Why has Blizzard failed at professions ?

[Quakecanada]

What kind of team do they have at Blizzard? Do they ever think to themselves, I wonder if we should change professions entirely?

Should professions be just to make money? Or to give the player base what they love about Diablo and POE -- Gear and strength!!

Bring back sockets, bring back enchants on everything! Bring back making cool armor that takes weeks to make and you can compare it to Mythic plus plus!

Bring back having to get mats from all xpacs and you have to fly all over the world to get the stuff.

Bring back patches for the pants that make you tougher, bring back spikes for sheilds, Have some new and cool ideas that make people go WOW

The feeling you got when you heard they were gonna make DIABLO 1 gear again in Diablo 2

Boom

Aok

[Daedius]

Professions failed the moment they made them no longer necessary, aka relevant, when they removed their perks.

Should add TFing has completely made gearing off professions pointless beyond getting the entry ilvl requirement for new capped chars.

TF'ing... what a loathsome system.

[exochaft]

Indeed, one of the things where I agree among all the negativity is this. Unless it is gathering, professions are pretty crappy and worthless to me.

Even the gathering professions can be terrible, especially Skinning, as it's more useful on a regular basis for random daily turn-ins for warfronts and WQs, not Leatherworking. Ironically enough, the most useful function of Leatherworking is to assist other gatherers either bardings, not even the Leatherworker. Even the gathering skills that are useful are mundane and boring. At one point, Blizz looked like they were going in the direction of gathering skills allowing perks to the player, but that disappeared almost as quickly as it was implemented (btw, this was one of the good things in WoD that got removed).

I mentioned it in another thread, but Blizz seems scared to make crafting/gathering professions meaningful in the game or even remotely competitive with end-game content. Occasionally one or two items have relevance for a while, but that tends to fade away fast. Even with their limited use, there are some that legitimately have universal usage (like Alchemy and Enchanting), and many of them have near the same functionality as the profession-formerly-known-as-First-Aid. Unfortunately, even the most useful professions have zero depth to them.

Professions could easily be a vehicle to not only RPG enrichment of the game, but it could also help with some issues that cause tension in the game. For example, there's endless debate over warforing and titanforging, mostly because it's purely RNG... but it doesn't have to be. Armor crafting profession could easily be a source of upgrading armor manually in the case where you don't get lucky, allowing some good-luck protection in the form of player investing in a crafting profession.

[tankbug]

As a blacksmith, I've always been frustrated about how quickly the profession becomes redundant. You don't need it when leveling the "next 10 levels", and I don't rush to max level, where you can make like "expensive" dungeon quality gear, so once I'm there, the profession is already pointless to waste time and money on skilling up. The only way of keeping blacksmithing relevant is to introduce new recipes periodically that's better than whatever you can pick up from emissaries.

[MoanaLisa]

The Blizzard team which from the top down forms the game around raiding(ish) activities doesn't really understand what to do with professions and for whatever reason seem to be unable to break out of their self-imposed box about them. I suspect they find them a boring afterthought compared to the "important things" (Ion's words) in the game. So the design is boring and an afterthought. They could put a developer on this that sees the possibilities and give them a lot of room to play with.

Professions could be very rich and for casual players a reason to hang around those extra months between patches. If they got the attention that pet battles have you could easily add a few hundred thousand more folks to the game happily running their professions for fun and profit.

Fully subscribe to the post by @exochaft above this one. Hell, I'd happily be doing professions in BfA if they meant anything.

EDIT: Also give players the right to engage in more professions and make them mesh with each other. For that matter, make a professional builder/gatherer class that any race can take and allow them to take all of them with extensive synergy between the professions. Allow players to have one/faction on each server. Give them special NPC's they have to train to enhance their production abilities. And then (controversial thought arriving) let them set up their class in the old garrisons and turn those things into manufacturing facilities requiring a little bit of planning/scheduling and constraint management.

[Sencha]

Fully agree. To me, professions are the biggest letdown when I look at how the game has evolved over the years. They are pretty boring and useless currently, especially the crafting ones.

[Flarelaine]

I mentioned it in another thread, but Blizz seems scared to make crafting/gathering professions meaningful in the game or even remotely competitive with end-game content.

