Progression Remove the ID system (among other things).

I've played through the game several times over now, and I notice the same problem: Most of the content is basically ignored. Ingredients and crafting are optional, entire areas of the map are functionally useless, most merchant equipment is either bad, or too difficult to get compared to just going out a few blocks and clicking on some enemies, and by the time I find most of this "optional" content, I'm already over-leveled. As far as I can tell, this is because the usual gameplay loop of "Walk around>Kill>Loot chest>Identify" is oppressively effective. I have no reason to take a detour to, say, bear zoo island save for being particularly bored with the rest of the game.

And that's where these changes come in:

1) Get rid of Equipment drops for normal mobs. It really doesn't make sense anyway that a maggot drops Legendary equipment, but to boot, its existence removes any incentive I have to craft it in the first place. Not to mention the random loot chests. Rare mobs dropping things probably makes more sense.

2) Cull/move resource gathering spots: Like Quests, the search for stronger equipment should move me to new parts of the map. Barley, for example, can be found in plenty of spots off the beaten path, but there's also several patches right in Detlas for the lazy crafter! These sorts of easy-access gathering spots would discourage much exploration even if you had to craft all your items.

3) Make crafting probabilistic: The six item limit makes sense, but then the only reward for levelling your crafting skill is you get to make higher-level equipment. That's not nothing, but you're disincentivized to use many ingredients on your recipes by this hard cap. I'm proposing that you be allowed to throw in as many as you like, while reducing the probability that the craft will be successful based on your crafting level relative to the recipe: Your over-tuned staff is entirely possible, but only after grinding for levels and materials.

To boot, if the change is made, the equipment from merchants can be tuned against the available ingredients. You can see how likely you are to make something equivalent to bought items and decide if you've over-shot or under-shot your mark.

At least one person so far has suggested "splitting" items: trading their power for more ingredient slots.. So that sounds cool too.

4)Increase XP reward for discoveries/add more discoveries: Exploring the map for XP isn't exactly a viable strategy if you want to level up. And there are often relatively hidden spots that are just pretty to look at yet are not, in fact, discoveries (e.g. that cove under the cliffside manor near Ragni).

5) Crafting level requirements for Quests: Come on, everyone reading this can think of at least one quest where this makes sense. Recover the past? With the shrinking potion? Surely you'd need some alchemy experience for that one.

It goes on like that. Durum isles can probably be turned into some kind of resource hub to give you the gathering/slaying quests and teleport you to any gathering spots, the boss altars suddenly make sense since they're the now one of the few sources of Equipment for anyone who doesn't want to craft. Slowing down the pace of the game would probably do more good than harm, as far as I can tell.

P.S.: The original post has been changed. But only a bit, since most responses don't actually engage me and instead wonder where they'll get items.

 

So, you want to make the game more grindy? Professions are meant to be an optional part of the game, and were added quite late in development in the large scale. Over 90% of players, myself included, mostly ignore them, and that's how it should be.

This is a horrible idea on all aspects. It fucks up all balance that remains in the game and adds an incredibly grindy and frustrating aspect to the game.

If you want to hit a rock or a zombie for a hundred extra hours because you think it's fun and good gameplay, go play Hypixel Skyblock.

 

You already spend the hundred hours hitting zombies. The only extra is going on a trip to a new part of the map instead of to an item identifier. The actual materials gathering takes a fraction of the time and effort killing mobs for ingredients does. And you get so many of those as is you need a whole extra bag to stop said ingredients from choking your inventory. The most tedious "new" thing you'd see just cruising through the game is literally just crafting what you need.

 

Most players detest grinding profs on the logic that they're "too grindy", and the players that do grind profs do it for profit and not enjoyment.
Most of your suggestions here encourage/promote proffing, making the game much more grindy, which is something the majority of the player base does not want.

