SPOILER 2.1 Speculation Thread

Alright, I'll admit my previous response was a joke. But I've actually been thinking about this, and I have a genuine answer:

PVP update. As in, an update that reworks and rebalances PVP into something that players will want to engage with for the sake of fun.

Sar and NerdyGamer2012 have already proposed this in the thread, but I'll list my own reasons as to why I think this will be the core part of update:

• Isn't content-heavy. This isn't something that would require many builds and quests to be made, if any at all. This means that this could've been developed in tandem with Fruma's content.
• Would serve as repeatable endgame content to keep players engaged with Fruma.
• Would bridge right into Fruma, with new items (there will be new items with Fruma, right?) and maybe new abilities leading to meta shifts and potentially new battlegrounds to fight in.
• PVP may seem like a bad fit for Wynn, but people (myself included) said that about housing which ended up being a great feature. MMORPGs like World of Warcraft and FF14 have PVP, so there's a precedent for it being a possible feature. Hell, Elden Ring, a game that's predominantly singleplayer like Wynncraft, has PVP on this side which has support and a dedicated community.

 

Casuals, by definition, are not willing to spend as much time into the game as tryhards. Especially when it comes to optional side activities, which is what professions inherently are. Most casuals don't even make it to the end game. So expecting casuals to put in the same time as tryhards is just not gonna happen no matter how much you incentivize them. I think you're also overlooking just how complicated and time-consuming professions actually are, especially when it comes to crafting. This guide alone shows how... a lot it is. To fully level up Tailoring, you need 2,958 ingredients or over 46 STACKS of ingredients. And that's WITH profession xp and speed bombs from level 50 onwards. And that's not even mentioning how you need to craft 49 items from level 1 to 50, and whopping 378 items from level 50 to 100.

Even if you gave me a mythic for all of that I wouldn't do it. Ultimately, if you view professions as a practical ends to a means, then why would giving players more materials and ingredients to make gear encourage them to pursue professions when you don’t need any of those to get good gear in the first place via regular items? It will always be inherently faster and convenient to get regular items than running dungeons or spending money on tools, gathering all of the right materials and ingredients you need, crafting tons of redundant items, and then finally get the recipe you actually want to make. That’s just more steps. Professions aren't even in the tutorial anymore, so it's even harder for casuals to even know what to do.

I've already explained in earlier posts why it isn't gatekeeping or wrong to have features for specific types of players, so I won't repeat myself. I will elaborate and say another reason why the system was designed this way is so that the trade market wouldn't be flooded with materials and crafted items, depressing their value and making it even harder to make money off of professions.

This is why keeping the grind also means restricting how much stuff you get out of professions from how much time you put in. Because then you'd risk depressing the value of materials and ingredients. It's already happened with Dernic materials being removed from TNA (though that was also from materials being obtained outside of professions), and how people were complaining about how the new loot runs significantly lowered the price of mythics.

So there isn't any other way to incentivize players to do professions that doesn't break the balance of the game, disrupt the market for professions, or decrease the grind.

Also, tool durability would really conflict with getting as many materials as possible in time and you can't have multiple of the same tools without downsides either.

I'm also not a fan of actual quests being locked behind professions with the same grind. The CT has actively been trying to make quest less fetchy and grindy, and I wouldn't want a major plot point locked behind a profession quest or have Fruma have less quests because they needed people working on profession quests.

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What mostly held back housing was just the amount of dev time required to implement it. The past community hatred for it was less about housing itself and more so about the amount of thoughtless and poorly made suggestions about it.

What's holding back PvP is just that it would be an incompatible balancing nightmare. Even if they designed an entirely separate ability trees for each class for PvP, they would still have to deal with items not being designed for PvP. And it would be a lot of work and extremely complicated to have items each have 2 separate stats for PvP and PvE. That's what they tried to do the Nether and it's why they gave up and got rid of the Nether entirely.

 

For like smaller areas or mediums yeah. But have you seen some of the stupid claims we have nowadays? Like 70 territories and their towers are spuper duper strong.

Also I don't know how new this is but they have been adding alternative resources which give new types of items. Adding more of these could give more incentive and giving some low level ones could make it understandable to do so.

 

Wait this goes hard. Probably should stray away from tier 3 materials required for the highest level materials unless they have bonkers rewards. I really love the crafting idea though, helps introduce ingredients and crafting better and can encourage more crafting of the players own equipment.