Not suprising considering the level of rabid screeching there is already against any gear being comparable to mythic raid loot.

[Skildar]

I don't think it's a problem of being relevant or useful. It's just that the gameplay linked to those is way too limited and exists only in management interface.
Gathering materials and consuming through recipes is a fine start but it should be more. It should be a game on itself, meaning that they should re-craft the feature to be a fun experience, where you actually feel like you're playing with your mats!

[Flarelaine]

What those people would scream about and what would probably be the best for the professions would be for them to offer unique abilities though. Engineering goggles have access to unique Azerite traits; what if every crafting profession had that and that gear could scale all the way to heroic raid ilvl without requiring months of normal raiding to get (but perhaps timegated after a daily crafting cooldown)?

I like that and there has already been a tradition of daily crafting cooldowns.

[TriHard]

Just get rid of it, nobody crafts anything but potions and vanity items anymore.

[cparle87]

What kind of team do they have at Blizzard? Do they ever think to themselves, I wonder if we should change professions entirely?

Should professions be just to make money? Or to give the player base what they love about Diablo and POE -- Gear and strength!!

Bring back sockets, bring back enchants on everything! Bring back making cool armor that takes weeks to make and you can compare it to Mythic plus plus!

Bring back having to get mats from all xpacs and you have to fly all over the world to get the stuff.

Bring back patches for the pants that make you tougher, bring back spikes for sheilds, Have some new and cool ideas that make people go WOW

The feeling you got when you heard they were gonna make DIABLO 1 gear again in Diablo 2

Boom

Aok

Why have you failed at making any threads that don't have "Why has Blizzard failed at..."?

- - - Updated - - -

Professions failed the moment they made them no longer necessary, aka relevant, when they removed their perks.

I remember the constant whining from "raiders" who complained that JC's perk was 1 stat point stronger than the others, or how all their raiding characters had to be double crafting to get the best perks and how expensive it was to level since they couldn't use gathering professions cause those were inferior.

Just goes to show that no matter what choice Blizzard makes there's going to be a vocal group whining.

[TheVaryag]

What kind of team do they have at Blizzard? Do they ever think to themselves, I wonder if we should change professions entirely?

Should professions be just to make money? Or to give the player base what they love about Diablo and POE -- Gear and strength!!

Bring back sockets, bring back enchants on everything! Bring back making cool armor that takes weeks to make and you can compare it to Mythic plus plus!

Bring back having to get mats from all xpacs and you have to fly all over the world to get the stuff.

Bring back patches for the pants that make you tougher, bring back spikes for sheilds, Have some new and cool ideas that make people go WOW

The feeling you got when you heard they were gonna make DIABLO 1 gear again in Diablo 2

Boom

Aok

So Blizzard like to steal ideas from other MMos and make them "better" right? Well why don't they look no further than like... Final Fantasy 14 that has an acclaimed proffesion system that Is pretty good.

I mean not only are they NOT utilizing proffesions the way Elder Scrolls Online Does, and that Is using It to be able to craft a large variety of decorations for player housing. They don't HAVE player housing in World of Warcraft and that's the biggest flaw for years and years now.

Essentially It's the easiest thing to tie your proffesions to your player housing, blacksmithing lets you build various blacksmithing related structures, decorations and such In your Player Housing. Like an anvil, a small house, a bed, a table. ANYTHING... but they just don't use It, that's the most basic fundumental use for a proffesion system and believe me I've never seen that to be as Important as It Is until you play a game like Elder Scrolls Online or Final Fantasy 14 where proffesions matter not only progression wise when It comes to gear, but to your decorations as well.

I mean obviously you won't make giant dragon head decorations out of tailoring, you'd get that from a Mythic Raid or something. But that Interconnection betwenn these game systems Is non-existant and has not been existant In the game since arguably TBC expansion. Which Is weird since WoW claims to be a "Top Dog MMO" to this day, even though It's not, at least not until It tells us sub numbers and active users for us to compare It to other MMOs.

So yeah, that's what I'd like to see really. A true player housing system that Incentivises doing Dungeons, quests, pvping, raiding In order to get decorations (Not the primary reason of course, you'd still be gearing up assuming blizzard Isn't stupid enough to go down the "Artifact/Azerite/<Insert bad system name> power" route again next expansion and goes back to proper gear progression that matters, new (and returning) abilities and talents as well as tighten up the ilevel numbers, 100+ ilevel per patch cycle alone Is really bad, considering Wrath had like 40 ilevel across It's entire expansion.

