World Fix Professions

Okay, so - some context:

Hiya, I'm Quint! I'm level 101 woodcutting (have been for a while) and level 85 farming, and have spent the last two days going straight from 65 mining to 75 mining. I know this isn't as much as other people have done professions, so understand that I'm trying to come from the place of both someone who has gotten a profession to close to the highest level as well as someone who is working on levelling professions. I've also been doing this across 1.18, 1.19, and 1.20 - I know every profession system.

I don't have much of a segue, so here are the points I want to make:

Change the Profession XP curve. I know, it's kind of beating a dead horse, but the issue is that all the curve changes so far have targeted low- and mid-range profession levels (If I recall correctly, 0-70), but the problem is that, if I'm being honest, they don't hit what they need to. As far as I'm aware this is very rough approximation of what the current XP curve looks like:

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The following is what I think it should approximate:

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A much more tame curve, that begins with heavy growth, and then mellows out to a linear growth. Or better yet - don't just blindly rely on math to make your XP amounts, and test them to make sure they feel an good mix of rewarding and difficult.

Secondly, let's talk refining and weight -
GET. RID. OF. AUTO. REFINE.
This may be an unpopular opinion, but refining made professions so much better in 1.18 VS 1.19/1.20. Get rid of auto refine and don't bring back weight with it, and hugely buff refining XP from what it used to be. Refining made for a natural break that gave a burst of XP from gathering. Since you're now going out of your way to refine again, reduce refining time and eliminate the chance to get nothing from refining sessions. Refineries also shouldn't be fixed functions - they should be more like workshops, and be able to refine all kinds of materials in a single refinery, in my opinion. I think something like 20% percent of the XP you get from gathering nodes directly should be shifted from gathering nodes to refining, to make it more rewarding. I think a potential problem to occur from this may come from people just getting chock-full inventories of stuff to refine and refining while AFK - I think this detracts from the experience of taking a break to refine, so you should get some very slight multiplier for refining multiple items in a single session that has diminishing returns after ~two or three stacks.

I actually don't think tool durability is bad - it makes another natural break (something I think is VERY important for something as inherently grindy as professions) to go fix tools - that being said, I think tool durability should be buffed - by between 1.5x and 2x. Tool durability doesn't scale with nodes needed per level - before level 67 or so, you level up multiple times between tool repairs, but afterwards, you repair multiple times between level ups. It's just kind of chore-y, and I'd rather it be tuned for the nodes per level by hand rather than just "add an extra 10 durability per!".

One more thing to wrap up this system - miniquests. Another natural break from gathering, miniquests are important. I think rather than just adding more, miniquests should actually be nerfed - I currently get 45% of a level per miniquest. I think this should be nerfed to around 30% with a HUGE asterisk. Miniquests should be repeatable (with perhaps a flat cooldown of 30 minutes OR needing a 20+ minute break from being off the server to reset. Something like that.) But they should be repeatable with diminishing returns AND should have one miniquest per level, at least beyond level 50. Something like the first run requires 30 Ingots, and gives 30% XP, but giving the gathering post 40 Ingots post-cooldown would give you 10%. Exact numbers are up for debate.

 

I definitely wouldnt mind refining returning, HOWEVER, it heavily relies on good refinery placement. IMO, every refinery should have an enderchest for easy storage. (this also eliminates the 1.18 problem of really convenient refineries with awful bank access.) regardless of refineries returning, i feel durability should be scraped too, its just an artificial obstacle for no reason, and prevents players from getting the most outta the bombs they paid for (if players want to take a break, they can, they dont need the game to tell them that this is their break time). I dont like your suggestion to discourage bulk refining, as some players just might prefer to horde mats to refine while grinding for a long time in between, and there's no reason to discourage different playstyles/preferences (also the avg amount of materials per tool at max refine rate is ~4 stx of t1, closer to 4.5 stx overall. , you literally couldnt refine a full tools worth of mats with your current numbers).

Personally, IMO, profs should be relatively easy up to lvl 110 for gatherings and 103 for craftings. that's what's considered "max useful" professions, and I think it shouldnt be too hard to get there so one can "experience" everything with the game. However, i think one of the main draws for players like myself is the grind, and so i think after lvl 110, profs should become a lot slower and grindier, so it remains an actual accomplishment to achieve max level.

and on that note, delete guild boost salted. its fucking busted, makes profs way too easy, and its completely unfair to those who cant receive the buff. I know youre super proud of your new guild features, but a lot of players, including myself, dont wanna deal with the drama that comes with guilds, we just wanna grind profs.

 

True, true - I myself recently joined a professions guild, and yeah, I honestly don't like the guild thing. I think it could be constructive as a (largely unrelated feature) to have "companies" of a few people that share resources for some people to craft, some people to gather - details aren't specifric

I agree with your point on the bulk refining, in retrospect. I'll edit that out when my brain is less fried.

Durability, I have mixed feelings on. I don't mind it, I don't like it. I like having natural breaks (because I know I and others, personally, get a bit too lost in gathering for a long amount at a time, and need that reminder in-game), but if refinery placement was actually good and made for a better gameplay loop (gather > refine > bank > fix > gather) that was designed with the help of a competent world designer, I'd be happy to get rid of it. I think I would be okay with keeping durability under that circumstance if it was changed a bit, so that 50% and below is current normal gathering speed and above is slightly faster - I dunno, just a thought..

Agreed, it's stupid to level past 110/103. I was thinking of also suggesting some kind of leaderboards/something because most of the people I know that grind profs beyond aren't for future proofing but for flexing. Again, just a thought.

 

I have prof lvls of 70 farming 80 mining 80 fishing and 70 woodcutting. I’m doing profs for money since I have mega -luck with mythics. However I hate profs due to it being the same repeating grind for hours. Honestly sounds ironic, but profs are a job not gameplay. If you like grinding that’s cool. But there should be more fun and interesting ways to lvl up while doing profs. I like the repeating mini quest idea. However I think other things like that would be cool too. Maybe there can be “special requests” at tool merchants. These requests give a bunch of xp for mats you gather or items you give to them in that prof

 

Probably won't delete this thread, but I will make a much more serious/specifically thought out thread later, most likely