Prof rework

Professions are dreadfully tedious, and once the dopamine from level ip fireworks wears off, quite boring. The fact that profs need a rework or overhaul like lootruning got has already been agreed upon, but I haven’t really seen or heard and actual ideas of how it could be done. So, I wanted to create a post with some ideas I come up with, and hopefully the community will chip in with their own (likely much better) ideas in the comments.

Fishing: regular mc fishing style with a holographic indicator and audio que when a fish is on your line (or just do the bobber thing). Have bodies if water be available for fishing instead of at a 1x1 node? Maybe make certain locations have higher chance if better quality fish ex: the city sewage won’t have more than a tier 1 at a 5% chance per tick but gylia lake will have a 5% chance for t3 10% for t2 and 20% t1 each tick. With ticks being chances of getting a fish (maybe 6 ticks per min or 12 with prof speed). Stats per fish? Would be down to catch the biggest fish for bragging rights.

Mining: Could do a pop-up like for az runes where it is a chest and you click the items that would be ‘weak spots’ to get the ore node. Don’t really like that idea though, would make it worse rather than better I think. Could make cave systems with a bunch of nodes and you farm them on a time limit. (Basically just Zhight Island for profs) This would probably just be in addition to the current nodes but it would have to have a higher chance fir t3 but with a buy in or something to make it worth it yet balanced.

Woodcutting: Could just do one of those timing games, the bar with an arrow that points at it and moves up and down and you have to stop it in the center. Make 2-3 center cuts down a tree while 7-9 out side cuts do it and make each tree actually give more than 1 piece of wood/paper. (More time per tree but more res per tree. Could be 3-6 res per tree with chances for each tier of mat)

Farming: I have literally 0 ideas here. Help. Please.

 

Farming could be like "click all the something in the chest, while avoiding clicking the something else". It would be different in a way where Mining has these ingots that pop up one after the other, whereas Farming shows the grains all at once.

Also these minigames could just be from the current nodes, maybe like a special proffing event that rarely happens when gathering a node.

But yes this looks fun!

 

I don't think this fixes the tedium of professions at all. Yeah, it's more interesting than just clicking, but whatever mini game comes of it will just end up being the same as the previous click to harvest; doing the same task over and over and over again for hours to level up

 

I believe that the professions should all feel different, instead of just being "click on nodes", but I also think that this wouldn't fix the tedium much. If anything, having to do something more complicated the same large number of times would make it worse. If they did this and drastically lowered the xp required to level/increased the xp you got, I could see this being an improvement, but people who enjoy the grind or just being able to turn of their brain for a bit would be probably not be that happy. Alternatively if this was an option to get more xp, I could see this being popular, but the people who enjoy grinding might be upset (though rather less justifiably I think).

 

This in a nutshell is why any changes to professions that solve its major issue will never be done without controversy; because its biggest issue (the grinding) is the feature for prof tryhards. Even after 2.0 when prof xp from guild wars was introduced, prof tryhards absolutely hated it.

I’d rather leave profs how they are than piss off people who enjoy profs the most.

 

KEEP FISHING AS NODES PLZ

fishing nodes look the coolest lol

 

I agree with Deusphage's point that making it the same every time wouldn't make it less boring.

The thing about proffing is that progression feels awfully linear: if you do something (harvest/craft), you gain something (xp). What makes combat levelling different is the variety of ways you can gain it: quests, dungeons, raids, or good ol' mob grinding.

Making profession levelling more varied would make it a lot less tedious to level up. We can have more quests that require profession levels (like The Shadow of the Beast) categorized as optional "Profession Quests" different from normal quests. This way, newer players won't feel like they're missing out on the story by being barred off of these quests, while still giving proffers something different to do to progress.

Another way we can add variety is this suggestion! But instead of the minigames being what to expect every time you click a node, it could instead be a random event that could keep your attention to the game. I know that doesn't sound like a huge change, but there's actual scientific research about random events making things more engaging (ik they used lab rats for that research but still).