Archaeology: The Most boring profession

[Skalme]

First, it is a secondary profession and you claim it forces players to travel across the world FALSE

Your other claimed cons fall in the same category, secondary professions aren't needed for anything other than a timesink.

Considering the entire game is optional, people should stop attempting to use this as an argument. Just because a lot of people, including Blizzard, use this as a reason does not make it accurate or true. People play the game to have fun, people have different definitions of what fun is. For some raiding is fun, some enjoy PvP, some get a thrill from collecting mounts, others enjoy minipets, or getting achievement points or transmog items, etc.

Archeology is the sole source for several of these things, if you want these things then you have to deal with the poor design of archeology. Which means that the mechanics of archeology dictate how you play. The mechanics mean you do not have a choice. In the same way a boss fight mechanics force you to be mobile (i.e. not standing in the fire), archeology mechanics force a player to fly all over the world.

Why is this bad? In an interactive online game, a mechanic designed such that people are more likely to spend most of their time AFK, or doing other things, is a very bad decision.

And your suggestions to improve it?

Every time the mob pops up, I frown. That change alone made the farming worse. You suggest making the mobs even harder, no fuck!ng thanks.

The mob is no more difficult than the mobs you face for dailies, and provide an extra dig worth of fragments. This means that the mob actually provides something useful, unlike the hawks and vermlings that appear when farming. While I cannot say that it adds any excitement, it does actually help you slightly.

However, I do agree that the archeology should not have more difficult mobs associated with it. Since there is no guarantee of having a sufficient ilvl to defeat hard mobs, having archeology suddenly be a source of player death is a bad idea.

If you could toggle races off, the items which are rare, wouldn't be rare anymore, losing their worth. Bad change again.

You clearly do not understand the mechanics of archeology, or even the capabilities of programs.

The desire, and ability, to turn off a race is usually suggested for people with high enough skill or when you have "finished" a race.

In the scenario of turning off a race when you have completed all possible projects for that race, you have to consider that any player who has this capability has almost certainly spent a large amount of time doing archeology already, which means that rarity has already been preserved. Even then, the player still has to overcome the RNG to get the project that they have not completed for the uncompleted race, which means it still not guaranteed. For every instance of some player getting lucky and getting the rare project on the 3rd or 4th solve, there will be be another player who gets the 1 in 10 chance item on try 30 or 40. The point being that a suggesting that the items will suddenly become common is foolish.

If Blizzard had followed through with the ability to focus on a race, the fact that they have successfully put into the game any number of rare items that remain rare even when farmed means that they certainly have the capability to preserve rarity. If the overall chance of a rare is 1 in 1000 with all races available, it would not be a huge problem to tell the game to look at different tables when determining the next project depending on how many races the player has turned off. Rarity would be preserved.

PS: Zin'rokh is not worth getting any more, I got it as a dps upgrade in cata. If I leveled up arch now, I wouldn't bother with it.

I see, you are in the "I got lucky, therefore there is no problem" category. Your personal luck does not negate the complaints of the person that spent hundreds of hours doing over 1000 troll solves and still not getting the sword.

People may still want Zin'rohk, or other items, for the purpose of transmog.

[Deleted]

With fishing, you're just sitting there, tossing your fishing line in the water, waiting for something to move and then you click on it.
With first aid, you take a bit of cloth and turn it into bandages. You have like 2-3 things to make every tier, and you always just use the best one.

Cooking is the only secondary profession that they've turned into something interesting with the Tillers.

Archeology doesn't really feel like a real profession. To me it should just be an account-wide mini game like pet battles. It needs a little spicing up though. It's exciting to find new stuff, but the actual "digging" part of archeology is boring.

[Markle]

I think the mounts and pets are worthwhile, it would be nice if there was more vanity items, perhaps a mount / pet for each race or something, maybe with a little higher drop rate than the bug/hand, still farming those!

[Deleted]

Yes, it is grindy, but it isn't mandatory. If anything, cooking is mandatory (geez, almost wrote pandatory...) for the 300 stat food. Since arch is entirely cosmetic and nothing fancy to upgrade your performance (like in Cata, where grinding in start + RNG gave you headstart) I don't have much of a problem with it. I also like you can now watch all the lore at Lorewalkers, but I think you should be phased out there since PvP while watching such a movie is incredibly lame. In the old archeology system you were grinding, getting items you didn't care about, and you'd to have to read the lore surrounding the item but because it was such a boring long grind people didn't bother to read the lore. Grinding to 525 also does not take that long anymore (it is heavily nerfed compared to original archeology). I know this because I switched main and had to start archeology level 1 on my new main (which I did end of Cata) whereas on my old main I grinded archeology to 525 in start of Cata (I also grinded to get the jurrasic park mount for my DK to fit with the default flying mount; in vain I see now :P). I believe people who swap main are punished enough by starting with no gear, and so I also believe players should be able to level up their secondary professions quicker if they already have a character which has that profession. Does Blizzard agree? It seems like that, as they put in mechanisms to make it go quicker.

[Deleted]

Threads like these can be instantly summarized:

- I am used to IRL instant gratification and demand the same in-game.
- Nothing should be hard or random. Everything should be presented on a silver platter.
- Blizzard is wrong, I know better, the current design is flawed and should be changed the way I see fit.

A fine post, though I seriously doubt that the first even applies to RL.

[Seezer]

No, first aid is the most boring.

[Deleted]

they should really make the leveling on it a lot faster. so timer consuming and a brain number after 10 mins of doing it

[Dan97]

What is the longest time , that you spent at the single artifact ?

[Playintrafic]

I know if I want my exalted status with Lorewalkers or any of the other Prof achieves, I will need to finish the push from 455 to 600. Fortunately I am only grinding my main, cause it would suck to have to do it on an alt.

What? You can get exalted with lorewalkers in about an hour or less just clicking on all the lore objects in pandaria. Hell there even multiple places were you can get a tom tom route .....

[chocobo606]

I think it has a lot of potential to be fun, unfortunately how it was done in my opinion made for something slightly more interesting than staring at your fish hook until it gets tugged on for hours. There needs to be less time spent flying all over the place and more time spent doing things with fragments and such, more time puzzle solving, putting things together. I don't see the fun in it in its current state.