Profession System Rework

Buckle up, this is gonna be a long thread.

Let me start by saying that profs are currently deeply flawed, at least from my perspective as a player. I realized this after the 467th time I heard someone on discord tell a new player to avoid profs entirely on their first playthrough. A system that is this integrated into core gameplay probably shouldn't be avoided, but here's the thing: profs take a lot of time to grind.

- Let's say it takes 25 hours for a brand-new player to hit combat level 70. Along the way, they experience many unique quests, explore a vast map, fight deadly foes, and learn about the dark lore of a dangerous world. There is grinding, but leveling isn't too hard, there's plenty of variation in grinding spots. Oh and there are also multiple unique dungeons to explore.
- Let's say it takes 25 hours for a brand-new to level up a gathering prof to level 100. Roughly 10+ of those hours will probably be spent in the same spot from level 90-100, and minimal exploration will be needed to find the best spot, even without the help of a guide. That player will also have to spend a shit-ton of time waiting to get into a prof party server.

If you went up to an average player, what gameplay experience do you think they'll pick?

Simply put, prof grinding is likely very repetitive to many players. That being said, I am aware that many people enjoy profs, and many have invested countless hours into them for the sake of a higher spot on their online leaderboards. Their accomplishments should not be invalidated. So, this suggestion aims to do four things:

1. Make it easier to get rewards from profs without grinding a ton.
2. Make profs more accessible to new players.
3. Ensure that the current "prof endgame" at what's currently level 110+ stays relatively the same.
4. Make profs somewhat less repetitive.

I will also split this thread into segments. I ask that you please read the whole thing before commenting, as some ideas may seem absurd at first, but I will do my best to justify them.

SUGGESTION PART 1 - REMOVE PROF SPEED BOMBS FROM STORE

Spoiler

I hate prof speed. So, so much. It gives a 2x (even greater since the amount of materials it halves is rounded down) boost to crafting, which doesn't seem too terrible at first, but keep in mind that these bombs don't decrease time, but resources. This means that you basically are wasting resources if you don't craft with a prof bomb. I do not like these bombs. I should not have to wait to get into a certain server to play a part of the game.

My proposal is to halve the amount of profs needed to craft something permanently, but round it up this time. Prof Speed would also be permanently on for gathering (and it would take 30 seconds for nodes to reappear) Prof speed bombs would be removed from the store, but people who previously owned them are still able to use them.

SUGGESTION PART 2 - CRAFT MORE STUFF AT AN EARLIER LEVEL

Spoiler

The entire point of doing profs (for most people) is to get to a higher crafting level, so you can craft cool stuff. If you want a cool item you can just buy it off the market, but if you craft an endgame weapon, you’ll need to spend a lot of time grinding. Sure, once your crafting level is high enough, you have the benefit of being able to craft anything you want provided you have the materials, but I don’t feel like that’s enough of a motivation boost for many players.

My proposal is to tie crafting level to getting more crafting slots, rather than being able to craft with better materials. This means that you can IMMEDIATELY craft a level 100 item, but you can only use one of the six ingredient slots.

So low-levels aren’t screwed over, lower-level ranges for crafting start out with more slots already unlocked, meaning you can always craft a level 9 item with 6 ingredients used. I made a chart to explain the exact values for this stuff.


Example: a player with level 20 woodworking wants to craft a level 50 bow. They can use four ingredients, but if they level woodworking up to 30, they can use five slots.

My reasoning for these changes:

• Makes returning high-level players immediately interested in crafting, as they can immediately make something, albeit a normal-tier-ish item.
• You don’t have to feel like all your crafting was worthless on a new playthrough if you stop leveling a profession at say… level 30, as you can still reap the benefits of leveling up this profession for a while.
• Makes high-level players feel like they are progressing better through a profession, as the reward will be more noticeable as they level up a certain profession.

Keep in mind that even with this change, players still have to gather materials and ingredients.

SUGGESTION PART 3 - PRIORITIZED SKILLS

Spoiler

In Detlas, there will be a new blacksmith-type NPC: The Artisan.