 

im surprised no one's really thought of that idea before tbh. t3s could probably be fine if the quest is marked as 'long' like combat quests are, and lower tier materials could have other steps in the quest aside from just gathering them. again, the key is to introduce players to the system early and show them all the benefits of it, while continuing to reward them throughout the levels so they have motivation to keep grinding. as long as there's plenty of variety in the quests - simple crafting quests wouldn't be very interesting later on - i think it would be able to effectively keep players motivated.
for later quests you could start to involve combat, maybe boss altar drops or unique ingredients from areas players don't visit much, like skien island, dead island or the mesa (no one goes there after completing the single quest it has). we don't want to make them glorified gathering mini-quests so they would have more steps then simply gathering ingredients - this also avoids players just going to the market and buying the items, which is how i did the final few slaying mini-quests. oh, maybe parkour to reach a rare drop, or fighting through a dungeon to find a rare ingredient at the end. i think that would feel much more like spelunking than teleporting through a cave, killing 10 mobs and opening a chest to get pristine, untouched, functional armor, potions and money.

 

i think we have different definitions of casual and tryhard. of course casuals aren't going to grind, but a casual that does go for the grind then becomes a tryhard. my point is that we can get casuals into the grind, for them to then become tryhards if they commit to it. a 'casual' is someone who does like the first 80 levels of a couple professions and leaves it there. those are the people we need to gear the system towards, because if they see that it's worth it, they're more likely to become a 'tryhard' and do the grind.

sure, but there's also no reason to have almost no rewards. people who don't have intrinsic motivation and don't view the act of leveling up and grinding as the achievement, but instead are extrinsically motivated are more likely to commit to the grind and become tryhards if there's a tangeable reward waiting for them. something unique to mark your progress. it doesn't have to be a super op meta item that everyone needs to get to play well or anything (hell we already have those with crafteds, which aren't enough of a reward), but just something that gives people something to work towards. it could be unique cosmetics, such as tool skins, crafted consumable skins like different foods, or even badge models on the player or an icon next to their name. maybe even all of those. yes, professions are always going to be miles less efficient than other methods to obtain typical rewards like mythics and raw emeralds, and locking unique powerful items such as tomes behind a thousand+ hour grind is a terrible idea, but that doesn't mean you have to have essentially no reward either. Games like Overwatch have golden guns to signify a grind and no one complains about those. and again, there already are powerful items locked behind the grind in unique crafted gear, but those aren't enough on their own to reward players.

i guess using your definition of 'casual' and 'tryhard' it isn't gatekeeping, since those are two distinct playerbases, with two distinct goals and motivations, and your definition assumes that any player who will do the professions grind at any point in the future, even if they just joined the game, is a tryhard. but i was going by a different definition, wherein casuals *are* the tryhards given enough time, and everyone starts as a casual and becomes a tryhard after investing the time, and trying to prevent those players from becoming tryhards by making the system so astronomically unappealing *is* gatekeeping. That's a communication error between us and nothing more.

sure, but there's other ways to maintain an economy other than bottlenecking the supply. consumables for example. if they were easier to obtain and had more gameplay uses, the easier to obtain consumables would be cheaper as they would be produced more often and used more often, but the higher tier ones would maintain their value. similarly, a system where lower power gear uses more durability and can permanently break would also increase demand for them as more players need new stuff. though this is a very contentious idea and if implemented wouldn't be nearly as simple as i described, and i'm not suggesting that it should be implemented. maybe higher tier gear can be repaired or combined with lower tier gear, similarly to the fuse mechanic in TOTK, with the lower tier fused item having limited durability and can break, but the higher tier one loses durability like normal but cant break. again, just off the top of my head, don't tell me my idea is shit because i'm well aware of that. i'm just using these as examples of ways you could increase demand for an item, maintain the value of the existing items and subsequently be able to increase the supply by lowering the grind needed to craft, say, the worse items and make the system more accessible. you keep the grind for the best stuff, increase the demand for all gear - keeping prices high - while lowering the barrier for entry for less committed players.

there absolutely is, if i'm able to think of a few flawed ideas within the space of 10 minutes, i'm sure a dev team of dozens(?) of professionals with much more time are able to come up with far better ideas that achieve the same goal.
Cosmetic rewards don't break balance, fusing/consumable/differing tiers and more uses for consumables *theoretically* wouldn't disrupt the market too much (some items may become cheaper while others become more expensive, but the end result is still that there's valuable crafteds and cheaper crafteds, without saturating the market as the more plentiful items get destroyed and removed from circulation eventually. We're basically implementing planned obsolescence into wynncraft except (hopefully) good this time. and lower tier breakable crafteds allow the grind for those to be decreased, with the grind for the best stuff being maintained.

well that's not an inherent flaw to the quest system by any means. all that's needed is unbreakable tools during quests which disappear/they become breakable again if you stray too far from the area, gather the required amount of ingredients or log out or /kill.

