adinosiiMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,294Arc User
edited September 2018
Now, we will (hopefully) be getting the armor kits back, but ignoring those for a moment, I have a question:
Is there even a single non-masterwork item that is worth making for a lvl 70? Just one....that's all I ask. A fresh L70 can be assumed to have the Vistani gear. Are there any non-masterwork items that would be worth making for him/her?
When new applicants come, I've had types showing up from professions that I do not have. Is this so we can plan ahead? Do we need to pick up new artisans before we can choose a new profession? If not, could you please make it so that I do not get tailors asking for a job when I only practice jewelcrafting and have no ranks whatsoever in tailoring? Cause that is like a pastry chef applying for a job at the furniture shop....
Out of some pieces of gears for cosmetic purposes, NO.
At least, not now.
But they will probably add more recipes and more accurates ones in futures patchs, everything available on preview now feel like a placeholder, or a joke.
Now, we will (hopefully) be getting the armor kits back, but ignoring those for a moment, I have a question:
Is there even a single non-masterwork item that is worth making for a lvl 70? Just one....that's all I ask. A fresh L70 can be assumed to have the Vistani gear. Are there any non-masterwork items that would be worth making for him/her?
Those recipes have not made it into the test build yet.
The current test build is more about the basic shell of the system.
I think the basic shell as it is on the test server is a HUGE improvement over the current system.
The new system allows you to craft items immediately if you have enough morale. And morale is regenerated each day. This is a HUGe improvement.
Also, you can task your artisans to keep creating/gathering something when you are away. You periodically clean out your chest and everything works without you having to re-assign your artisans. This is also a HUGE improvement. It would be nice if you could chain the tasks together. For instance, in making potions, if the artisan could make the 3 ingredients for the potion, then make the potion, that would be awesome!
That you have favorite tasks/recipes makes it very easy to assign your most used tasks/recipes. This is also a HUGE improvement over the current system.
I did not see any random epic recipes. I hope you took this randomness out of the new system, as it was horrible. If you have a recipe or task, show it to me all the time. Having an RNG for possible recipes did not work for me. I am glad it is not in the new system.
The turn in values for old assets/resources will never make people happy. As there is such a huge disparity in pricing for the different assets. That a purples asset on test is worth 100 times more than a green asset, seems fair to me. Given on live server the ratio is 12 to 1.
Overall, I think the new shell is a HUGE improvement over what we have currently. Thank you for letting us get a peek at it. The main confusion for me was that I did not realize the recipes were incomplete, the profession level transfer was not complete, etc. But that was all spelled out in the patch notes. So I guess I should read the patch notes. =p
Speaking as a console player with no current access to the preview server, could anyone let me know any of the following.
1. I was hoping that the new system would expand on the guild donations. Since newer guilds don't have access to willing donors in the same way original Guilds did, I hoped to see the possible introduction of Treasures and so on from whaever Leadership morphed into... is there any sign or suggestion that this is happening?
2. If I have a character with Jewel, Alch, and say... Tailor at 25 that toon will have four rank 70 skills including the new Gathering, cos they would have leveled that up if they'd known... or something. If a toon has the same Alch, Jewel, but instead has Leadership... they get three professions with no direct compensation for the somewhat more labour and time intensive process of ACTUALLY leveling it rather than hypothetically. Is that correct? And if so... WHAT???????
Speaking as a console player with no current access to the preview server, could anyone let me know any of the following.
1. I was hoping that the new system would expand on the guild donations. Since newer guilds don't have access to willing donors in the same way original Guilds did, I hoped to see the possible introduction of Treasures and so on from whaever Leadership morphed into... is there any sign or suggestion that this is happening?
2. If I have a character with Jewel, Alch, and say... Tailor at 25 that toon will have four rank 70 skills including the new Gathering, cos they would have leveled that up if they'd known... or something. If a toon has the same Alch, Jewel, but instead has Leadership... they get three professions with no direct compensation for the somewhat more labour and time intensive process of ACTUALLY leveling it rather than hypothetically. Is that correct? And if so... WHAT???????
I have more, but I'll stick with those first.
Cheers for any help with this.