Upon right-clicking him, you will be given two options:
- Prioritize Skill
- Weekly Missions (more on this later in the thread)

The [Prioritize Skill] option works like this: select one of the four gathering skills, and you will gain a +10% XP bonus in the gathering skill AND any crafting skills associated with it, as well as a +10% higher chance of getting T2/T3 materials for that skill. Once you’re past level 110 in a skill, the 10% XP bonus is removed.

You can only swap a skill once every week, so there will be more than one confirmation GUI to make sure you’re certain about whatever skill you want to prioritize.

The point of this suggestion is to encourage players to not necessarily level all skills at once, by encouraging them to prioritize one or two.

One more thing: your prioritized skill will carry over to ALL of your classes, so you can’t make one class for all four gathering professions.

SUGGESTION PART 4 - WEEKLY CRAFTING TASKS

Spoiler

The next thing I’d like to address in this suggestion is the tedium of gathering professions. At higher levels, they can get pretty repetitive. There are two ways to go about fixing this:

1. Making the gathering itself more interesting, which I’m not sure how to do without making it some sort of stardew-valley-esque minigame, which I’m not sure would mesh well with Wynn.
2. You can get prof XP from other sources, such as quests or mobs, but this could be hard to incorporate without making it feel tacked on.

Instead, the bonus method of getting prof XP is Weekly Missions, accessed at the Artisan I mentioned above.

Every week, you are given the objective of crafting five [specific thing, like a bow or spear] with one or more [specific positive or negative IDs]. These tasks carry over to ALL classes.

Here’s an example of a list of Weekly Missions:
- [Woodworking] Craft a Bow with [XP Bonus]
- [Armoring] Craft a Helmet with [Melee Damage %]
- [Cooking] Craft Food with [Health Regen Raw]
- [Woodworking] Craft a Relik with [Melee Damage %] and [NEGATIVE Health Regen Raw]
- [Woodworking] Craft a Wand with [At Least 4 Strength] and [Exploding]

Here is the criteria for determining which types of weekly tasks you will get:

• If your highest-level crafting skill is within 10 levels of your lowest-level crafting skills, weekly tasks will be for any of the eight professions.
• If the above criteria is not met, your weekly tasks will only require to use your three highest-level crafting skills.

Upon completing one of the five weekly tasks, you will receive the following rewards:

• All materials used to craft the item are refunded.
• 60 Emeralds or more (increases by 60 Emeralds every five levels after level 25)
• XP for whatever two gathering skills were needed in this crafting skill (so if you crafted a Bow, you would get Farming and Woodcutting XP for instance). The XP received is always a set percent, determined by the following formula where X = your level: 55 - (X/2) = percent of XP in that profession you’ll earn. So at level 100, you’ll earn 5% of the XP needed to reach level 101 in a gathering skill. At level 10, you’ll earn 50% of the XP needed to reach level 11 in a gathering skill. This system may need tweaking.

Here’s my reasoning for this new system: it gives players a reason to craft items, even if they don’t want to interact with the community. It rewards them for exploring the world and getting the specific ingredients needed to craft something, and it acts as another source of gathering XP. Given that there are only five challenges per week, it means that players can’t just rush through their gathering, or earn a crap ton of money.

SUGGESTION PART 5 - NEW PROFESSION TUTORIAL

Spoiler

Alright, so let me start by saying that the part with professions will be removed from the tutorial. Entirely. Instead you’ll start with an oak weapon like you did pre-1.18. Use of professions will also be removed from the Cook Assistant quest. Removing or relocating Therck’s Chain would probably work well too (Therck’s Chain is beyond busted imo, but that’s a conversation for another time)

Instead, professions will be taught in a level 5 quest, which starts here. It’s low-level and on the road to Detlas, so players shouldn't miss it.

The quest will start off with a guy, I’ll call him “Man”, who needs your help chopping down some trees. Located near the NPC will be a small Oak Tree. Man will give you a T1 Axe and tell you how gathering works.