1) This is going against the whole idea of profs in wynncraft. Crafting is not how you're supposed to make your gear. You're supposed to find gear, identify it, and wear it. If you want to grind and craft your own gear that's great for you. Crafteds tend to be a bit stronger than normal items, so your time will be worth it. Requiring or incentivizing crafting over identifications would mess with the way most people want to play the game. If you prefer the playstyle of crafting and proffing, you can make a craftsman class. Basically, crafteds are supposed to be an extra bonus and not the main way you get armor. The unidentified gear is the focus, not the crafted gear.
2) Not a bad idea honestly. Some late game players might find the travel times annoying but it might be a nice way of getting newer proffers to explore they wynncraft map more. Idk, it wouldn't hurt too much.
3) Like Emolga said, this would destroy the game balance. Late game builds already abuse strong crafted recipes frequently to make them much stronger than no-crafted builds. Allowing players to add as many ingredients as they want would result in the most overpowered monstrosities that literally all combat (the best part of wynncraft imo) would become trivial. For example, all you would have to do is craft a ring with a few dozen tough bones and a bunch of vim veins, and boom, you now have a ring that gives you thousands of hp and maximum defense with no downsides.
4) If you think quests are discouraging exploration, the solution is not to reduce quest xp. This will not make people explore. It will only make people go to the same grind spot over and over again and hit zombies for a few more hours. Unfortunately, running around the wynncraft map exploring is not a valid way of leveling up. If you want a way to encourage players to explore more, then a better solution would be to make exploring more fun, not forcing players to grind xp at grind spots more.
5) This has been done with a few quests before. I'm sure people would be annoyed if it was added to more quests. Like I said earlier, most players detest grinding profs and would prefer to just do the quests without having to right click a bunch of rocks for an hour straight beforehand.

My final notes:
Most of your suggestions seem to come from a misconception you have about wynncraft: that crafting and crafted items are the main focus. This is not true. Quite the opposite is true. Quests, combat, item drops and item identification, THOSE are wynncraft's main focus. Crafting and the professions associated with it are just bonuses, something that the player can choose to enjoy if the want to, but are in no way requried or even encouraged to. They're optional, and I (and the rest of the wynncraft community I'm pretty sure) want them to stay optional.

 

i think we should remove playerghosts i swear they r following me (scary in real life)

 

they are gang stalking you

 

1) The entire gameplay loop is hardly changed. You still kill things, you still do quests, and you still have other sources for equipment that don't involve grinding. But now instead of going to an identifier to hope you don't get more vendor trash, you go to some other part of the map for a few minutes for resources. If you're not all that jazzed about it, you make whatever with what you have on hand, or you buy from the market.

2) Honestly, the gathering spots are just kind of slapped on. A little inconvenience to make your ultra-necklace should be expected if you're in the end-game. Be nice if it also showed you something one of the builders was proud of.

3) Right, but everyone's acting like there's some guarantee here. Right now you're guaranteed to make your insane staff or whatever. If suddenly you need more ingredients to make your already-broken things, and then exponentially more to have a chance at making something better, that sounds like an improvement to the situation. Your only hope of beating out what you have now is to hope you get lucky. Even if people make worse, by their very nature, these items would be obscenely rare. Unless you think it'd be a problem to have to grind a lot for your broken equipment.

4) We can't even begin to have the conversation about encouraging exploration if the quests just breeze me through the area level in an hour. The only thing harder than getting someone to stop grinding to explore a bit is getting someone to explore for no real reward. If I tell you there's equipment on top of a mountain, you probably won't get it. If I tell you there's weak equipment on top of a mountain, what are the odds you'll go for it now?

5) I agree the professions get grindy after a point, but I actually find that performing actual work with the professions is far more interesting than the usual Gather>Craft loop. The thing that opened my eyes to this is the bread baking in Aldorei Valley. I can just buy a bunch of wheat, pay for the fresh water, then in a few seconds I can grind my way through the levels for money. It'd be interesting to see this sort of thing turned into a full-on money sink. Does it trivialize the cooking profession? Maybe. But completing a quest to allow you an alternative to exploring for resources sounds like a good reward. Especially at high levels.

Alternatively: Just don't make people hit level 100 prof to finish a quest. It's not like everything's a massive, tedious grind. Just give an incentive to do something other than the main gameplay loop.

And no, I'm clear that it's not the main focus. It wouldn't make sense to make a post suggesting it focus more on crafting if I think it's the main idea of the game.

 

i would quit

 

Have you ever played another mmo before

 

I’ve seen troll suggestion threads that had better ideas than this.

 

Yes. Runescape, and a bit of WOW back in the day. They had roughly the same problems, and I can't imagine it's gotten any better. At least RS understood the whole skill requirements for quests; shame it was as grindy as it was, what with the dozens of skills they have.

