Ask the Devs #7 – Professions - Answers

They need to make Jewelcrafting dailies less retarded before they make other profession dailies. Currently because of the annoying gem demands certain uncommon gems sell for more then rare gems. Also the dailies massively limit the repertoire for a single jewelcrafter. If a jewelcrafter is expected to have a variety of cuts they have to grind for several months, This is not true for other professions, at least not to the timely degree JCs have.

Plus all of a jewelcrafters grinding for recipes will go to waste when Blizzard stops arbitrarily holding back epic gems.

How about just make the node dots a different color... if I recall theres only 3 now... yellow for node/neutral NPC, Red for enemy player/npc, and the new "crosshair" for your target. That leaves a bunch of different colors that they could make the dots, they don't have to make completely new graphics in 'just a few pixels'

Originally Posted by usiris

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Will you provide a way to speed up the acquiring of glyphs usually acquired through research and glyph books? Glyph books (Book of Glyph Mastery) are hard to come by now that people spend so little time in WotLK content. - Furlqt (NA/ANZ), 에르네**린덴만 (KR), Kånê (EU-ES)

Yes. We will be changing the discovery spells so they can teach all possible glyphs, and the books will simply provide a no-cooldown method to do the same thing.

worst fucking thing blizz has done in a very long time

Worst thing...?

you remind me of that person on the Paladin boards who "felt sick to his stomach" and was considering quitting because of the Paladin Charger to Elekk change.

Originally Posted by Madmarv

First! AGAIN!! lol lawl i keep getting cooler and cooler[COLOR="red"]

LOL i see u 2nd

if only professions worked like they did in UO

Originally Posted by Seriousdoom

if only professions worked like they did in UO

Hey, someone remember UO?!?! WOW! :O)))
It was the best game...

---------- Post added 2011-05-16 at 11:12 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Almighty1

Most professions are useful "past the self bonus" in fact if you are least bit creative you could make some nice gold out there. The only profession that is literally completely useless past self buff would be ENG
.....
Eng gets NOTHING...

You r absolutely right.
Love ENG and want to keep it this way BUT!
There is nothing for us in Cata. Helm, few pets, gloves... Not even talking 'bout making some gold here.
Blizz made cogwheel - and we can use it only for 1 item?? Whats the point?
At least horde got new vehicle, alliance got a screen shots of running worgens...

Originally Posted by Shambulanced

I'll give you that Alchemy's a good moneymaker. In terms of the other crafteds, their value will drop significantly when chaos orbs become BoE--so that renders that defense moot. I consider profession "perks" to be part of the self-buffs.

I never said completely useless, anyway. I said that you'll make more money with a gathering profession than a crafting profession--which has always been the case, so nothing new there--and that outside of the perks, the professions don't have much use. The gear you get is comparable to raidgear, but that's only useful if you don't have access to those raids. SO...yeah.

umm how is chanting and jc value gonna drop? with new gear to be gemmed, chanted and DEd chanting will go up. So will JC. We already saw this happen even when 4.1 hit. When Epic Gems are introduced JC will skyrocket to the top again. Yes you are correct the 357 craftable BOEs will drop in price a lot, but so will the mats for them. and there will still be demand for them. players with alts will want to gear them out asap and get them firelands-able asap so they will be buying the 357 boes instead of trying to grind old raids hoping to get the drops they need. So even if the Boe drop to 500-700g a pop they will still be bringing in few hundred gold here and there. If they were to give ENG goggles a 4.2 upgrade it still wouldnt do jack because it would require ENG to use just like 95% of what we can make. Scription will take a bigger hit just because the DMF Cards are not gonna surpass 4.2 trinkets although they will still be viable choices for alt gearing etc.

your entire argument made no sense. especially the part i made bold. umm yes perks are self buffs... the issue is that eng provides nothing of value to others that can be sold. Obviously craft profs are not gonna bring as much gold in as gathering profs would, but most crafting profs still provide a decent way of making some extra gold. When cata dropped i made over 100k with JC/Chanting. It was simple: i would buy ore prospect it, all the rare gems i would cut into most expensive cuts and put on AH. Regular gems i would use to make rings, necklaces, and fist weapons then DE them for chanting mats and sell the mats. i can still effectively do this today with a smaller profit margin.

