Suggestion: Professions Revamp

silvergryph

With the loss of Gateway, it is time to introduce some QoL improvements to Professions. Here is a collection of suggestions to make Professions a little easier to manage and make all Professions worthwhile. I also include suggestions for new homes for some of the items lost with the Gateway closure. I originally posted most of these ideas in the Gateway closure announcement thread, but I have since refined them a little.

Professions Interface
Collect All Button: Add a Collect All button to collect rewards for all finished tasks at once.

Repeat Option: Add a "Repeat" checkbox or radio button next to the Collect button and the Collect All button. This will attempt to re-queue the task using the same assets (except rare tasks).

Copy Option: Add a "Copy" checkbox or radio button next to the Start Task button that will open the task window again for you to start another copy of it using the next available slot. This would work just like selecting the task from the list and allow you to choose optional assets again.

Professions and RP
Remove RP tasks from Leadership and add them to the gear-crafting Professions.

Make the character-bound RP containers from Professions usable directly for RP. They would provide a fixed amount of RP if used directly, but could be opened to gather unbound RP stones that could be traded. But, the contents of the bag would have a lower refinement point value on average than simply using the container. For example, a Resonant Bag could be used as 4,000 refinement points on artifact equipment. Opening the bag has a chance to give you a blue stone worth 5,000 RP, but is much more likely to give you a green one worth 2,500 RP or a gray one worth only 500.

Skill Nodes
Remove Mount Insignia from Skill Nodes and slightly increase the amount of Professions resources they provide.

Profession Resources
The Bounty Vendors in the various zones should sell green and better Profession resources. The Sword Coast Professions Bags that used to drop as daily bonus rewards from playing SCA on gateway could be used for this and expanded with blue and purple versions. The higher the zone level, the better the resources offered. For example, you might only be able to buy the green Sword Coast Professions Bag by trading Many Arrows Insignia in the Tower District. But, you could buy the blue version with Gray Wolf Insignia in Vellosk or the purple version with Onyx Fragments in the Dread Ring. This will increase the use of these underappreciated NPCs and increase the relationship between gameplay and Professions.

Leadership
Make Leadership more about actually leading those who follow you. Not only your Profession workers and craftsmen, but also your mounts and companions.

Add Mount Insignia to the loot table for Medium Chest of Goods, Large Chest of Goods, and Very Large Chest of Goods. Add a Loyal Signet crafting item to the Very Large Chest of Goods as well that could be used to make Loyal Companion gear. This Signet would be BtA on pickup.

Increase the percentage of XP awarded as Companion XP for all Leadership tasks. VIPs would get this on un-summoned active companions as well.

Replace common RP tasks that generate Thaumaturgic Bags, Artifact Paraphenalia, and Resonant Bags with ones that reward Professions resources. For example, change the level 21 task, "Protect Magical Goods Market" to "Protect M'tari Prin'tal's Trade Convoy" and replace the Thaumaturgic Bag with a blue Professions resource bag.

Remove and replace rare RP tasks that generate Thaumaturgic Bags, Artifact Paraphenalia, and Resonant Bags with companion and mount oriented tasks like these:

• Create a rare, but low level "Protect the Shepherd" task that can only be done once per character. It will reward the Damaran Shepherd from the SCA tutorial.
  
• Create a rare level 25 task called "Recruitment Drive" that rewards a box with a random companion. It could pull from the list of green event companions and have a small chance to contain the Lightfoot Thief companion that used to be obtainable in SCA.
  
• Create a rare task that rewards one or more Companion Upgrade Tokens.
  
• Create rare tasks that rewards the Companion XP scrolls that used to be obtainable as daily bonuses for playing SCA.
  
• Create a rare level 25 task that rewards a box containing a random blue or purple Mount Insignia.
  
• Create rare "WANTED: Dead or Alive" tasks that send your soldiers out to battle various enemies to collect their corresponding Bounty items. For example, "WANTED: Dead or Alive, Orcs" would be the lowest level task and reward a box of Many Arrows Insignia. As mentioned above, these Insignia could be used to buy Profession resources.
  

Other Professions
Deep Gathering Tasks should be made more "set and forget" due to the loss of quick Professions management via Gateway. Greatly increase the time required and rewards (both materials and XP). Alternately, make "Intensive Gathering" tasks of the same level as the Deep Gathering tasks, but with the longer completion times and greater rewards.

Create RP tasks that consume green and blue resources that must be gathered. Possible examples:

• Alchemy: A "Thaumaturgic Experimentation" task that consumes Fundamental Fire, Earth, Lightning, and Ice and rewards 1 Thaumaturgic Bag (Tier 1) or 2 Thaumaturgic Bags (Tier 2).
  
• Artificing: An "Artifact Paraphenalia" task that consumes 2x Residuum and an Arcane Crystal and rewards 1 Artifact Paraphenalia bag (Tier 1) or 2 Artifact Paraphenalia Bags (Tier 2).
  
