Discussion: Making professions more fun!

[Vishiz]

Intro

This whole rant stems from an article about SOPA and I believe the author quoted a very good point from one of the Valve representatives that could also apply to Blizzard and the hackers and gold sellers that are currently running rampant through the game.

"The best way to stop piracy is to provide a service that is equal or better to the current options."

So I got to thinking. Blizzard has all kinds of bots, why haven't they tried to offer something better than what they're offering?

The most recent issue being the Queen's Garnet dupes. Why do Queen's Garnets have to be so hard to get in the first place? Sure it's not as bad on higher population servers where there is a larger raiding population. But on Medium to Low pop servers that just isn't the case. So right there Blizzard has created a problem. The dupers found a remedy to the situation that benefits themselves and hurts us. But why can't Blizzard implement a remedy that benefits us and hurts them? I think we can all agree it was a bad call for Blizzard to not allow us to prospect it from pyrite or even transmute them. This issue wasn't here when that was possible in ICC. So obviously the Queen's Garnet issue is one of the easier problems to fix.

Problem 1: Why do people buy gold?

The simple answer is: It takes too much time to make gold if you don't already have a lot of it and or the proper knowledge to do so.

How do we make it easier to obtain gold without inflating prices?

1. We make the acquisition rate of fish, herbs, skins, and ore faster. The only reason we even have as many bots as we do now is because the people who run the bots are the only ones even willing to attempt gathering these nodes as it takes roughly an hour to manually farm 10 stacks of ore. How many people actually have an hour of free time that they would like to spend flying in circles around Uldum/Twilight Highlands? Sure there is your random player here and there that will do it. But I think it's safe to say that in our auction house, more than 75% of the fish herbs and ore that goes up was acquired by bots.

2. We can continue to find ways to break or ban bots that they will inevitably find ways around. Breaking bots creates more nodes for the player to gather instead of having to fight bots for them.

3. We ditch the current gathering model and try to come up with something that is more fun and doesn't just feel like more work.

So of course when looking to fix a problem such as bots we ask ourselves: Which one of these solutions is really going to be the most cost effective(blizz is cheap) and the easiest to implement? Obviously 1,2, and 3 would be the easier to implement than 4 but 4 brings something else to the table that could provoke more activity.
So for the first part of this discussion I'd be interested in hearing some ideas on how they could make gathering more fun.

Problem 2: Crafting professions are limited to being a stat boost.

Most professions other than JC/Enchanting simply don't give us much benefit outside of a minor stat boost.

What can we do to make professions more fun?

1. We can start by making the lower level items crafted by professions more useful. Maybe even to the point of actually crafting BoA's using a wide aray of materials found throughout the 1-80 zones.

2. We can offer more vanity items from the professions be it something like armor dyes or pets or mount saddles or even tatoos?

3. We can create unique crafting quests throughout the world that offer rewards of gold or armor and weapons or whatever it may be.

For the second part of this discussion. What else can we do to make crafting professions more useful/fun?

Conclussion

When you have a career or profession in life you take that career very seriously as it is your main if not only source of income. A lot of people find their careers entertaining or fun in some way and take them very seriously. How can we make wow professions more than just a minor stat boost and make it so people actually enjoy using their professions?

I'd like for this posts in this thread to stay away from complaining about what is wrong with professions currently and try and come up with ideas to improve what you don't like about them instead.

[sarahfireworks]

So for the first part of this discussion I'd be interested in hearing some ideas on how they could make gathering more fun.

I'm all for rare drops, or even semi-rare ones. When I'm skinning and I get one of those stomach things, it's like a little goodie bag, <3 it. I would enjoy more stuff like that. Something to keep me playing the slot-machine I suppose.

For the second part of this discussion. What else can we do to make crafting professions more useful/fun?

Kind of what you said I think. I wish more of the gear you could make was actually good for you at the time you make it while leveling. More often than not you've already out-leveled something by the time you can craft it, and that kind of ruins it for me at least. The odd end-game items help though. My favorite part of inscription was skipping Deepholm for example, and some of the other items were actually good for a time. Letting the crafted PvP gear scale as the expansion went on was really a nice touch.

