SPOILER 2.1 Speculation Thread

I doubt this is coming but I would like to see dungeons become more of a dungeon crawler experience, or something else to fill that role

 

I hope it isn’t.

The thing with professions is that the worst part about them that keeps most players away from them is what profers love about them; the grindiness. They are fundamentally not fun in of themselves and only serve the purposes of getting better items, bragging rights, and money making. The last of which isn’t unique and is outclassed by raiding and lootrunning. Even if you add a mini game to crafting, it would still get tedious and have the feeling you’re wasting resources by crafting items you don’t need or want. So if you try to make professions less grindy, profers will be upset because they will feel that their previous work was invalidated and everyone else should work as hard as they did to achieve the same prof level. It’s happened before with prof guild xp.

All that being said, it wouldn’t feel right to significantly change professions to make them more accessible to casual players at the expense of current profers. You don’t need crafted items at all during a normal playthrough, and you’re better off just buying whatever crafted items that are useful in the endgame like for wars or raids. For those reasons, even if you made profs significantly easier, I doubt most people would still touch them. So why do that while upsetting a dedicated portion of the playerbase?

 

I was thinking about this last night, and I think that profs should stay the same, but there could maybe be additions to how they work? I really enjoy going exploring and finding a random gathering spot I never knew about. Equally I enjoy spending time gathering from said spots, however sometimes I just cannot bring myself to do it. So maybe if they just built off what there is already that would allow for accessibility to casual players, while keeping the grindiness that proffers enjoy?

 

Build what though? And again, it’s still avoiding the main issue. It’s like asking can you add more toppings to a poop sandwich so more people would eat it.

 

It's an endgame content wall especially for guilds. (guild rework too pls). Like I can't just buy the war builds off the TM. They are usually secret and people prefer you to get all the ingredients which can be insanely expensive or not even avaliable. I think if they could figure out a way for both tryhards to feel good and casuals to be able to experience them would be optimal but I don't think that'll be easy. I think a solution would to not make it easier but make it enjoyable. I am all down for a profession rework no matter what it is unless it makes it worse.

To say we can't rework it because it'll upset a small % of the playerbase which denies the majority to actually do it is just some bad logic.

 

It might be Wynncraft moving up to 1.16, modernizing a lot of the code which would be great. This update also comes before Fruma, and I think they'll want to make Fruma in 1.16.

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wAIT NO

Perhaps they're FINALLY adding Totemic Shatter Interactions with Summoner and Acolyte??????

 

More enjoyable how exactly? The grindiness is the most unenjoyable part of professions. Too much of anything is a bad thing; you could make the best fishing mini game and it would still get boring after awhile.

It’s no different than saying an indie horror franchise releasing a sequel that isn’t scary for a wider audience would be a bad idea. Sure, a few more people might enjoy it, but it being an indie franchise to begin with not many people even know about it. And the indie franchise still gets outcompeted by most other media. So all it would mostly do is anger the current fan base who came for the horror.

That’s basically where professions stand.

Salted explicitly stated that professions were designed for players that liked to grind. And that’s okay; not all players like the same things, so it’s only natural that games put in different activities for different players to enjoy. Not every player cares about the lore, yet they still added secret discoveries for those that do. But then turning around and revealing all of the secret discoveries in-game so no player can miss them would also ruin them in the process. The same way that revealing the entire crossword without the person asking ruins the fun of trying to solve it.

I don’t mind tweaks to professions; heck I’ve suggested some myself. But tweaks aren't going to get casuals into professions. I’m just saying what’s holding back professions the most is what makes it fun for others. And we shouldn’t ruin other people’s fun when people have many other things they enjoy or they wouldn’t enjoy professions anyway.

 

They will be adding every Ability rework/change you have sugges.

 

Isn’t it already 1.16+?

 

They should add "a new age, summoner remake proposal"

 

HECK yeah

wait fr?