Originally Posted by Unferth

AND DREAMCLOTH!!!!!!!!!!!

PLEASE, please make Dreamcloth not soulbound. One of my alts is a tailor, and I would absolutly love it if I could sell Dreamcloth.

---------- Post added 2011-05-16 at 10:04 PM ----------



They want us playing, grinding raids and dungeons to get BiS epics. The more epics you buy or make, the faster you get gear, the faster people get bored and cancel till the next content update.

Obviously the idea is to keep playing for the longest time possible, BiS epcis with low drop rates from hard bosses keeps people playing longer.

It seems like this design philosophy is a penny wise and a pound foolish, since often when people realize the futility of this endless carrot and stick process you see them permanently quitting. Basing part of your game design on 'interesting drop choices' seems to be taking the lazy road, as opposed to figuring out how to continue being innovative and engaging in your content.

except for engineering. Engineers will always get more toys.

yeah to make up for the fact that our profession really fucking sucks right now.

Sigh... and there's another useless Q&A.

I'm not going to say much about the cowardice that these answers reek of (as others have already beaten me to the punch), what with their "we might..." and "we're thinking of..." answers, but come on! I'm sorry, but Blizzard needs to learn how to own up to their decisions! Say, "oh hey, that was a great question; here's what we're working on right now," (or even just flat-out admit that there's nothing on the table for the foreseeable future) and if it changes during production and people grill them about it after it's released, tell them they need to understand what an iterative design process is -- "yes, that's the concept we originally started with, and we ended up changing it because of X, Y, and Q factors; now stfu and drink some more haterade... you're slippin'."

And about the upgrade-able crafted gear, why do they automatically try to swing the pendulum from none all the way back to BiS gear, as if there's nothing possible in between? Smells like a cop-out response to me...
"Well, if we do upgrade-able crafted gear again, we have to make it BiS or no one's going to use it." No, you nimrod... you make it an upgrade over the preceding tier and give it an equal ilvl to that of the current raiding tier, but just don't make it BiS. Since all the classes and their gearing desires have been homogenized - almost to death - that's not hard to do at all. And allow it to be upgraded via the same system used during BC; using vortexes/motes/orbs/gummi bears/whatever that will only drop in the current tier of raiding.

As an example, say you craft a 359 2h Sword of Awesome. Now, it's certainly better than a 346 2h weapon, but it has haste on it... ick (or maybe it just has a slightly lower dps, or maybe it's only a 353 item, whatever, there are many design paths to take here). So if the new Ashkandi drops off Nefarian, wow, that's not a huge upgrade, but it's still better than what you've got. Now later on in the next tier, you grab one of the new orbs that drops off every boss and use that to upgrade your old sword to the Sword of More Awesome, ilvl 372 (or 366 -- again, many paths), and the cycle starts over again.
It's certainly not the best item for you, but, at the very least, you'd have a means of personal progression available that isn't completely reliant on a slot machine (nor overpowered, to compensate for that fact). And I'm sure that, for some, that's a hell of a lot better than nothing at all...

edit:

Originally Posted by Venant

It seems like this design philosophy is a penny wise and a pound foolish, since often when people realize the futility of this endless carrot and stick process you see them permanently quitting. Basing part of your game design on 'interesting drop choices' seems to be taking the lazy road, as opposed to figuring out how to continue being innovative and engaging in your content.

And this, omg... I <3 you... lol

They just need to add a way to focus on a specific race...that alone would make arch 1000x better.