 

Especially with that knowledge that WoW and RS, and now seeing Wynncraft follows it maybe you will realize that MMORPGs have gameplay loops of do basic task get average gear, make money, and buy better gear in some form.

 

This, simply put, is ridiculous.
I'll tackle the first suggestion last, as it is going to be the longest of my rants, so let me begin with the fifth.

5) This is an awful idea. "Let's gatekeep certain quests behind grinding! That will definitely make the game more enjoyable!"
What would be the point of this? From a lore standpoint, I guess it makes some sense, but from a gameplay standpoint this is a terrible idea.

4) Reduce XP from quests?
It's not my fault that you nolife your way through Wynn - if you complete the entire game in two weeks, that's your issue for taking it too fast, not the game's. Quests are already a not-great way to level up (grinding can complete the game in a matter of hours - let's complain about that, cause then I'd be on your side), and reducing their xp would make the game rely even more on grinding. It would require more content where there isn't any, and so players would be stuck grinding mobs, dungeons, or secret discoveries.

2) This is, once again, a bad idea. You seem to be of the mindset that making games more grindy is a good thing, which completely baffles me. This would give no benefit to anyone whatsoever - it would just make crafting take even longer, which helps no one and hurts everyone.
A version of this idea that might make no sense is giving additional benefit to these "off the beaten road" nodes. This actually would be kind of cool - you're stumbling through the wilderness, when you find a giant field of barley, granting you dozens upon dozens of grain.

3) Again, why is making things more grindy a good idea? I'm not sure if you find repeated menial labour entertaining, but I can assure you that most people don't. While this is one of your less ridiculous ideas, it would definitely be a downside, as it would make crafting more luck-based, and this game doesn't need any more luck in it (lootrunning). Wynncraft should be a skill-based game, and this idea wouldn't help.

1) Here goes.
So.
You're completely right, from a lore standpoint. Honestly, it's ridiculous that I can kill a Grook and have it drop a bow (not to mention random mobs dropping hyper-powerful Mythic weapons - I hate the Mythic drop system, and have posted threads on it before). It also doesn't make that much sense that there are random chests scattered around the map.
So what's your idea?
Remove the entire item system from Wynncraft by eliminating the only way to get items?
That, simply put, would be bad.
The item system as is is fine - nay, it's quite good. While lore-wise it doesn't make sense for worms to fill up your inventory with spears, from a gameplay standpoint, getting items as you go along works quite well. The chests also provide nice little "boosts" - especially the higher-tier ones, which make it feel like you're actually being rewarded for looking around and exploring. You would rip all that away so that players would have to take the grindy route, spending hours upon hours upon hours crafting items. I don't understand what part of walking back and forth and back and forth gathering resources and killing mobs seems fun to you, but none of that appeals to me. Wynncraft's item system is great, and destroying it in favour of a new one which requires that you take the grindiest route possible would be a bad change.

Why do you find grinding fun?

I'd also like to point out that you hypocritically complain that "we already have to whack zombies with swords" while simultaneously criticizing the speed at which you run through Wynncraft.

 

You don't do basic task on Wynncraft. I mentioned RS having "roughly" the same problems, but at least RS would actually have you explore an area. They may need to reduce the amount of grinding around the higher end of things, but the slower gameplay encouraged me to explore practically every inch of the map. WC just has you speed through the game, with incidental murder fueling your progression as a side-effect. The issue with both games is there's always some extreme optimal strategy that involves you ignoring most of the game. With RS it was avoiding minigames; with WC, it's avoiding entire chunks of the map. Taking a moment to craft is at least viable on WC.

 

5) To give some incentive to break the standard gameplay loop. Like I said: Most of the game's ignored entirely. And the reason is that you can sustain yourself in place with just what you find killing mobs. Even a meager requirement leaves you exploring more of the map than you would just rushing from beacon to beacon. Detours are not a bad thing.

4) You can't blame the player for playing the game. If people can work their way through your game in no time and ignore 80% of it, it's your fault. Telling me I did it too fast is weird. Telling me people can reach endgame in mere hours by grinding just highlights that we both agree the game could slow down. I'd just focus on giving people a reason to take a detour. It's not the player's fault they optimized the fun out of the game they're playing. Even grinding obsessively would force you to slow down with this, since you can't exactly keep killing low-level mobs for XP, and you can't kill higher-level mobs without the appropriate gear.