• Jewelcrafting: A "Gemstone Empowerment" task that consumes Perfect Gems and 2x Elemental Aggragate and rewards either 2 Peridot (Tier 1), 1 Resplendent Citrine (Tier 2), or 1 Flawless Sapphire (Tier 3).
  
• Weaponsmithing: Create a task that rewards Resonant Bags and possible Cubes of Augmentation.
  
• Leatherworking/Mailsmithing/Platesmithing/Tailoring: Create tasks that reward Resonant Bags.
  

Companion Gear: Add rare recipes to the appropriate Professions for creating all of the various Loyal Companion gear. These recipes would require the Loyal Signet acquired from Leadership tasks as described above.

beckylunatic

Some really great ideas here (@panderus to add to the conversation about what to do with professions)

Additions from me:

Mount insignias use a different drop table than profession resources, so they never replace other items in a node. Unless green insignias are made to drop a lot more frequently from monsters, I disagree with removing them from nodes. They are a valuable source of insignias for new players, solo players, and players on a budget. People who don't want them can either leave them behind because that doesn't create a problem for other players, or discard or donate them. I see that you want to add them to the loot table of Leadership boxes, so maybe it would be ok, but I'm not sure.

All skill nodes where refinement drops were removed only give half the amount of crafting stuff (and crummy "treasure") as lowbie nodes that never dropped refinement items in the first place. This is a glaring imbalance and makes looting skill nodes very unrewarding for players starting as early as Blackdagger Ruins. It's exasperating, and just one example of taking things away from players without putting anything back. Really needs to be corrected, and NOT by making the lowbie nodes drop half as much stuff. Please.

The idea of a far more integrated and hands-on system for making refinement is interesting. I think a lot of players would hate it, even though it wouldn't bother me. I do very much like the idea of adding tasks that can generate companion equipment, upgrade tokens, and cubes of augmentation. I am all for adding utility to the resources we accumulate in larger quantities than we can use, like Fundamental Fire, etc.

I think AD costs on reinforcement kits and jewels should be re-evaluated. They're stupidly expensive for an item that can't be reused.

More uses for bounty items would be fabulous. These things are just sad in the current state, nearly useless other than taking shots at cosmetically desirable boss drops in a few adventure zones. (Note: obsolete seal vendors remain in adventure zones on all platforms, afaik. They confuse the PS4 players muchly.)

I agree that the structure of gathering tasks needs a revamp with the loss of Gateway. The long tasks aren't long enough to be efficient without fiddling with them multiple times per day (which was still ok when supported by Gateway), and the short tasks are only feasible on a character you're actually playing at the time. (Event professions will suffer some of these same structural issues.)

Tasks to make Stronghold resources also now suffer from short durations due to not being able to reset them regularly. Please consider making them have longer durations and increase the quantity of items rewarded at each tier. If you double the running time, double the crates, etc.

I don't know how many rare tasks there actually are in each profession, but it's a lot, and checking them on rotation every hour is utter madness without Gateway. Masterwork, for good or for ill, is structured around obtaining items from specific rare tasks. The paltry amount of useful equipment that can be crafted is dependent on specific rare tasks. Maybe the simplest solution is making more than 5 of these visible at a time, unless a more fundamental change is warranted. Note that the one "disabled" rare Leadership task Gather Astral Diamonds (or whatever it was called) still takes up a slot in rotation and is just not visible. You can tell when it comes up because you only see 4 rare tasks instead of 5. Removed tasks should be completely removed so that they no longer consume a slot.

The UI for adding bonus assets to tasks is gawdawful. Gateway hid everything that was already in use, and displayed all the items at once to select from. In-game, you have a teeny-tiny scrolling view that shows you a few items at a time, including your occupied assets.

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levdbronstein

silvergryph said:

With the loss of Gateway, it is time to introduce some QoL improvements to Professions. Here is a collection of suggestions to make Professions a little easier to manage and make all Professions worthwhile. I also include suggestions for new homes for some of the items lost with the Gateway closure. I originally posted most of these ideas in the Gateway closure announcement thread, but I have since refined them a little.

Professions Interface
Collect All Button: Add a Collect All button to collect rewards for all finished tasks at once.

Repeat Option: Add a "Repeat" checkbox or radio button next to the Collect button and the Collect All button. This will attempt to re-queue the task using the same assets (except rare tasks).

Copy Option: Add a "Copy" checkbox or radio button next to the Start Task button that will open the task window again for you to start another copy of it using the next available slot. This would work just like selecting the task from the list and allow you to choose optional assets again.

If nothing else changes, these three things need to be implemented. Rotating professions is intensely tedious and time consuming, especially if one has many alts. Going from 18 clicks to clear and 27 clicks to reset (more if you are slotting additional assets) to one click to clear, one click to reset would be huge insofar as in-game QoL is concerned.