Once you’ve gotten one Wood Log, he’ll give you a T1 axe and tell you to mine some copper nearby. Once you’ve gotten two Ingots, he’ll mention that you have enough materials to craft a dagger, and will also suggest using some Rotten Flesh to craft a better weapon. Located near Man will be a Weaponsmithing station, and once you bring him any crafted dagger, Man will go into a final long speech about the types of crafting and gathering professions, along with how ingredients work. The quest ends and you receive emeralds and XP.

My goal with this quest is to point towards professions as “very useful”, but not “mandatory” like current King’s Recruit may suggest.

CONCLUSION AND CLOSING NOTES

Spoiler

So yeah, these are my suggestions for “revamping” the current prof system. If you’ve noticed, all my suggestions don’t really affect professions past level 110, and in fact, the lack of speed may make them harder at that level. My main goal here is to make profs feel more accessible to new players. Will these suggestions help?

I’m not sure. That’s where you all come in. I have not made a long suggestion in ages, so I need your feedback to fix stuff like balancing. So if you have any suggestions for changes PLEASE let me know in the comments. This suggestion is far from perfect, but with your help, I hope for it to become closer to perfect.

Thank you for reading,

WithTheFish~

Spoiler: Thread Changelog

10/26 - Increased emerald reward from weekly tasks

 

absolutely pogging

i will read this later do not fret


Okay I have taken my time to read through and I really like the proposed changes, especially the weekly crafting tasks look neat and I also like being able to prioritize a specific profession, it would take a long time to overhaul professions like this but I'm sure it would be worth it

 

These are pretty awesome suggestions. I think all of these could be implemented in the game to some degree.

Awesome job, +1 to all :D

 

Pls rename the suggestions in poll (if you can) so they are clear.

I think this thread would make professions much better. Perhaps still not perfect, but better.

If I understood correctly you mean "tacked" as "necessary".
Sadly, even though prof quests might be great, in my opinion it would do more harm than good. (just commenting the general idea, I know you are not proposing them)

 

Fancy suggestions! Just to add another idea concerning gathering; something e.g. Runescape does to make repetitive tasks a bit more diverse is "highlight" a particular gathering node periodically, which will then yield more xp/resources should the player interact with them in time. Figured Wynn could just highlight those with particles and since it's all client side anyway it'd work out that way.

 

Done!

By tacked on, I'm referring to something like already existing quests and mobs giving prof XP.

While I've heard of Runescape I've never actually played it - that special node idea does seem really cool!

 

I think that number two would work better with a similar compromise with gathering, since that's by far the more grindy of the two. If I was buying the materials either way, I wouldn't be too concerned about leveling up my crafting levels, but if I'm going to gather materials, the horrific tedium of harvesting 800 logs I have absolutely no reason to use is kind of an enjoyment killer. I like the idea of being able to craft items without grinding crafting levels too, but I think that if I had to pick one to reduce the grind on, it would definitely be gathering.

Also, how would you scale xp from this? A level 100 wand would give a massive amount of xp to anyone at a low crafting level, so it would be fastest to grab the highest level materials and just make a few of those to level up quickly.

 

Let me copy its description in the store:
"Using this bomb will double the gathering/crafting speed, and halve resources respawn time and crafting material cost to everyone on the server for 10 minutes".
well they actually decrease time, but time isnt important for crafting imo, it is the resources, which I agree on this one tbh

The problem with crafting isn't really crafting itself, it is the grind it takes for your materials. I mean you can buy them in the market for cheap but you don't really want to buy materials all the time when you want to craft. It is the GATHERING being too grindy.
and yes Melkor talked about it :

-

From what I read in your thread is that, you go to the guy in Detlas and swap prioritized skills? So why do you need more than one GUI - do it like what you guys did in the trade market is fine. It works like:
You choose Woodworking (which means weaponsmithing, armouring, woodworking, scribing) then it asks yes or no, like class deleting confirmation or anything that has the yes/no GUI.