Final Fantasy 14 alone does a good job of keeping proffesions relevant and unlike WoW It admits It's mistakes, when It launched It was a shit show but they stopped and said "We will fix this, don't worry" and they did... they listened to players and It got better. Well once Blizzard starts listening that'll be the day, that'll be the day when they swallow their corporate pride and finally listen to the people giving them money.

[markos82]

Because they don't give a fuck about anything anymore.
I mean they can solve it in so many ways. Like you need combination of 5 different profession ( each needs to make specific items ) in order to open additional boss.
Or you need specific profession to remove some insanely hard ability from a boss ( item made by that profession ). Better crafted gear that can be used for 2-3 tiers.

[Akka]

Professions failed the moment they made them no longer necessary, aka relevant, when they removed their perks.

This, but only because the gear treadmill also became so insane that what profession made became irrelevant.
In TBC and Vanilla, you could craft items that would require a lot of effort, but you would keep them for months. So even if Vanilla didn't give any perk to profession they were still useful simply through what they could produce.

That being said, this runaway gear inflation has been the main problem of WoW, and the source of 90 % of the troubles, since the beginning.

[szandos]

Bring back combat perks for professions!

[Kralljin]

Crafting Professions were on their way out since Wotlk.

The moment all craftable items became BoE it was already smarter to simply buy mats, ask someone to craft it, while having Alchemy / JC to make money.

That aside, i do not believe Blizzard wants to go back to the era where you go outside and farm stuff to craft powerful items, perhaps because characters are overall far more powerful than in Vanilla / BC, thus any farm spots would be horribly overfarmed or people would just easily get powerful item(s) unless it requires an utterly insane amount of mats.

Honestly, i wouldn't mind if crafting became more relevant, i just get the feeling from Blizzards side that it would be too much of a hassle to put it properly into the current progression system, so they're keeping it in something slightly above maintenance mode, minor updates to keep it just barely relevant but nothing big.

The combat perks have been no solution and were nothing but a bandaid fix to me, if i'm a Leatherworker, i want to wear stuff i crafted, not just some stitching on my wrists or some shit.
Especially as the mats required for that perk were so damn easy to get.

[Oneirophobia]

They should use professions to fill in the blanks instead of stuff like a residuum vendor. That darn head slot Azerite piece just wont drop? Okay, we’ll craft it then.

As it stands, you can spend hundreds of thousands of gold crafting a piece of gear that is obsolete from one 5 second world quest, or even a normal dungeon. They cost to make things drastically out paces the created items, unless it’s enchanting, alchemy etc. in which case you’re paying an “I’m a raider” premium.

[Daevied]

I miss the day you had bis gear from professions, now is just more rng into the rng grindfest :C

You know what could be cool? Professions specials transmo sets

[Pakheth]

This, but only because the gear treadmill also became so insane that what profession made became irrelevant.
In TBC and Vanilla, you could craft items that would require a lot of effort, but you would keep them for months. So even if Vanilla didn't give any perk to profession they were still useful simply through what they could produce.

That being said, this runaway gear inflation has been the main problem of WoW, and the source of 90 % of the troubles, since the beginning.

This is how I see it as well.
It was worth becoming a leatherworker for the leg enchants because you wouldn't trade out your pants every fricking day due to the rampant gear inflation.
Gear means nothing to me anymore because it is so abundant and it could always be a better version(titanforging, rng stats etc) and neither does proffessions as the gear I can create is already redundant before I can get the high enough skill level to make them.

[Hugthetree]

They should use professions to fill in the blanks instead of stuff like a residuum vendor. That darn head slot Azerite piece just wont drop? Okay, we’ll craft it then.

As it stands, you can spend hundreds of thousands of gold crafting a piece of gear that is obsolete from one 5 second world quest, or even a normal dungeon. They cost to make things drastically out paces the created items, unless it’s enchanting, alchemy etc. in which case you’re paying an “I’m a raider” premium.

Not to mention the abomination that was created when secondary stats on crafted gear turned random.