 

a rework of the mob system was mentioned a few months ago, i could see that becoming enough to merit its own update

 

All that means for now is you can’t join earlier versions

 

I'm not a game designer so I do not know exactly how they'd do this. I think just a little bit more variety in the way you get XP could just make it slightly less stale.

I do understand your point but what I'm saying is that professions do block other aspects of the game (to be fair warring and such also needs a rework which could just counteract needing a profession rework). In the current stage of guilds, you're needed to have crafteds and consums which again, sometimes you can't just go buy them from the TM. To XP grind it gets way easier to use consums and it can be annoying having to buy it constantly.

With that all being said I think it's fine to have a part of the game that's grindy and some players do enjoy it my main gripe with it is just that it blocks guilds.

 

I see. I never really touched guilds and casuals don’t participate in endgame guild wars either, so that’s why I didn’t mention them originally.

Are crafted builds really the only viable option for war builds? If so, that seems like a balance issue with warring given how every thing else in the game like raids and loot runs are perfectly doable with non crafted builds.

 

i think they will fix the rivers to make them hydrologically accurate

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idk man, i'll never get bored of fishing in stardew valley...

 

You don't need crafteds for wars

 

the issue isn't casuals not sticking with professions through the late game grind, but getting into them to begin with. there's not enough incentives early on to get players interested in professions, so that they might be ok with the grind because they like what professions offer. the rewards aren't good enough and the cost is far too high. they need to be more accessible early on, with unique rewards that are just as easy to obtain as just going into caves and finding shit, while slowly dialing it back to the current progression later on. adding better more general rewards in the late game other than being able to make specific gear for specific sections of the lategame also helps to get less casual people who would otherwise not bother with professions because they're aware of the grind interested in them. you don't have to remove the grind but you do need to incentivize it more for a wider playerbase, because it essentially gatekeeps itself with how specialised the rewards are. no reason for a lootrun player to invest the time or money into profession shit, either crafting it themselves or asking someone else to, when they could just buy a warp build and save time and money, and then earn far more emeralds than professions.
I do think that consumables should be better in some way, because the market will eventually become saturated with mythics given enough time as there's no way to remove them from circulation, but consumables will always be needed. im not a game designer so i don't know what the answers to these problems are, but i am a player so i can at least notice the issues. im also not a profession player so i don't know the intricacies, but i can say that these are the things that are stopping me personally from getting into professions.

 

The grind IS a major part of the high cost. The main way to make professions more accessible and have their rewards be just as obtainable as regulars is by reducing the grind. Otherwise, if you made crafted items more powerful in proportion to the time it takes to grind them, they would be absurdly broken. Crafted items are already technically stronger than regular items, so just buffing their power won't do anything and just further introduce more balance problems. Especially since the player's power already got immensely buffed in 2.0, and you never needed a lot of power to get thru the early to mid game. Sure, there is durability, but that is manageable.

It also doesn't help that professions are inherently outside of the main gameplay loop, so any time put into them is an opportunity cost from just playing the game normally like exploring, finding loot chests, killing mobs, or doing quests.

Again, I really don't get how people recognize all of these problems, and yet still are in denial about having to address the grind. Especially when they don't bring any specifics to fix these problems. It just further shows the inherent contradiction with trying to have professions be geared towards casuals and tryhards. Yes, it would be nice if both groups could enjoy professions, but you simply can't have both.

 