In my opinion, the weekly mission is very neat, but here you need some tweaking:
- Do not need to refund tbh, you give them items and they give you XP and money, fair trade
- Weekly 608 emeralds (if my math isnt wrong) and <5% of gathering XP is not appealing (assume you are level 105). I guess 5 eb for level less than 15, and increases by 5 eb every five levels is way better (it is like 1.5-2 le per week, which is NOT efficient in terms of getting rich)
- XP (by percent) = fixed 50 for level < 20, then 50 - (X/3) for X = level. So it gives like 13.3% of XP per week when you are level 110. Note that it won't give XP for any X > 110 though.

shhhhhhhhhhhhh

This is great but if its profession related then I think adding prof XP upon completion is better
Also, I believe that they should add a category of quests called "Profession quests", which are related to professions and gives relative prof XP upon completion. This could kinda change the image of profs being grindy asf.
As you proposed that removing prof speed then I think there should be a way to get more XP in a fast and not-so-boring way.
(and yes, the quest you suggested could +access to all prof quests so that you can help others do stuff after you learned something in a tutorial.)

 

Only under the condition of being completely (in questbook, stats etc.) separate

 

yes thats why I said add another category (like Normal quests and miniquests)
and for miniquests actually they should also separate them into combat (give ingredients) and gather (give materials)

 

Well shit, I didn't even think about XP scaling. I'll see if I can add a solution to this in the next few days. As for gathering changes, I was kind of considering that too, but with gathering XP likely being in the works, I decided to wait to see how that feature pans out before making suggestions for quicker gathering.

My hope for this hypothetical system is that with crafting being accessible, materials may be more common on the market.

Given that you potentially can't swap your prioritized skill for up two seven days, I think a confirmation screen might help just in case.

In my opinion the crafted item is the "primary" reward for this, in case you used a rare ingredient for your task I feel like you'd be cheated if you lost it, plus a refund would maybe make players more likely to use this system.
Keep in mind that it's 608 emeralds per task, so 3040 emeralds total. That actually isn't a lot now that I'll think about it, I'll try increasing the rewards a bit.
My plan is for the XP to be pretty minimal in the prof "endgame".

I've thought about profession quests, but I can't really think of any creative ideas for them. Being limited to mining, farming, woodcutting, fishing and maybe crafting severely limits quest creativity. I'm worried any prof quests would be like fetch quests.

Oh and thank you so much for the feedback Ghoti, this really helps!

 

This would make profs 10x better

 

Then why not making it exclude stats like mana regen or mana steal or tier attack speed?
Also actually note that pretty much a LOT of "rare" ingredients are actually very common, for example I got like 20 urdar's stone and nearly a stack of eye of the beast. For non-boss-altar ones I also have 20+ ritual catalyst and the level 85 meat for cooking (it kinda sucks that I forgot)
Maybe before they actually implement this, they check which stats are available in tier 0-1 ingredients so that you won't be "forced" to complete your tasks with a rare ingredient.

oh lol sorry for the misunderstanding, but actually double the emerald rewards is fine.
As for the XP one if it is 5% per task then it is cool

If the quest you proposed isn't really a fetch quest then I don't see a problem here

 

Sweet, a well written suggestion. Let's break it down to what I think about it.

--------------------------

SUGGESTION PART 1 - REMOVE PROF SPEED

I agree with removing the crafting part of speed bombs. Most prof tryhards been saying this since the beginning of profs. The only issue is, what do you do with the people who bought these speed bombs only for crafting purposes? That would be literal false advertising and that could get Wynncraft into serious trouble. Make this into some kind of "legacy" bomb where you can't buy this anymore but it still applies both speed and crafting effects and only sell the "new" speed bombs that only increases gathering speed at a cheaper cost and/or make them 20 minutes long instead of 10 minutes (kinda like how /gc is still in the game)? Honestly, I don't know how this is going to work but I agree with your suggestion for the crafting part.

For removing the speed part, I do not agree. Almost all prof tryhards will literally freak out and probably quit profs because we are too used to speed. Plus, speed makes profs much more engaging. Like I said earlier, make them cheaper in the store then and/or make them 20 minutes long instead of 10 minutes.