[Jiraden]

Everytime someone goes to gather a node, a captcha pops up and you have to type the correct characters to retrieve the node.

JK.. but not really. Some sort of mechanic similar to this, maybe even a random letter pops up, just 1, and you get 2 or 3 tries to hit that key on your keyboard. Or you get locked out of the node. Or a small bubble pops up at a random location on your screen you have to click on to access the node.

Let the bots put that in their pipes and smoke it.

[Vishiz]

Everytime someone goes to gather a node, a captcha pops up and you have to type the correct characters to retrieve the node.

JK.. but not really. Some sort of mechanic similar to this, maybe even a random letter pops up, just 1, and you get 2 or 3 tries to hit that key on your keyboard. Or you get locked out of the node. Or a small bubble pops up at a random location on your screen you have to click on to access the node.

Let the bots put that in their pipes and smoke it.

The same way bots are able to detect the nodes in the first place would prevent something like this from actually working. And instead of making the professions more fun it just adds to the annoyance that farming already is. I've seen the whole captcha thing in some games and my experiences with it weren't very pleasant, bots can beat captcha. And instead of it making people want to farm more it would just give them even less of a reason to do so. Sure it might temporarily stop certain bots. But it's anything but a permanent fix.


And to go with what sarah has posted I agree. Having cool pets like the Elementium Geode or the sack you get from skinning added does make things a bit more interesting. Maybe blizzard could add things to gathering that aren't strictly crafting materials?

[Jiraden]

The same way bots are able to detect the nodes in the first place would prevent something like this from actually working. And instead of making the professions more fun it just adds to the annoyance that farming already is. I've seen the whole captcha thing in some games and my experiences with it weren't very pleasant, bots can beat captcha. And instead of it making people want to farm more it would just give them even less of a reason to do so. Sure it might temporarily stop certain bots. But it's anything but a permanent fix.


And to go with what sarah has posted I agree. Having cool pets like the Elementium Geode or the sack you get from skinning added does make things a bit more interesting. Maybe blizzard could add things to gathering that aren't strictly crafting materials?

I don't think node spawns are random, rather nodes keep spawning in the same location, and the bots have this path programmed, but I totally agree that the captcha bit is completely annoying and would make people want to gather less, and I'm not saying that I would want to have go through this, but I'm just wondering if the pros of not having to compete with bots would outweigh the cons of it being annoying or not.

[Deleted]

I guess the best way is to add something unique to each profession, that you cannot get with another.

Tailoring has got their flying carpets already, and engineers their helicopter.
Alchemy could have had something in the form of the sandstone drake, but Blizzard decided to make in BoE and usable for everyone (there was absolutely no reason for that, if you look at the profession only carpets and flying machine)
So give alchemy something like a transform.

Jewelcrafting: at the moment it is very daft, as you only get real money out of the red gem, a little out of purple and orange, even less from blue, and the yellow and green gems can better be vendored than put on the AH right now.
Jewelcrafting could have had epic necklaces and rings (like LW, BS and Tailoring have their raid drops, so could there have been something for JC) and maybe some vanity item like a special jewelbox that plays music, or shows something (a bit like the sylvanas lament thingie)

Engineering: engineering only pets. And they already have their goggles.

Mining: chance of minig up parts of a pet or other vanity item.
Skinning: already has the bag thingie.

[Vishiz]

I'm just not convinced that flying up to a node and right clicking it is really something you can make into something more interesting. You can add the pets/vanity items or whatever but in the long run it's only a short term fix. I'd like to find some different/more complex way of mining that is a little less obvious than just flying around and seeing a big chunk of metal sitting around and whacking it with a mining pick a few times.

Maybe make the actual amount of ore you need for things smaller and make it so you have to search caves/walls for ore. Or do something similar to the quest in howling fjord where you actually get to blow up the nodes with some dynamite. The whole idea of being in the middle of a green grassy area and seeing some random node just sticking out of the ground feels too generic to me.

