinding gathering, then you shouldnt have the opportunity to customize your crafted items.

i very much disagree. i would like to think i am both decent at crafting and general wynncrafting, if i don't sound too pretentious, and that at least for me i find high-level optimized crafting and gameplay challenges require a similar level of skill, albeit different areas of expertise. but assuming changes were made to the crafting system to make your items more customizable, then optimization would certainly become a much bigger factor in creating recipes.

what exactly do you mean by "more accessible"? because at least in my opinion (assuming they went through with the changes to speed bombs. speed bombs can fuck right off) making the grind of gathering less time consuming would lead to an oversaturation of crafted items in the market, making crafting simply not profitable.

 

Not trying to defend the fact 90%+ of ppl do profs only with bombs but the profession grind needs to stay hard as it currently is to keep endgame profession material economy balanced (however the wood, paper and string economy is collapsing thx to some ppl like @Harganeth reee)
They'd have to make crafted gear more attractive to players to use them in a balanced way if they would want to make the grind easier while keeping the prof economy balanced.

 

But that wasn't the purpose of the system; the primary purpose of the system was to spur trade. The reason why the system is so grindy is to discourage people from doing all 12 professions and to instead trade their materials, ingredients, and items. It relies on players trading with each other to work. The economy isn't made up of a few individuals; it's made up of everyone. And if most people aren't doing it, then the system doesn't work.

Salted didn't make the system tedious just so that a few people could use it.

I will admit I'm not as skilled in crafting recipes, but you also have to consider that making crafting recipes has no time limit and you're not as susceptible to lag. You have to be on your guard the whole time while in game, and the slightest lag spike could be the end. Whereas if you're just using the forums and wynndata, you can switch to something else inbetween like a YouTube video or chat with friends, and then quickly resume right where you started.

I'm not saying there is no skill involved though, it's just more so like regular build making rather than playing the game.

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I'm fine with keeping gathering near the grind what is now (even though I do think it's a bit too tedious). It's just crafting levels that are my main gripe.

 

I don't really know how exactly. But I don't mean that by making grinding much more easier, I don't really know how much time it takes so I can't just say raise the XP by 10%.
Maybe adding some alternative ways to level professions and crafting instead of grinding/crafting, it's also supposed to be time-consuming but in more of a fun way.

I'm not that knowledgeable in the economy part, but if I understand it correctly it should have been like this: Crafted items are famous for how strong and cheap they are, there are items that are near the strength to mythic and much cheaper, and mythics lose a little bit of their value in terms of strength overall.

Note that it supposed to be cheaper because making them doesn't depend on the RNG for the most part.

Edit: Honestly, I think I'm going ahead of myself. I need to play with professions and crafting first to understand what I'm saying.
For now, there is a clear problem with bombs and we all (mostly) agree on that.

 

This thread was not made to comment on the duration or difficulty of gameplay. If all that was needed for the profession progression to be good was duration, then we’d be fine. The problem lays within the quality of the grind.

The fact that it is a grind in itself is concerning. Grinding is meant to be used for two reasons in MMORPGs. The first is gameplay padding. Everyone knows that Wynncraft can’t release stable, consistent streams of content, so gameplay padding may seem viable for them. It can help them keep some players interested until the next update. The problems here are that 1. If professions are padding, post people ignore them anyways 2. Even if they did use them, people would still run out and lose interest before the next update 3. I feel that most people would agree it’s better to have somewhat less high quality content then a bunch of shit content

The second way grinding in an MMORPG is meant to be used is to make the gameplay more fun and engaging. This seems counter intuitive so let me explain how it works. For the most part (emphasis on this, I’m excluding a bunch of variables that are not very relevant to the profession system) things are “fun” when 1. The player has a goal to complete 2. The player will receive an award from said goal 3. That goal is not too challenging or too easy 4. The player doesn’t spend too long at the same pace 5. There are different experiences the player undergoes during the process of achieving the goal

Obviously this is a very generalized model of what fun is, but in terms of gameplay a lot of the time it can be found to be true. Take a look at most aspects of Wynn that can be done solo (again, some variables are being ignored here) and compare them to this model.

Anyways, if we compare the profession system to the model I’ve presented, there’s some clear problems. There is obviously a goal present (level up professions) with a clear reward (endgame crafted items).

The first problem is that grinding professions is too easy. No I’m not talking about how long it takes so for fucks sake don’t make it longer. I’m talking about actual skill involved. Anyone with no life and enough determination can do professions without having to try, al you do is left click for hours on end. This is the first problem.

The second problem is that there is no change in pacing. You do the same thing, for hours on end, with no change in the pacing. There’s never any moments where you may have to be extremely focused, have to really think about something or have to make quick decisions with professions. It’s just mindless, left click span for hours. There is no mental stimulation excluding external factors like music or discord calls.

The third problem is fairly similar here in that there is no change in the players mode of actions. Again, all they do is left click resources nodes until they get what they want. This becomes tedious and just isn’t fun.

edit: oh and obviously I’m attacking the state of profession bombs in this thread, but you didn’t really seem to disagree with that so I didn’t comment on it

 

I think a good comparison to bring up here in regards to The Economy Update is a pathway that everyone cuts across. Salted laid down a 90 degree angle garden path with slabs for people to follow properly. However, an easier alternative exists (even if it gets your feet a little muddied) where you can just cut across the angle to save time. If the pathway is more inconvenient than just cutting across, people are going to ignore it.

 

This thread has been locked on Theeef's request.