Just a thought, if speed bombs were to be entirely removed from the store, gathering speed ingredients will need to make up for this loss or nearly everyone would burn out past Lv 80+.


SUGGESTION PART 2 - CRAFT MORE STUFF AT AN EARLIER LEVEL

Makes sense to try to get players a bit more engaged in leveling craftings, but it feels weird to me. It doesn't really make sense to be able to use endgame materials to craft when you haven't even leveled up yet. The current implementation of being able to use new resources as you level up is nice to have.

That said, I think a better middle ground is to be able to craft using materials that are up to 50 levels above your current level and decrease the number of ingredient slots you can use by 1 for every 10 levels of material level above your current crafting level. For example, at Lv 1, you can craft using Lv 1 materials with 6 ingredient slots, Lv 10 materials with 5 ingredient slots, etc., up to Lv 50 with 1 ingredient slot. This still feels weird to me but better than what you suggested.

As for the problem of XP some players have described in some of the replies, there is a form of xp decay that occurs when you use low level ingredients. Using Lv 110 materials when you are only Lv 1 in a certain crafting profession means you only get to use Lv 1 ingredients. This means you only get about about 1-2k xp even when taking into account only 1 ingredient slot can be used and T1 materials (no bombs). However, that would level up said person to Lv 20s in one go. Just a thought to put out.

So for this, I'm a bit concerned on how this is going to go and I am on the fence about it.


SUGGESTION PART 3 - PRIORITIZED SKILLS

I seen some threads on this that suggested things similar to this that I am too lazy to go link them right now. I agree with this though.


SUGGESTION PART 4 - WEEKLY CRAFTING TASKS

Interesting. I agree, but like others said, the XP/emeralds gained should be worth a little more at higher levels. As for anything past Lv 110, your formula should be fine as levels past this are mostly for bragging rights (until Lv 120 mats pls no) aside from faster Dernic material gathering.


SUGGESTION PART 5 - NEW PROFESSION TUTORIAL

This 100%. I don't care if this new quest becomes a fetch quest, but professions in the tutorial need to go, or at least be purely optional in the tutorial somehow.

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One main issue that your thread does not suggest to solve other than partly in suggestion 3 and 4 but is a really big problem is the grind it takes to level up gathering professions. These are the main reasons professions are such a huge turn off for many players. Perhaps when gathering XP/speed ingredients comes out, it will be much better, but as of right now, your suggestions doesn't help these out too much. I'm thinking you wrote this thread with gathering XP/speed in mind so it should be fine for now until we know more about these ingredients.

 

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE IMPLEMENT SUGGESTION NUMBER TWO IN SOME WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM. THANKS!

It would help with pretty much every gamemode, and make it so that you aren't cucked by being one level short of the next multiple of 10

 

As an extremely active bomb thrower I feel removing certain bombs gives me a lot of concerns about what would happen with the bombs I currently have. I would be upset if they were nerfed in any way or simply unusable.

Although, I am not at all against changes to how bombs work. I do believe profession bombs should either both be 20 minutes long.

And some more things on profession xp and speed ingredients, if you replace profession speed bombs with crafted items then the armor shredding glitch needs to be patched. I don't know if there is a post explaining this already so I'll explain it here the best I can. ex. there are two players not in hunted at dernic mining and one player is wearing crafted armor and accessories. The other player (NOT IN HUNTED) can arrow storm them to subtract durability very very quickly from their armor.

 

Fish can I just say, all of these are killer ideas and I’d love all of them. please please please salted add these suggestions into the game, it’d help so many new players!

also Fish I see you used the suggestion of team detlas’ treasure island from the Wynnic Olympics, the weekly quests. I’d love that one considering I also came up with that same idea for the island design

 

Forums wouldn't let me upload this due to spam/inappropriate content, of which there is none. So, I posted it as an image. Apologies for the inconvenience.
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You have too few messages

 

ah. thank you forums very cool