I haven't had any ideas as for what to do with Herbalism because for the most part, it's pretty accurate to how you would go about doing it IRL. But in the same essence it still feels pretty generic. And as for fishing, I'm sure a lot of people have played some sort of fishing game. There's a lot of room for improvement here. Sitting there casting over and over to get it into the actual pool is silly, shouldn't we be able to choose where we cast to?

Skinning could be more fun but you always run the risk of making it a bit more gorey than it really needs to be.

As far as the crafting professions go they're all basically the same. You take materials and combine them into an item. Nothing feels different about any of them. A tailor specializing in cloth could have some sort of sewing to do. A blacksmith could actually control the hammer as you hit the heated metal. A jewel-crafter could control the cut of the gems.

Or you can do what they are doing with D3 and leave the crafting to the actual professionals and have shops setup around the local hub where you would go to get your items crafted rather than having to skill it up yourself.

Ultimately it just feels like we need tooooooo many materials to craft the stuff we need. And rather than just making nodes more accessible it seems to me like it would be cooler to need less materials but to make them maybe a little more complicated but still fun to acquire. Of course we probably wont see anything like this implemented any time soon. But blizzard has dumped bigger things on us in much shorter notice.

[Tanker]

Professions tend to be boring by their very nature. Every single player knows the exact same recipes to crank out the very same product This is why crafted pieces are 1500g and a raid drop is 20k. All about access.

I have for years advocated changes to the crafting professions. If I can learn a recipe to create a shoulder with strength and crit and a second recipe to create a shoulder with dodge and mastery, why is my toon so dumb he will never learn to make a shoulder with dodge and crit? I asked for a long time. Blizzards answer was Reforging. Reforging takes crap wrong gear and makes it less crappy. Too bad it is still crappy.

Now, if we were to change things, we could place trainers within the world who specialize in stats. Some guy has mastered strength, another crit rating. We can become their trainee (quest chain) and learn to create strength on items. Repeat process for other desirable stats. Now you have a craft to sell for gear that can be unique, or as unique as this gaming format can allow. When I think of this questing process, the line to learn Imperial Plate comes to mind. A real pain with a real reward.

Alchemists could learn to create flasks with 150 spirit + 150 intellect.

Enchanters could learn hybridized enchanting stats.

You get the idea. But it seems Blizzard is terrified to allow players to gain the stats they desire. We all must have the exact same stats. Sigh. Professions are boring, always have been, and serve as a guild function.

[Deleted]

I'd like the profession stat boost perks to be taken away. I'd rather take the profession i find the most fun instead of the one that increases my dps the most.

[Hoticehunter]

I'd like the profession stat boost perks to be taken away. I'd rather take the profession i find the most fun instead of the one that increases my dps the most.

But they mostly increase your dps by the same amount. The only ones that are different are the gathering (for a reason), Engineering, and JC and BS if you're completely decked out in epic gems.

[Deleted]

... Engineering: engineering only pets. And they already have their goggles..

That's fine, except, the Goggles are already too out of date to even be considered useful. I don't know why they scaled the PvP gear, but not the Engineering googles, granted, some of us might not use it, but being able to put the stats in it YOU want is awesome.

OT: Crafting is boring as it is, and something needs to be done about the whole system. It's not fun to sit there, and click on 'craft' 5 times, or whatever. A small minigame could be awesome, much like the fable idea. I agree with the point about liking the profession boosts to be taken away, but then you're just left with, in some cases, useless professions. Only Blizzard know what they can do to stop people not taking professions, and I hope they do it soon, as the thought of levelling Enchanting or Inscription again makes me want to be sick, eat it, cut my head off, and feed it to a pack of ravenous fish.

Botting was good for the economy, but bad for the game. I didn't mind paying 30-60g a stack for ore, but I do mind paying 200g a stack. On the other hand, I can't say that I like the idea of botters, which might be using stolen accounts, to get ore. It's a tricky situation, much like disagreeing with slaughtering animals, but still eating meat (yes, I don't like Slaughter houses, but I do still like meat. Yes, I'm a hypocrite. Yes, I'm ok with that ).

