Game Mechanics Money-Making Content in Wynncraft

Hey, what's up Wynncraft. I'm posting here today to explain what I think is one of the major issues with Wynncraft, the Endgame, and I'm also here to offer some fixes.

Wynncraft's endgame is fairly linear. After you finish the main questline, the essentially best way to make money in Wynncraft is simply to lootrun. From a game design standpoint, you can see the immediate clear issue: a lack of options. Sure you can do profs, which might be somewhat profitable after 75+ hours of consecutive grinding, but even then it doesn't really come close to the results that lootrunning yields.

I used to be a major lootrunner. I'd spent about 90le on loot quality gear, food, and the whole thing, I was in the Lootrunning Guild discord to plan out my runs; it was going great. I even found some mythics, but after a few weeks of doing this.. I quit Wynncraft. I never thought to post here; I just thought Wynncraft was going to expand its content out later, but it's been multiple years and no endgame content fix has been released, so here I am, posting about it!

There is another major factor at hand here: what is fun. Lootrunning is not fun. The concept of "ooga booga open box get rich" for 6 hours a day is so bland.. and simply monotonous. Content diversity and its thrill is what keeps games alive, if history has taught us anything. This concept shows in Minecraft itself: the diversity of what you can do, and the thrill, for who want it, in hardcore.

Here's what you've all been waiting for: my proposal for a fix. Personally I love the game Path of Exile. I think it's great, the endgame system is great, but incorporating the map system into Wynncraft is simply something that, sadly, cannot happen. Although I do think we can take one thing away from that game: how they handle bossing. They have a very simple algorithm for most of their bosses: you kill a set number of mini-bosses (known as their "guardians"), each hold a fragment, and when you "turn in" these four fragments you get a portal into the boss room, and the bosses have a drop pool unique to them, and the items are TRADEABLE and FARMABLE.

I think this system should be adopted & adapted to Wynn! One proposed use of this that I think would be nice is in Qira's Hive. You'd keep the quest the exact same, however, when you kill Qira you get a singular random master item (potentially a token, but I personally think a randomized system would be better as to not oversaturate one specific item if it's in the meta), which is tradeable. In order to fight Qira again, you have to fight each of the elemental floormasters again, which would act as the fragments. Each of the previously owned master items would simply be kept untradeable, as a legacy item of sorts.

Also, personally I don't really understand why dungeon items are untradeable. This being the case utterly annihilates any possible dungeon farming; which would be a fun and enticing thing to do, in my opinion. The Silent Expanse dungeon (I've totally forgot what it's called) is such a fun and interactive dungeon, but there is actually zero reason to farm it right now. Sure you can get the items for yourself, but like I said: there's no purpose to getting strong gear if there's nothing to do with it! Note: in this model, we may want to change dungeon boss loot to a randomized pool by simply making the drops you need more fragments for a lower %, and the more common ones a higher %.

EDIT #2: I forgot to talk about the issue of keeping them untradeable. Untradeable items, in theory, are made to engage your playerbase to get the item. It's a great idea, but unfortunately this isn't how it works psychologically. Let me elaborate with yet another Path of Exile analogy. In Path of Exile, everyone looks forward to the endgame content, it's simply the most fun thing in that game. In order to get to endgame content, you have "to suffer through the acts (earlygame)" - Fyregrass, Zizarin, Path of Matth, and many, many more Path of Exile content creators. Path of Exile recently lost 2/3 of its playerbase because everyone hates the acts to much. The devs, due to mass community hate, are currently trying to revamp the acts to make it more fun. You're probably wondering where my point is, so here it is: take a dungeon item that you have to complete the dungeon five times to get that's potentially instrumental for one's build. Psychologically speaking, the player will naturally view the dungeon as the thing they have to "suffer" through; in turn, this lowers player morale and their will to keep playing. However, if you could farm a dungeon and sell the items for good money, player morale goes up because they can finally appreciate the amount of fun the dungeon is and the wonderful design made by you guys.

This system being in place would finally give mythic items and good builds actual value. Right now, there is actually ZERO value to having a really strong build worth 4 stx that can do all content, vs a build that's worth 15 le that can do all content. The 4 stx build will likely do it faster than the 15 le build, but there's no reason to need to do it faster. If there's a need to do it faster, like farming bosses for more LE per hour (otherwise known as min-maxing your farming methods), there's finally a use for having a 4 stx vs 15 le build. Right now, the only "good" build according to general standards is a loot quality build; for like I said before: there is zero uses for a build that can do crazy amounts of damage and is generally strong.

You may be thinking to yourself right now: what makes this any less repetitive and fun than lootrunning? Simply put, the thrill and interactivity of it. The bosses in Wynncraft are so well-designed and fun to fight that I know I could farm it if it had a real economical and, well, actual purpose.

There's plenty more I'd like to see in Wynn, such as: making mass mob farming for money a legitimate strat, adopt a less time-intensive view on crafting (something like where Path of Exile has it [but don't do everything it does] where instead of being blocked by XP and levels, you're blocked by the materials you have. I'd also introduce the idea of killing a boss or doing something unlocks particular crafts, or it unlocks uses of a particular craft; similar to bestiary in Path of Exile without instanced Menagerie's), and a whole lot more. I'm considering applying to the content team to present all of these ideas in detail directly to the staff, but I'd like your guys' support for this idea before attempting!