of course, but there wouldn't be major plot points in the quests, it could easily just be their own self-contained stories or a progression-specific story. maybe there's a woodworker or stonemason who travels with you, but the 'story' doesn't really expand the lore and is just there to add set dressing and immersion. and though it strays from the original intent of the thread (this whole discussion has tbh), the quest system would come in a later update post-fruma. im sure they don't have their entire team working on the new area, since we got lootruns and other content during the development of Fruma. Combat quests *do* need to be less fetchy and grindy, but if your entire system is already grindy as hell, it stands to reason that the quests for them are as well. gathering posts are grindy as hell and are clearly intended to give some form of motivation to players to keep grinding, but they fail because you can skip the grind with buying shit off the market, they don't give enough rewards and they're really really boring, even without the grind.

i think it's more than possible to design a system that is grindy for the most dedicated players, while still allowing casual players to dip their toes in and see if it's for them, while rewarding those who commit to the grind and have previously commited to it, while still maintaining the existing economy and lowering the overall grind to get the basic rewards.
going back to the overwatch example, you earn competitive points for playing competitive at any level, but those at the higher ranks gain more, allowing them to get the rewards faster. maybe professions could reward players with a currency throughout the levels, but as they complete more quests and gather more materials and ingredients, they earn them faster. these could be cashed out for unique rewards, similar to the trophy store in BTD6. profession-specific pets, particle effects, tool skins, material skins, crafted skins that are bound to that item (you would apply it to the item after crafting so it's not wasted on a crap roll) or even gathering particle effects if you want to scrape the bottom of the barrel. unique mini-ranks that display similarly to guild in chat or simply an icon similar to the challenge modes could also work for rewards. you could also have unique trinkets like with event items that do have unique gameplay effects, but they're not powerful enough to undermine the players that don't have them.

i understand the position you're taking but i think you're too stuck on the idea that professions can only ever be a mindless grind that has very little reward and that only players who find getting completing the grind to be the reward itself. the system *can* have wider appeal while still appealing to players like you. for me, i *need* to have a tangeable goal or reward to work towards to stick with something. i can't play survival *or* creative minecraft any more because there's nothing about those gamemodes that motivate me to keep playing. the rewards you do give to players don't have to interfere with the existing players, while still giving them and other players something new to work towards, i think even for tryhards it would make the system less tedious and add a reason to come back to the game every so often.

 

To be fair totemic shatter interaction won't help Acolyst since they only use blood pool for aura, they don't need that much blood pool.
But I'd absolutely love the new paladin ultimate.

 

Yeah… when I said casual, I meant players who never get into or got far into professions like past level 10 in a single profession. Which encompasses most of the playerbase, which is why I went with that definition.

If you like doing the grind up to level 80 in not just one, but multiple professions, then at that point I’d consider you a tryhard as well. Not the tryhards of the tryhards of course, but definitely not a casual compared to most players whom don’t touch professions or barely touched them.

 

yeah, in which case you're not gatekeeping at all for wanting systems dedicated towards the people who grind a lot. many systems in games are designed for players who put a lot of time into. but it is gatekeeping to say that players who want to get into that system but don't feel that it's worth it shouldn't be allowed to also become a tryhard by having something that motivates that player to grind. you can have a grind and be accessible to more players at the same time, there's nothing inherent about a grind that means only a certain number of players will ever do it. hell, regular combat levels are a grind to an extent, especially to first time players, but there's ample reward and reasoning for them to see it through. i see no reason for professions to not be the same.
a better professions system will keep the grind, while allowing for more players to undertake the grind and become tryhards. if people don't want more people to do the grind because of their precious market prices, then that's nothing but pure selfishness and greed and IS gatekeeping because you're preventing players from having a gameplay experience so you can personally make more money (i mean you as in general you not you personally). but it's not gatekeeping to say that an improved system should keep the market prices stable, as you're still willing to open the experience up to new players while still keeping an intrinsic aspect of the system just as rewarding. the market is a part of the motivation after all, and it's fair to not want to crash the economy completely, but it's not fair to want to stop players from doing professions just for the sake of the price of a few specific items. the market will be affected by a rework no matter what, but it's up to the team to design the new system in such a way that you still have the same potential for earnings at higher levels.

srry about all the walls of texts, i just tend to get a ton of ideas when i talk about an interesting topic and i just type without thinking about formatting and such

 

Can we make a "potential profs update thread"

 

should i make it or someone who actually does professions?

 

if u make it, then u have the power when someone disagrees with you

 

HECK yes. You know, out of all the abilities I've made, Solar Aegis has the most votes.

 

my bets are on music update

 

It would be amazing if they updated the entire Wynncraft OST to include the new instruments they've shown, although that sounds like it'd be a lot of work considering how many songs there are.

With that said, I wonder if that alone would be enough to make it a "major" update...

 

FRRRRRRRR

 

Ig there will be a whole new resource pack since the current one is too old because it was released on the Gavel Update so... think about it.

 

The resource pack is still beautiful. if it aint broke, dont fix it!

 

It's received changes over the years. Textures have been updated as time has progressed

 

WAIITTTT

Maybe they balanced the game????