Heh, if they have OLD forums archived they may dig into it and find thread I posted about professions some 5-6 years ago. It would answer them all questions about how to balance this without making anything obsolete and MORE :). What they plan now is about 40-60% of what I wrote then (some of what I wrote actually is in lesser form added in game already like socketing item). What I didn't think about are those craft orders, which actually look really interesting AND what I understand will be crafting Talent tree of sort.---------------------Now more seriously - one thing I'm currently afraid about Work order is that some no-life AH players take over that system completely and no one other would be able to use it from crafter side.Solution would be some kind of daily/weekly limit on how many server-wide posted work orders anyone can craft (player targeted or guild ones could be unlimited)
I really hope they won’t make this too convoluted. Coming into Wow after a few patches, having 89 different currencies, overflowing bags with different stuff you have no idea if you might need. Then realizing: «Oh, this is some catch-up gear currency that is not even close to viable to actually catch up. Oh, and this is some crafting reagent that is more or less obsolete this patch.» etc.I hope they manage to make this interesting and fun, without making it too convoluted. If it’s intuitive and understandable from the UI and the ingame information, I’m happy! If you need a 8 page guide from external sources to be able to get good use out if it, I’m not happy.
I just hope they'll somehow fit archeology into this even if they said the opposite. It wouldn't feel right to have an expansion about an untouched land with dragonscale expeditions without a major reveamp of that profession. Just do a thorgast version of it, indiana jones style. It wouldn't be mandatory and you already have most of the assets. You're already reusing every assets from previous expansion each time and making us pay for it, might aswell do us a favor and do the same with archeology ?
Just make the work order system work for the entire battle group. That way there's a large enough pool even players on small pop servers can get access to enough of the player base.
"We definitely have world PvP in mind with our crafting plans, both with interesting recipes, and with regards to gathering reagents," Please, please, please don't lock crafting plans behind PvP content that a major part of the crafting base simply has no interest in - especially on Crafting alts. (Reagents I don't mind, unless they are BoP...)
I used to love crafting my own gear or weapons. It made them special to me. I’m excited about their interested in revamping and offering a more rewarding experience.
I think the "inspiration" system is useful as long as it's not a conditional to get max/min gear and eventually it will be mandatory for all players."inspiration" can add fun things like the ability to walk on water, or increase mount speed outdoors or reduce transmog cost and even at lower levels increase item ilvl by up to 5 points. Thinking about the utility outside of m+, raid or pvp, but if with a impact for the player.A good profession system, from my point of view, is one that at maximum level allows you to create an item (unique - equipped) with all the characteristics and that randomly includes leach or avoidance. Limited to one or two pieces at the artisan's choosing and as patches progress they can be refined to create more items. This would help, for example, that many tailors can enter the AH with different pieces of slots, but equally valuable for players, especially those who need that specific piece to continue advancing.Finally, there has been no mention of creating weapons in professions. I think a good idea would be that at max level the professions related to this have the possibility (with the right materials) to reforge the stats of the weapons through orders. Example, I got the weapon from the third raid boss. To change their stat I have to get the necessary essence from the same boss plus some additional materials. While at first glance it doesn't seem like a push to make more content, this will motivate more players to go for the higher content especially the latest bosses of each raid. Perhaps give this ability to more limited professions like inscription.Note: it would be very entertaining if, in order to obtain these improvements, the craftsman is the one who creates the mission, in which you must gather the materials and the gold that he charges you to complete it.
No matter what i have only one request for crafting in dragonflight, dont gate progress to any dungeon or raid instance. I like to pick up all professions with my toons and would love to craft without these.