1. The Dev mentioned that there will be ways to donate to the guild. The patch on test is very early. We normally do not see something so unfinished on test. But they put it out there for us to see the "shell". They have lots of holes to fill in. I recommend reading the patch notes fully for test server, then reading all the Dev notes in the threads. It explains most things without the whining and misunderstanding from people (like me) who did not read all the info. 2. Currently on test, Leadership seems to transfer levels to Gathering. So if you only have Leadership profession on your character, it should transfer over to Gathering.
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monkeeyman1Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 46Arc User
Don't know if this is feedback or a "bug," but:
If you go to the merchant in PE and try to buy a Potion of Exalted Healing, the cost is 50 Silver - again, no crafting, just buying it.
If you go to your workshop, and want to craft it, the commission cost is 1 Gold, 39 Silver, and 62 Copper, plus all the mats and the time.
That makes absolutely no sense. I'd expect that it should be cheaper (in gold) to craft something than to buy it, since I'm using mats and time.
I checked a few other recipes and they were even crazier, for example:
To Buy a Major Tidespan Potion - 7 Silver, 50 Copper
To craft a Major Tidespan Potion - 54 Silver, 98 Copper, plus the mats/time
Or am I missing something? I know they are tweaking costs and such, but that is just crazy.
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adinosiiMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,294Arc User
We'll start with a little context. I have leveled all of the basic professions to 25 on 13 separate characters. I use professions to make resources for my guild and to generate RP for myself and my wife. I leveled the non-Leadership professions specifically to be able to generate lots of surplus equipment, gems, and gold for my guild. We're in a small, level eight guild wherein we are the two most active players in the guild. Due to the lack of boons, we haven't been able to recruit and retain active players that can help contribute to the guild's growth. I'm really not interested in doing masterwork, even though I'd recently been thinking about it, and I'm not interested in making things to sell on the auction house. I enjoy the aspect of professions that lets me progress my characters and my guild.
I'll start with the positive. First, I think the new system is rather fun, and certainly more fun than the existing system. The idea of a workshop is good and adds a good deal of flavor and environment to the game.
Now we'll move on to what I don't like.
1. The workshop is an instanced zone, completely separate from Protector's Enclave. There are several reasons I dislike this. First, you can't put your character in there during the day and leave them between logons. Second, you can't talk to anyone else to ask or answer questions or make trades. Third, it makes getting there a pain. I avoid going to PE any time I can. Having a bunch of people milling around over here is going to make things much, much worse.
2. You have created the gold sink that the game does not need. In conjunction with how hard you've nerfed drop rates for gold and gear, and the fact you're removing things that are saleable strictly for gold, I can't see how I'm going to be able to afford to use this system. I also can't see how new players will be able to afford to do professions.
3. Due to #2, I'm really concerned about how much this will impact guilds. There are guilds that require their members to contribute a certain amount of profession-generated resources every week. While I haven't done that with my guild, if players can't afford to use professions to generate these resources, as they can currently, then small and mid-sized guilds are going to wither and die; even large guilds are going to struggle.
4. We cannot currently, on preview, perform enough Gathering tasks simultaneously, nor can we do enough crafting tasks simultaneously. Being limited to three of each is absolutely ridiculous. In my opinion, we should be able to run 9 or 10 Gathering tasks and at least one crafting task for each of the other professions. There is no logical reason to limit us in this way. Adventurers go out and gather things and so they don't take up any space in the workshop to do what they do. As for artisans working in the workshop, they aren't all going to be at that table; they have different work stations around the workshop and wouldn't crowd each other out.
5. Artisans. There is too much RNG involved here: random profession/craft, random proficiency stat, random focus stat, random commission multiplier, random speed multiplier, random special skill, and random percent chance for the special skill. In fact, I have had an artisan by the same name at the same time for Leatherworking, Gathering, Jewelcrafting, Armorsmithing, and Blacksmithing. So your claim that these artisans have their own personalities is just bunk! They're no less nameless than the crafters they're replacing. The only difference is they have a name, albeit a completely meaningless name.