I was asking myself the following things when it is about professions:

1. why weren't chaos orbs BoE all the time? it was a pain to not have a profession that can use it, so I had to ask for the goodwill of guildies or friends to have an item made. (I had the leather belt made for my rogue, and could not provide the orbs needed. Why?)
2. Why does JC not have any epic things like necklace or rings. (that are useful)
3. Why isn't there a jewelbag of 32 or 36 slots? (tailoring?)
4. Why did they remove the 'alchemy only' from the sandstone drake?
5. why does truegold and volatile transmutes share a cooldown, while the gem transmutes don't?

for the more tedious professions fishing and archeology:

Fishing wishlist :

- sagefish in pools maybe?
- chance to fish up more than one fish at a time?
- Use of a net instead of a fishing pole?
- chance to fish up nice things, instead of only grey crap
- Cut the fish you don't need open and it give you a chance on something nice.
- Use the tackle box for something useful, like for catching fish, instead of just being a bag.


archeology wishlist:

- Maybe use the stuff we get to raise reputations (with for example steamwheedle cartel factions, or the according race factions)
- Please add some more digsites per continent. The 4 we have now is just too little.
- Survey shows the closest by of all fragments spot, instead of just one at a time. It annoys me to survey at border A of a site, having to go to the opposite border to get your first set of fragments, and then just have to return to place A for the second number of fragments.
- More fragments or surveys per digsite. Or add ‘rich’ sites, that give you extra fragments.
- Chance to dig up a treasure map you can use to make an item of your choice. Let’s say 1% of the digsites give you such a map. It would be less tedious hunting for the pet, mount or other artefact you want.

Originally Posted by Boubouille

Ask the Devs #7 – Professions - Answers

Originally Posted by Slorkuz (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Are there any plans to somehow change Archeology and Fishing, which have become notoriously tedious? Do you have plans to make archaeology more appealing, maybe with puzzles or something else? - Boîndal (EU-DE), Kalani (NA/ANZ), Käworu (LA)

Yes. The dailies help with fishing skill gain, and we plan to add archaeology dailies as well. We've also discussed further incentivizing fishing in pools with faster skill gain.

We would love to add a puzzle mini-game to archaeology, and may do that one day, but we can’t make any guarantees. There are some other ideas floating around for moving between archaeology sites more quickly, and we've been brainstorming for rare random events when you are digging or fishing.

Our overall goal for these professions is that it shouldn't be too difficult to max out your skill, but catching every fish and finding every artifact should be a long journey.

While I don't have an issue with them making it so skilling up these profs is easier, when are they going to add some kind of incentive for maxed fishing?

Can you change the +1/+2 skill reward to some kind of token when at max skill, redeemable for cool fishing gear/lures/etc.? I mean, really. What they have now is nice, but it means @#$%-all once you're capped out.

Originally Posted by Boubouille

Ask the Devs #7 – Professions - Answers
Are there any plans to make Chaos Orbs BoA or even BoE? - Mommycow (NA/ANZ)

Yes! They will be unbound in a future patch.

Yes, you will see them unbound but not in the 4.2 release. I am betting they leave those things bound until they release the gear reset patch.

Primal Nethers and Vortexes didn't go unbound until Patch 2.4, when Sunwell was released.
Frozen Orbs we unbound from Day 1.

Between the two, Wrath's idea sucked the most.

By incorporating them into current content, they guarantee the need to run heroics and to help the masses out there that enjoy playing with complete strangers. If you unbind them they immediately drop in price so there's no real incentive to even run Heroics except to cap out VPs during new content, which will ultimately lead to extended queue times for most everyone as people stop needing VPs. They would be very smart to leave them bound and incorporate them into everything until they get close to Deathwing as this is an excellent way to insure that most all profession proficient players are able to assist the characters that need to run them the most.

And if you have several stacks of them in your bags, go use them and make the items they were meant to make.

Yes. The dailies help with fishing skill gain, and we plan to add archaeology dailies as well. We've also discussed further incentivizing fishing in pools with faster skill gain.

Have your considered the idea of people able to control WHERE your cast is going... it is a sad sad joke that at 525 fishing skill it still takes sometimes 10 casts just to hit a pool... this is not even remotely realistic and honestly it is just a pain in the rear. How about giving us the ability to place the cast like you do with aoe etc? That would be a wonderful idea!

nothing about engineering`?