no, i'm not saying to buff crafteds or make them specifically easier to get. im saying there needs to be other incentives for players to grind that much. more ways of making emeralds that reward you for the time you put in. because as it stands, i can get 100s of stxs doing lootruns in the time it would take me to grind out a high profession level, there's no reason for me to do that. the grind itself may be the draw for some players, but most players accept it as a means to an end, and the end is not worth the means. you CAN have both casuals and tryhards enjoy professions. tryhards enjoy the grind, so keep it. casuals want better rewards so give them better rewards. you don't have to buff crafteds or even tweak the current systems, you just have to add some form of different reward for the time invested into professions. it could even be a lootrun-esque minigame that people with high profession levels can take part in to actually use their high level in something other than grinding. having an entire game mechanic that literally only a small percentage of the playerbase actually uses is just terrible design, you can still have aspects of that mechanic geared towards that small minority, while still having other incentive structures for more casual players. no other gameplay mechanic is this inherently gatekept by its own design, even TNA is more accessible while still appealing to tryhards. plus i don't think it's a bad thing to reward the tryhards more for their grind. not wanting rewards and wanting to grind for basically nothing is just masochism at that point.
there's no contradiction about having professions be accessible to casuals and tryhards, that's just gatekeeping. if you don't want to feel like you wasted your time because you spend hours grinding, that's fine but it's pretty selfish to say that other players shouldn't be able to engage with a mechanic because you spent a lot of time to get where you are. and like i said, you dont even have to change the grind! i'm literally just talking about adding more rewards along the way that get players to accept the grind. give them a few dopamine hits occassionally so they want to keep going. lootruns were needlessly gatekept by high cost of entry and niche strategies but the changes that made them more accessible to the wider playerbase were well received. sure, the players who spent a long time playing old lootruns were annoyed that their hard work was undone, but keeping an entire playerbase away from something just to satisfy a tiny minorities of players is dumb and gatekeepy, and lootruns weren't even an official mechanic. to not do the same in some way to an *official* game mechanic is even dumber.
as for what the solutions might look like, i already mentioned the minigame. maybe throughout the combat progression, there's gathering camps that require you to run between resource nodes, collecting as many materials as possible in the time, maybe with powerups along the way. rewards could be higher tier ingredients or materials if ingredients are too good of a reward. the camps would scale with the local area and streamline resource and ingredient gathering while providing incentives and rewards for players throughout progression, and not undermining the grind as it's still required to play the highest level of camps.
or it could be as simple as receiving high tier materials and ingredients for profession level ups, with some way to obtain a parallel of combat chests which only opens with certain progression levels and can contain ingredients, materials and even tools (at a similar rate to fableds).
im just spitballing here, but you wanted ideas so there you go.
i think it's very stupid to say that you can't have casuals and tryhards enjoy the same game mechanic at all, it's certainly possible with a better designed system. tryhards will obviously get better rewards because they're higher levels, but it's important to give casuals some reward along the way, as well as tempting them with better rewards at the end of the road to incentivise them to undertake the grind. yes, keeping the grind in any form will discourage a certain number of players, but a better designed system with the same grind will still increase the number of players to actually accept the grind. i agree that some grind is necessary for the mechanic to be rewarding, it's impressive when someone reaches a high level, but the problem is that there's not enough to do with that high level. you get far more from combat levels for far less grind. also i think that the grind should be far, far shorter than it is but that's just my preference.

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another idea i just thought of would be actual full quests for professions, not just mini-quests. maybe a hunter is looking for a new bow, so he gives you the specific stats he wants and gives you a hint on what mobs you should hunt to get the ingredients. or a civilian wants their roof repaired so they are looking for tier-3 materials of a certain type. these would be placed alongside the regular progression of combat levels, incentivising players to do professions alongside regular combat levels as they're rewarded with better materials to make superior gear out of.
at the moment there's really no reason to not get combat 105 while ignoring professions, then just go back and level them up afterwards, which completely ruins the progression and makes it trivial to get better gathering tools as none of the dungeons pose any threat at that point, but having quests like this gives players another way to obtain powerful gear without giving them specific class weapons or armor that doesn't work with their set, as the materials can be used on any weapons and anything that doesn't work with your build at least gives more crafting exp.
again, you can keep the precious grind while still having incentives and rewards for more casual players to engage with the system throughout their journey and potentially get them interested in seeing the grind through to the end.
it's really not hard to have both casuals and tryhards enjoy a system, these are just ideas i came up with on the spot, i'm sure an actual dev team would be able to come up with better ones.