The overall profession changes...

[ttak82]

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What I’m not cool with is what they’re trying to achieve with the heavy tie in to garrisons, and how players are supposed to approach crafting now that they’re essentially being told that alchemy, engineering and blacksmithing are presumably far more efficient thanks to the mine and herb garden.

If my questions here are unclear, it’s because I’m entirely muddled by what this whole approach to professions is trying to achieve. Any discussion and/or advice, honestly, would be appreciated.

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My theory:
I think the devs are using garrisons as an experiment. They want to see 2 things: How can such a system be technically implemented and how do players respond to it and view it. My hunch is that this was supposed to part of Titan (now Overwatch) and Blizz just decided to add something conceptually similar (Garrisons) to an existing IP. If you read this article about Titan, you can see that that game also had a profession system where you'd work in one profession in some home base and then get out into the world to fight (aka PvE/PvP). And thats what garrisons are: your own profession base with a few other perks/mini games.

Garrisons were already in development well before the Overwatch reveal and i guess that if they tried to implement it in the actualy Titan project, it would have taken more development time to add such a system in that new IP.

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Another reason for adding garrisons could possibly be a test to add one or two more professions/systems. gathering proffessions are boring so they have given them to all characters to deemphasize them as 'alt proffessions'. We have lumbering now. Expect to see lumbering added as a profession in the next expansion.

[Marxman]

I understand the new profession system just fine. It is indeed a little more muddied and unintuitive compared to the previous system, but with some digging it all makes fairly decent sense.

My issue with it is that it is entirely time-based now. With materials literally raining from the sky with any garrison effort, you are entirely limited by work orders and daily cooldowns, not materials. There's no way to power level, or farm recipes, or craft up a bunch of stuff for a new alt. Everything is gated behind a work order/cooldown wall. That's not a very fun design in my opinion.

I'm also REALLY not a fan of all the important materials being BoP. At the very least I'd like to see them become BoA, so at least you can increase production through alts if you want. The mats being BoP furthers my feelings of being gated with no other option available... maybe that's the whole point. Either way, I don't like it at all. I'm a power gamer, I don't like being forced to slow down and wait. I want what I want and I want it right now. It's not about wanting to be spoonfed crafted gear and maxed out professions, I just want a way to power through it with effort and time, not just doing a pair of daily cooldowns and making sure my 4 garrisons are always working.