When it comes to purchasing these artisans from the Zen store, they'd better be pretty inexpensive considering all the randomness that comes with their creation! I can tell you right now that, after having used several hundred of the playtest artisan contract scrolls, there is absolutely no way that I would ever purchase a single artisan from the Zen store given the infinitesimally small chance of getting an artisan with decent stats. How to fix this? First, I would say that you come up with more names for artisans. Second, each artisan only is good at one profession; get rid of the random profession assignment. Third, fix their stats. For example, Artisan A always has a fixed commission multiplier, speed multiplier, proficiency, focus, and special skill (or a small range if you really must have the RNG involved). The point being that when someone purchases Artisan A, then they know they're getting Dab Hand as a special skill and they know about how good that artisan will be. Fourth, when people buy these from the Zen store, let them choose the artisan they want that has the stats they want.
6. Speaking of artisan stats.... From what I can see, the best Gathering artisan/adventurer stats for most people are going to be low commission multiplier and 20% or 25% chance to get double results from the task. I noticed in training up a Leatherworker that their results are never doubled - and I ran about 200 crafting tasks to test this. So for crafters, I would be going for (again) low commission multiplier and a 20% or 25% chance to negate the commission cost. For people who are going to do masterwork, I would expect them to prefer 20% or 25% chance to refund materials on failure.
7. The commission multiplier is really a stupid stat. There is no relation between it and the quality of work the artisan does. Basically, we're hiring people and saying "This work pays X", and they're saying "No, you're going to pay me X*Y". This is asinine. The work pays what the work pays. Either the artisan wants the work or they don't. Now, if you change it so that artisans who charge more have a higher proficiency and focus, that might be a little different. However, at a 200% commission multiplier, they had better be significantly better than an artisan with a low commission multiplier. In the end, though, this is just a stupid tax that makes calculating how much you're going to spend to make stuff incredibly difficult. The lowest commission multiplier I have seen is 50%. Why not just make things cost 50% more instead?
8. The cost to make this stuff is much, much higher than what you can get back by selling it. Furthermore, for people like me who are going to be consuming basically everything they make (or will be making things they won't consume only in order to be able to make things they will consume), this causes professions to price us right out.
9. It's ridiculous that we have to level the workshop, the professions, and the artisans. So even though every character that I and my wife have will be level 70 in every profession, we're still going to have to make a bunch of garbage we don't need and that no one else wants or needs in order to get our artisans up to the skill level required to make the things we actually do need. I think you should ditch the leveling of artisans and simply create a focus and proficiency multiplier that gets applied to them based on the level of your profession.
10. The entire UI needs to be looked at. You can't really tell what profession a given crafting task is associated with. You also can't tell how much experience it will award until after you've done it. You can't tell how much you'll spend to make or gather something until after you've ordered it (because of the aforementioned pointless commission multiplier). You can't reliably tell how long something is going to take to do. I once ordered something to be gathered that the UI said would take 2 hours on the button, then when I ordered it I was shown it would take 3 hours and 1 minute. Where did that come from?
11. Way too many resources and ingredients. Way. Too. Many.
12. Why are you making a system in which your goal is to minimize the number of players interacting with it? I would think you would want as many people crafting as possible. If you have a minimal number of people crafting, there won't be much trade and it won't be very interesting or engaging. Even if you somehow got 100% of the playerbase to do crafting, there aren't going to be many that are going to go into masterwork. And we know you'll never get 100% of the playerbase to do crafting. Of the ones who do, you'll never have 100% of them making stuff to sell to other players. I would guess you won't even have 50% of the crafters making things to sell to other players.
When I first started interacting with this last Friday (21 September), I was having fun, enjoying it, and was excited about it coming to live. Now that I spent part of Saturday and Sunday working with it, it has too many flaws and is, once again, a Corrupt-A-Wish version just like I expected you would create. I feel like I'm being punished because I don't like farming (gold, salvage, whatever), and because I'm in a small guild, and because my only interest in crafting is providing things for myself, my wife, and my guild. If you don't make serious changes to this system and its costs, I am going to have to seriously reconsider whether I want to continue to play this game. I've already been thinking hard about it over the weekend. And that's a shame because the changes coming to SW (my and my wife's favorite class) are really good and will make the class even more fun than it has been.
Wouldn't it be logical if a Peridot+1 gave more RP than a plain Peridot?
Too logical maybe - logic does not seem to be in fashion these days.