Hence, I think the endgame system in Wynncraft is flawed, and I proposed a few of my ideas for fixing them. I explained the one I think could be most easily incorporated into Wynn (and the one that I think I would enjoy the most) in the most detail, but also gave some other ideas I believe could be incorporated with a little more work, but most definitely beneficial. The more fun and interactive alternates to lootrunning and general end-game money making, the happier the playerbase would be.

Notes:

1. I'm NOT suggesting that you gut lootrunning, or remove it's strength. Just recommending alternatives.
2. You'd need to add more bosses into Wynn to make this work, since there's only a few high-level bosses. The market would swiftly be oversaturated as is, even with randomized drop pools. I'd recommend adding 3-4 new bosses.

If you'd like me to make a new post talking about my other recommendations thoroughly like this one, let me know.


EDIT #1: I thought of a perfect analogy to tie together this essay. Imagine you have to sit down for 7 hours a day for a multi-million dollar deal. This sounds actually really good! Except, the only thing you can spend your money on is things to get more deals. It's fairly simple to see how these two sentences contradict each other: there's a deficit of things to do! Getting money and only being able to spend money on making more money without being able to do anything else is extremely counterproductive, and needs to be fixed.


(This is a repost so I can change title)

 

I agree with this 100% - lootrunning isn't fun, I'm playing video games to have fun.

 

ok but there are definitely more things to do in wynncraft than lootrun or prof
endgame content needs to be expanded tho

 

I 100 percent agree with you. Luckily, Salted did say in the next update theres some "game-changing stuff Im sure you guys will love." so maybe theyre already working on something. I also really agree with the point that lootrunning shouldnt be blammed out of existence, cuz it means more options and I like to lootrun a cave or 2 here and there

 

Personally, this is what I do now :-

1) I create a new class and just play back from level 1 to 103
2) I do all the quests to get all the money and quest items (XP only quests don't count)
3) I delete the class
4) Repeat steps 1 to 3 for infinite amount of times
5) Profit

Of course, I do the occasional raids (except Grootslang, read my profile as to why...). My profs are already at 103+ on my main class [Mage], so I guess I can do the same with my other 4 classes. Then there's HICH, but I'm not trying those modes again until I get a stable internet connection.

Anyway, that's how I enjoy the game, what about you guys?

 

please stop using text so bright its impossible to read please and thank you

 

I'm hoping it's linked to the miniboss concept that was introduced in 1.20 :D

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I'd argue that there's a lot more than just lootrunning and profs as endgame content. Activities with guilds (currently just wars or just being social) needs to be expanded on a bit I feel, but nonetheless:
Lootrunning
Professions
Guild activities
Raids
Dungeon/forgery running
Housing
Boss altars?


There's all of these things (and maybe more that I've missed) but they all have problems of their own. You pointed out a key problem with dungeons which means that apart from the forgery chest, there's absolutely no incentive to run dungeons at endgame. Raids can give good tomes and some are rare enough to keep you running them at least. Housing is fun and creative, but a very different change of pace from the game and not often something that people will log in each day for or find very rewarding. I'm sure there's a lot more to this, but I'm tired.

I agree with lots of your points though :)

 

I agree there are others, but theyre flawed. Professions are boring, Guild Objectives can get repetitive. Raids are amazing I LOVE IT SO MUCH.... but no armor and equipment rewards. Forgery Runnings and Dungeons have the problem u cant trade the items u can get with tokens and boss altars are more one more time.

I would LOVE it if
A) Add more incentive and make Profession balanced.
B) Raids can get u armor and weapon rewards
C) Dungeons can be traded and can get armor and weapon rewards as itself and not having to do forgery.

 

You could up the amount of emeralds you get when completing forgery runs. Boss Altars could also have a forgery-like system where you could gain emeralds or gear from running different ones. (You would probably need new boss altars for this to work)

 

Me who spends so much of my life getting my Mage to a only slightly mediocre level and see this man saying he level his classes as profit: 0.0

 

ⓨ same

 

le bump (fancy :o)

 

I mean... I was once like you as well. I spent almost a year to get my first class (Which was a Mage) to level 100, and that was frim the middle of 1.18 to the middle release of 1.19. You should never rush your first time playing, as you'll only get that experience once.

Cut to today, and I'm leveling my classes every now and then to get quest exclusive items since we may never know when they would be legacy items. I still have the Abyssal Amulet from the "Order of The Abyss" quest and the Upgraded Orc Helmet from that one orc quest that I can't remember.

Both of them are no longer in the game and I, along with numerous others, have the only now legacy quest items.

 

yeah the first progess is always the best

 

Wait, you think almost a year is long? I've been playing 5 years and my mage is only lvl 54. I'm definitely not rushing lol

 

completly agree late game content, is way to repetitive and most of it is boring