3) I'm not entirely sure what the issue is here, since anyone that's not hyper-invested in making the most powerful item possible would be unlikely to waste a ton of time on the mechanic, and anyone dead set on making broken equipment will do so either way. People complain about broken end-game builds. Fine. The broken builds exist no matter what you do. As it stands, once you get the stuff for it, it's all but guaranteed that you'll make it. The only people really affected are the kind you'd want affected.

1) It would be to make getting stronger something deliberate. We're both on the same page: great loot from some mook too stupid to use it isn't exactly easy to rationalize. My solution? Make you do something more than just walk around killing things. No more serendipitous Purity, no more item sets you'll never finish because you out-leveled the area too quickly, no more inventories choked with useless junk. Want good stuff? Make it. Don't want to make it? Kill a boss at an altar. Don't want to kill a boss at an altar? Do a dungeon. Don't want a dungeon? Buy it at a merchant. Merchant doesn't have what you want? Go to the market. Nothing in the market? My god, kid, do something to get your loot. Just not walk around and randomly find it.

For a guy that apparently wants to reduce the reliance on luck in this game, telling me the random drop system is good is interesting.

I'm curious why you find pointing out that you already kill mobs is hypocritical.

 

I think the real issue here is your unbelievably reductive view of what this game is. Boiling the game down to walking around, looting chests and killing stuff is basically one step away from saying the game is just 6 keys and two buttons. Optional content is in the name, it's optional, not having a reason to do it is exactly what makes it optional in the first place. If you want to do it, feel free to by either doing it overleveled because it's fun or by making a new character, if not then don't.

I really don't understand how you can be so jaded, you shouldn't be playing for a gameplay loop, you should be playing because it's fun. Maybe to you that loop is fun, but it isn't to everybody and having extra stuff appeals to those people. Not everything needs to be meta, not everything needs to be required for progression and not everything needs to have a purpose, sometimes things should just be allowed to exist so you can change things up or go out of your way to try something new.

Terrible idea, getting random drops during progression is fun and gives you a reason to go back to towns to get marginal upgrades instead of just grinding for hours on end with no end in sight.

The search for new equipment does move you across the map, there's a zero percent chance you didn't visit basically every major city and point of interest on your way to 100. Crafting also has essentially no impact on progression, like it or not, it's essentially endgame content and making it harder by moving or removing easy nodes only makes that issue worse.

That's just a bad idea, yes item power scales with rarity but even then there's still a cap, the idea that there would be an infinity high damage ceiling attached to crafting is absurd and would essentially ruin the game. Balancing around mythics already causes enough issues as is, I can't even imagine the nightmare that would come from bullshit items made by random chance.

The whole point of high quest XP is that it means you don't have to grind as much. They tried low quest XP, everyone hated it and that's why it is what it is. You're literally pitching undoing all the progress that was made in making progression fun in this game over the almost decade that this game has existed.

Actually a based take but I'm pretty sure this whole post is a joke.

 

based

 

Yeah. I'm not sure what you wanted to say here other than to try defining "optional content".

I don't see how this makes you "grind for hours on end" unless the process really gets that much worse after level 60 and the markets suddenly disappear. Did they prevent you from buying materials and ingredients since I made this post?

I have never, not once, ever thought "Wow, I should go to this new place for better loot". I've done a quest, and in the process, found a legendary or a set item that sometimes has what I need. And if you think you visit almost "every major city and point of interest" on your way to 100, I suspect you'd make for a bad tour guide.

I suppose the literal possibility of making some broken item would be bad. Imagine a one in a trillion chance someone gets 10 mana steal per hit and 100% spell damage!

Too far in the other direction. Once I made it to level 100, I finally felt like the grinding was just right. I did a quest, wandered over to a couple of slayer posts, made a few discoveries, and I was ready to make my way to the next quest. By the time I got there, I got the level and started again.

Well I'm glad to know you're not being deliberately contrarian.

 

Professions get much, much more tedious the higher you level them. This is the reason why very few players bother to do them.

I understand that you think a lot of content is ignored, and I definitely see where you're coming from in many of your points, but replacing a liked system with a new one based on deeply unpopular features isn't a viable solution in my opinion.

 

Guess I'll have to max out the professions to see how bad it can be. That said, the solution would probably be to buff gains for it.