Right? What's the deal with having a higher quality Peridot if you 1) cannot sell it for more gold/silver/copper, and 2) cannot convert it for more RP than a basic Peridot. Just more stacks of garbage sitting in our inventory. Also, the difference in stats between a normal wristguard and a wristguard+1 are minimal. Once again, those each have the exact same gold/silver/copper value, too!
2. Currently on test, Leadership seems to transfer levels to Gathering. So if you only have Leadership profession on your character, it should transfer over to Gathering.
Right, but if someone took the time and effort to level Leadership, then one of two things should be true: 1. If everyone who leveled any profession gets a matching level in Gathering, then someone who actually leveled Leadership should get to choose another profession to have leveled to a corresponding level as compensation for the game not having to level Gathering for them.
OR
2. The people who did not choose to level Leadership should have to suffer the consequences of their choices and go through the time, effort, and expense of leveling Gathering.
Personally, I choose option #2, even though option #1 would benefit me on four characters created right before the last 2x experience event.
Questions: For my part of tests when we have a critical success we create an item +1. If for a recipe we use all +1 components, are we able to create an item +2? Not in my tests, critical success done only +1.
In a future release, wiil we able to craft from +1 to +5?
Brewald - GWF 18.3k Eleonore - CW Mof Renegade 17.5k Harlgard le Vieux - OP Prot 18.3k Valrik - DC AC 18.2k Furiela - SW Temp 18.1k
2. Currently on test, Leadership seems to transfer levels to Gathering. So if you only have Leadership profession on your character, it should transfer over to Gathering.
Right, but if someone took the time and effort to level Leadership, then one of two things should be true: 1. If everyone who leveled any profession gets a matching level in Gathering, then someone who actually leveled Leadership should get to choose another profession to have leveled to a corresponding level as compensation for the game not having to level Gathering for them.
OR
2. The people who did not choose to level Leadership should have to suffer the consequences of their choices and go through the time, effort, and expense of leveling Gathering.
Personally, I choose option #2, even though option #1 would benefit me on four characters created right before the last 2x experience event.
Yeah, thats kind of where I'm at. Honestly, from reading all the stuff that has been put out by Cryptic, I doubt the system would stand up from day 1 live if toons who hadn't leveled Leadership were forced to run 70 levels of Gathering. But to have no direct compensation for all the time and effort it actually took those who did do it is a bit of a slap in the face.
Its not really Leadetship has become Gathering... From what I can tell, all the gathering tasks from all the professions have contributed to Gathering, so anyone with a profession at 70 requires Gathering to function. Except Leadership, that just dissipates in a cloud of disinterest without a direct replacement or acknowledgement of lost time effort and resources.
@mordekai#1901 Well, Cryptic is the one that says Leadership has become Gathering. However, I understand your point that all the tasks that enable the other professions to function are in the Gathering profession now. Personally, I can live with no acknowledgment by or compensation from Cryptic for having leveled Leadership, provided they make this system affordable and usable by at least 80% of the players.
I know there are a lot of people who have been running Leadership tasks for years and are sitting on literal mountains of virtual gold. One person in my alliance has told me they have over 60k gold across all their characters. I've only been playing for going on 18 months and have no more than 1k gold on any individual character, with most of mine having ~100g. My wife has only been playing since Thanksgiving last year and has 750g on her warlock and <50g on her other characters (mostly given to them by her warlock for the purposes of buying a few supplies to level Mailsmithing).
With them reducing the frequency at which gold drops and removing drops that are only able to be sold for gold, I can't see how new players (or players who don't twink their characters) can possibly engage with this system. I'm not sure how long <b class="Bold">I will be able to engage with this system.
The only thing i'm here for, is to ask one question:
Are Professions being taken out of a UI interface and getting a treatment that can only be described as: "respecting the idea of MMORPG professions"?
I know there is always going to be a UI somewhere to manage the necessary nuts and bolts of a game operations, but i want to see Anvils; i want to see Smelting stoves and forges with roaring fires.
When i first came into Neverwinter in it's Beta days, this is what i wanted to see in terms of game professions like Blacksmithing:
But instead we got this:
Now i would have settled for something somewhere in the middle of an Anvil and a spreadsheet, but why did we get full spreadsheet instead of what older MMOrpg's have done? I'm just curious about that.