I posted about something similar in the past on reddit (actually on the League of Legends reddit), about how mmos should tie in crafting with combat to retain relevance, with specific mention to obtaining materials from dungeons/raids/pvp.Crafters though, should always retain their distinction amongst the community with regards to their unique craft. The ultimate form of giving distinction to individual members of the community might be to include an extensive dye system so that individual players can have the ability to ultimately unlock JUST ONE dye pattern of their preference that can become unique to their name so that players will only go looking to them for that specific aesthetic.Also, weaponsmiths should have to be locked into a further specialization, namely to create a specific weapon type. This is because weapons are the most popular thing in the game, everybody would want to be a general weaponsmith if it were possible so the scope of that would have to be limited to balance it out with the singular impactfulness of the other professions.It's cool they are doing this, because it's something obviously a lot of us people in the community have given thought to. I think going forwards if they refine combat even further (skills/abilities, etc.) and give it as much depth as a game of chess or summin it'd do wonders for the game going forwards. After all, if combat were refined to the point of it being seminally and profoundly rich in form and function, it would do nothing short of boost popularity. It's obviously easier said than done and the devs have a lot of work ahead of them in balancing out, adding depth to, and making combat glorious.They can also continue working on the combat pacing in older content too, making casual mobs a slower fight and each feel more like a chesspiece to conquer. This would make each engagement feel more unique and special rather than simply being "a trash mob". This could mean fewer overall different types of mobs, and variations to existing mobs leading to each mob feeling more special to its related zone. This is more akin to a balancing issue. This could consequently be expanded into a Compendium of Taxology after which mobs could be learned and gained knowledge upon and classified in order to uncover more about the combat methods involved with them. This could lead to an interesting lore and/or combat mechanics development with each mob or fauna. This would be an easier onboarding for newer players rather than have to sift through information online. They also have to expand upon Reputation and Factions, perhaps give actual consequences such as gated lockouts with content such as not being able to access certain small areas such as quest hubs or certain npcs normally being able to sell you stuff will now attack you on sight if you accumulate negative karma with a certain faction. In most cases, players would be able to simply progress in postiive reputation when killing certain mobs out in the wild. But with certain other mobs they'd have to balance that with losing reputation with another faction (after which they'd possibly be able to regain that lost reputation by killing yet another different mob but then rebalance the scales by losing reputation with the initial faction which would be a calculated grind if they wish to transfer reputation back and forth. And some mobs would simply give negative reputation altogether.This would be a good improvement and solution to merely handing out benefits with positive reputations. Of course all this would have to result in major changes to the sandbox of the game resulting in probably a bigger expansion each expansion with the addition of more neutral npcs and the added significance and impactfulness of each piece.Also, I think they should add an iconic dungeon/raid playlist (Molten Core neone?), and ramp up the difficulty to modern-day standards. Even if there are no rewards attached to them except for the achievements, it'd still be good to be able to do iconic older content as they were intended difficulty-wise (Hogger neone?). This would also help bring in the next generational influx of new players.After major ideas as such have been fleshed out what's left for them, of course, is to constantly iterate upon existing systems such as combat.There are limits to the upper bounds of creativity regarding what you can do with combat, but there's always the option of increasing the quantity of the complexity involved. Just give players more #'s to crunch on a spreadsheet or something, the quality of creativity may be limited but the possibility of increasing the quantity of complexity is always an option. This can be true for combat going forwards even regarding the simplest mob out in the open world!One example of a qualitative combat mechanic that can be implemented going forwards is like how the champion Fiora in League targets weak points/nodes with her Ultimate. This would obviously have to be modified for raid bosses as they are gigantic, but you can have melee or ranged combat dps target different "orbs" scattered in different shapes or constellations on the ground in order to bring down a boss. The orbs would have to be hit in a certain order, with all of them successfully hit partially or in total. This would be an example of a qualitative mechanical addition to raid fights. You could always then just make the patterns increasingly complex, with the order priority of the orbs being hit not necessarily require an increasing reflexive response such as speed or timing but just have longer fights with more orbs in total required to be hit over the length of the fight with complex patterns. This would tax the memory. This all sort of reminds me of a game called osu, rofl. This is an example of how combat can always retain relevance, by increasing the quantity of complexity rather than the quality. People obviously can't engage in raid fights that will have a length that extends beyond their time limit for playing. There seems to be a limit for everything. But I'm pretty sure WoW hasn't reached that point yet. Even if it has there will always be ways of moving the game forwards. At that point it's only a matter of time before new ways of pushing those limits are discovered xD. That is my belief.