Another thing they could do is to make certain professions relate, so for example, you could take, BS, and Mining, and when you do a dungeon, you could have a chance to stumble upon a rare 'digsite', and when you mine it, you have a chance to get an ancient recipe, which, eventually, when you have enough of them, could make a set. Maybe not for stats, but for Transmogrifying. I don't know. Maybe it would work. Maybe not.

[Constantino]

for gathering, you cannot just make it "easier", bottom line, supply and demand, you add more ore, itll just be worth less.

they are "breaking bots" which I think is a good thing, and I am not a gatherer. you could make gathering miserable... and do it like archeology... Id like to see bots do that lol.

[Alexpower3]

I love how this is stated: "Crafting professions are limited to being a stat boost"

And then you fail to follow up to this broad statement which is ultimately false..
The small stat boost only serves as a "hook" for those to continue to provide profession services and the entire game is balanced around everyone having this small boost.

What professions actually serve is to have an economy. Services and goods that people have and want are available for sale to those who are willing to pay the gold to buy them (Supply / Demand). If you make gatherables too easy to obtain, then the products made from those materials reduce in price, and so on.

To your first point; Why do people buy gold? Truth be told gold is easier to come by nowadays then it has ever been to previously. Its those small minority of people who are afflicted with the idea that it doesn't harm anyone by doing so. The reality is that these gold sellers acquired their 'stock' from compromised accounts.

Blizzard has even deployed an experiment via the Guardian Cub pet that is purchasable and is bind on equip that satisfies the few with enough disposable income who would otherwise buy gold from these shady dealers. In my opinion Blizzard is already taking the necessary steps toward making buying gold less desirable.

Botting is a separate issue altogether that, at the end of the day, cannot be completely prevented regardless of any possible game design decisions made by blizzard other than detection and banning of the said bots.

[UunaPriest]

In my experience, professions are not a way to make gold. Most items sell for lower than their materials.
Other than gathering, the only people making gold from professions on most servers are those with multiple toons to do mining > prospecting > JCing -> DEing -> Sell enchanting mats on AH.
If it weren't for the stats boost, almost none of the professions would be worth wasting the time and gold on.

[Deleted]

Blacksmithing:
Bring back specializations on blacksmithing.

Engineering:
Use engineers mote extractor in next expac.
Remove shit like "can blow your head off if unlucky".

Enchanting:
Make JC made items not disenchantable and reduce mat costs on enchanting crafts by ~50 %. (To counter bots through removal of ore shuffle.)

Can't come up with more other than that Blizzard should really do more frequent updates on the game and professions instead of these "massive" patches. If they could update things with mini patches the game would feel much fresher than it does right now.

[Constantino]

In my experience, professions are not a way to make gold. Most items sell for lower than their materials.
Other than gathering, the only people making gold from professions on most servers are those with multiple toons to do mining > prospecting > JCing -> DEing -> Sell enchanting mats on AH.
If it weren't for the stats boost, almost none of the professions would be worth wasting the time and gold on.

I have made gold buying mats and crafting items with blacksmithing, enchanting, jewelcrafting, alchemy, and tailoring.

this is PURELY a buy mats, craft, sell. You CAN make money with this, no question. problem is that people have this false idea that the only things they should make are the current stuff. market is saturated, and lots of uninformed people farm the ore no less and then sell it for less than its price because they dont consider the opportunity cost of the craft.

be that as it may, the older stuff is popular with someone... alts, twinks, donno, but it worked well for me. only problem was that I didnt have enough time, and some were more profitable than others, I had plenty of gold. so I cut it back.

simple system like TSM set to craft 1 of everything, post it all, monitor it for a while, review which ones you find yourself consistantly replacing, up the quantity stocked in those to make sure they are always available. discontinue those that never sell.

enchanting is nice, no AH deposit means you can do it all without hesitation.