I'm sorry for the rant, but that bit has been festering in me since i first played Neverwinter Online, so i needed to get that out of my system.
@neoyoshi Yes, there is a place to go in the game. It has an actual desk you can sit at/interact with. There is a job board for dispatching adventurers to gather raw materials. There is a worktable where you select what you want crafted. You can move around the building and find a forge and other workstations for crafters upstairs. (All those workstations, forge included, are not interactable by you.) There is a chest into which all the raw materials and finished products are deposited for you to pick up. Overall, I think the atmosphere and environment have been very well done. I don't even mind that you go to the worktable to select products to be made and the job board to select raw materials to be gathered. They're not far apart, first of all, and it makes it feel more real.
Relatively minor, but several of my artisans appear to be having an identity crisis.
At-rest artisans sharing a seat are clipping badly. I have also seen them catapult from the second floor rather than taking the stairs upon entering the workshop.
Right, but if someone took the time and effort to level Leadership, then one of two things should be true: 1. If everyone who leveled any profession gets a matching level in Gathering, then someone who actually leveled Leadership should get to choose another profession to have leveled to a corresponding level as compensation for the game not having to level Gathering for them.
OR
2. The people who did not choose to level Leadership should have to suffer the consequences of their choices and go through the time, effort, and expense of leveling Gathering.
Personally, I choose option #2, even though option #1 would benefit me on four characters created right before the last 2x experience event.
If you have Leadership to 25, as you should on LIVE, you had the potential to benefit much greater than any of the other professions, unless you do Masterwork. Leadership has already given you benefits the other professions did not.
If you did not level another profession to 25, then maybe you should look into that over the next month. It is really quite easy by just using deep gathering tasks twice daily.
On LIVE, Leadership level 25 provides:
1. significant player XP for doing nothing but click a few buttons. This has allowed me to max out all 124 power points on my alts 2. significant Gold generation 3. significant RP generation 4. additional benefits from level rewards such as AD, XP tomes, etc 5. unbound items that can be sold
The issue is that the devs are selling this as Leadership becoming Gathering. When really, Leadership is just going away and you will be compensated modestly for your assets. If you have played for any length of time, your Leadership assets have benefited you considerably. So enjoy for another month.
The only constant in life is change. =p
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arcanjo86Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,093Arc User
@neoyoshi Yes, there is a place to go in the game. It has an actual desk you can sit at/interact with. There is a job board for dispatching adventurers to gather raw materials. There is a worktable where you select what you want crafted. You can move around the building and find a forge and other workstations for crafters upstairs. (All those workstations, forge included, are not interactable by you.) There is a chest into which all the raw materials and finished products are deposited for you to pick up. Overall, I think the atmosphere and environment have been very well done. I don't even mind that you go to the worktable to select products to be made and the job board to select raw materials to be gathered. They're not far apart, first of all, and it makes it feel more real.
Hey, as long as it's not just a UI that i can open up from anywhere in the game, i'll be happy. xD I know it's baby-steps, but anything is better then the UI at this point.
EDIT: And just to give some context, i've been away from the game for quite some time now- the news of the Professions overhaul is what brought me back here and why i am even typing this.
This is the only memory i have of what Professions are in Neverwinter.
I am sooooo looking forward to this Professions UI burning in the depths of the Nine Hells of Baator
recipes are too cluttered, EQ2 did away with original recipe format since it takes too many slots in "refining" process into final product. they are now more streamlined and basic. what you did was just bring the outdated versions from early 2005-2007 era back into more mess and much more time consuming process and now seeing +1 ores and +1 ingots.
Do we need that?
pricing on crafting the items are too "Sky-high" cost. many said collecting potions from the drops was the source of income, you take away, and players get less income from the drops.
now, that is clear warning to devs, this would bring back "Gold Farmer-Sellers" back in business to sell gold for real money thru 3rd party sites again. WE DONT WANT THAT! i am sick of getting mail spams again! if we get limited gold drops and find ourselves short and cost restrictions, some other players may not had choice but to face the banning if they get caught or threw a towel and move on better game environment and more enjoyable and less grindy. it is already on thin ice, once breaks, some players gone.
Hey, as long as it's not just a UI that i can open up from anywhere in the game, i'll be happy. xD I know it's baby-steps, but anything is better then the UI at this point.
