Game Mechanics Making Profession Level Requirement a Soft Cap

Here is a problem with Wynncraft's profession system (based on my own experience):

When a new player is playing Wynncraft for the first few hours, they can get hooked with many of the Wynncraft’s elements. The quest is immersive, the landscape is detailed, the exploration is wild, the dungeons are crazy, the combat is amazing, and then there are professions.

Compared to others, professions are not very appealing to new players. They are complicated, grindy, lack of interactions, and its product is very replaceable with equipment dropped from mobs. As such, most players decide to skip on this part of the game and move on. Dozens of levels later, when they decide to try this mechanic out for the first time, they are bombarded with the same 4 things again. Even worse, since the profession level is separated from combat level, the player needs to grind the professions to their combat level to make any meaningful product, at least 3 of them(two gather and one crafting). The players will most likely give up in under an hour and go back to mob drops. As their combat level increases, professions stray further and further from them. Resources are slowly becoming decorations, ingredients are only sold for emeralds, there is no way the player can catch back up with the levels at this point. Even if the player creates a new account and starts over, there is no way to maintain 12 other stats leveling along with their combat level. Only players who reached level 100 and are very dedicated to wynncraft might level their professions, but even then they view anything done under ~lv 95 a chore and follow guides to speed up the process.

I did make it a bit more depressing than reality, but the story should apply to many players. I do have some suggestions of make players able to catch up on:




1. Make the professions' level requirement soft capped:

Having professions below the level cap no longer prevents gathering and crafting. When underleveled for gathering, increase the gathering time and decrease the success rate of resource gathering. When a resource fails to gather, it instead interrupts the gathering process at ~0-30% progress and the resource will disappear as if it is gathered. Experiences are reduced according to gathering progress. When underleveled for crafting, overleveled ingredients will have a chance to fail to apply while consumed, over leveled material will have a chance to be consumed without crafting while returning materials that would’ve been successfully applied. The crafting and gathering will be hard capped by combat level instead.(optional)

One of the breaking points for catching up professional levels is that it requires the player to dedicate their time on the grind without rewards for a while. Because of travel time, it is not worth it doing a casual 15 min mining session every now and then to just relax and chill. By making it soft capped, players can do a gathering session when they stumbled upon a resource cluster, or do some crafting when they got some nice ingredients when they found some rare mobs (encourage saving the resource gathered), it could be enough to revive the profession system for some players. For the experiences gaining effectiveness, it should be tweaked so working with materials at the same level is most effective leveling. (so there isn’t one grinding spot for players dedicated to effective profession leveling) The level requirement soft cap is mainly designed to allow players to experience the professions while they are underleveled, with sub-optimal experience effectiveness. When players are actually enjoying the professions and is dedicated to master them quickly (for the absent of failure uncertainty), they should be encourged to grind with similar levels. Still, the underleveled operations should take off much of the grinding there is.



That is the main point I wanted to get out, below are some more quality of life change that are also nice:

2. Make similar professions also gain XP

Gaining XP of a profession will also increase XP of similar professions by ~30% of the XP gained. The similar professions are: weapon-smithing and wood-working, armoring and tailoring, food and potions. (jeweling and scrubbing have no link but increased xp gain).

Again, there are too many professions to level with. Not having to start from 0 when working with another profession would be a huge relief for dedicated grinders.



3. Get bonus crafting xp from crafting with new ingredients

Encourage players to save ingredients gathered from exploring instead of grinding the most effective resources out there.



4. Gathering resources are no longer mob protected, but gain much more experience when the player’s combat level is below the level cap. (not applicable with mobless areas) (sketchy).

I think it would be great to implement aspects that encourage players to venture into overleveled areas every once in a while, avoid high-level mobs, and “stealing something” and get out, just playing the heartbeat game. Resources could be an option: having a group party to do the gathering with 3 defending from mobs and 1 gathering, which is another teamwork element that can be implemented in the game.




That is all that I could think of. This suggestion is only theory crafted and there can be many aspects that I have not considered (especially the 4th). If you have anything to add on to you are welcome to do so. I do believe the profession system is a great implementation, but the flaw is what kept many newer players (most <lv100 accounts) from using them.

 

so its somewhat confusing what you are trying to say... but i think your saying that you can gather any resource at any level but it has a higher chance of failure and takes longer? so idk how this would help sorry i didnt understand much

but the 3rd suggestion is ideal amazing

 

Yes that is what I am saying, Sorry if it sounds confusing I am just writing as my mind goes.
So you can gather any resources at any levels with higher time and fail rate at higher level gaps, up to a cap.
If it is a fail you will know in like 3-5 seconds of gathering so it is more like gacha where you only take time for the succeeding one.

Crafting wise it also increase the chance of failure when underleveled, higher min success rate, but still consume the material if failed.

High level gathering means more 1-3 star material, high level crafting means more stable crafting so it is secure putting all the best material in one craft

The entire point of this is to make it so that when the time is right (found some resources or ingredients) players can do some low commitment work to have a low chance to get some decent gear or consumables from professions.

hope that helps

 

It's like how you can kill mobs that are a higher level than you: you can, but there's a chance they'll kill you (because they're stronger than you) and it won't give you as much XP.