EDIT: And just to give some context, i've been away from the game for quite some time now- the news of the Professions overhaul is what brought me back here and why i am even typing this.
This is the only memory i have of what Professions are in Neverwinter.
I am sooooo looking forward to this
Yeah, maybe the first month, first 100x time going to the "bench", loading into Protector's Enclave, etc. But the 1000x time? Next year, day after day the same UI that loads slow, is clunkly with walking here and there?
This does not sound fun to me. This sounds tedious and time consuming.
workshop/profession needs to be account wide, because we gonna start making alts for one of each gathering then mail resources to main char workshop, and we need a collect all from the chest to be add to the "N" page going back and forward to workshop to empty chest aint gonna help anybody, also the chest from the storage from gathering and order we put in is too small we need it like a inventory size, and noticed we cant press Nwhen we are inside workshop.
See, this guy gets it. Making leadership army more cumbersome but still more profitable just makes people who are more okay with repetitive monotonous nonsense earn more than people who want to actually play the game.
I figured that was lurking in there. The old if they don't play my way they are abusing the game and aren't really playing the game.
When new applicants come, I've had types showing up from professions that I do not have. Is this so we can plan ahead? Do we need to pick up new artisans before we can choose a new profession? If not, could you please make it so that I do not get tailors asking for a job when I only practice jewelcrafting and have no ranks whatsoever in tailoring? Cause that is like a pastry chef applying for a job at the furniture shop....
I don't know if this is because I already had the professions unlocked at level 1 or higher before copying my character over, but I can just immediately send them on tasks. Also they can do recipes 5 levels over the profession level, perhaps this is not the case when its level 0? I have not seen anything about unlocking professions so far and Im up to the level 40 professions + char level to continue.
workshop/profession needs to be account wide, because we gonna start making alts for one of each gathering then mail resources to main char workshop, and we need a collect all from the chest to be add to the "N" page going back and forward to workshop to empty chest aint gonna help anybody, also the chest from the storage from gathering and order we put in is too small we need it like a inventory size, and noticed we cant press Nwhen we are inside workshop.
See, this guy gets it. Making leadership army more cumbersome but still more profitable just makes people who are more okay with repetitive monotonous nonsense earn more than people who want to actually play the game.
I figured that was lurking in there. The old if they don't play my way they are abusing the game and aren't really playing the game.
Let me put it this way.
If you started the game, in a special room, and at the end of each day, your character got 10 trillion AD (transferable), but once you left the room, you could never go back, would it be a problem? Of course it would.
Saying "Let me play the way I want to play" is just saying you don't want to have to critically approach the concept of game balance.
Because the AH is a player market, the existence of funds from repeated monotonous tasks means that people who DON'T want to do repeated monotonous tasks are at a disadvantage due to the existence of those repeated monotonous tasks. If you're saying "let me play it my way" well my retort to you is, let me play it MY way, without being at a significant disadvantage.
The devs have to ask themselves what they want the game to look like. You can attempt to make the case that they should make it look like a game where you log in to click a few things then immediately change characters and repeat infinitely. If that's the type of play you actually enjoy, it is totally reasonable for you to make that case.
But the fact that you, the individual, enjoy that style of play does not mean that that is what the game should be, from the perspective of the dev team, that-theoretically-has some kind of goals as to the shape of the game.
It's not "elitest" to say that we should award players for "actually playing the game." It's just guiding the systems in the game to work towards the intended design concept of the game. These alternate means of playing the game are fine *when they don't have negative impacts on the core design of the game* and professions/invoking/Zen-market-manipulation are all ways that these "let me play my way" things are having negative impacts on the core conceit of the game.
If your playstyle mandates other people adopt it to be competitive, and your playstyle is not the desired playstyle of the game at a conceptual issue, that's a problem. Stop getting so defensive when people point out that leadership armies are problematic for the economy: it shows a complete lack of self-awareness for what an MMO is.
EDIT: Another consideration: either the old or the new professions system. If it wasn't part of Neverwinter, but its own, say, clicker mobile game, would you play it?
I just crafted 50 Aquamarines in a row with a purple Jewelcrafter with the Passion Project bonus, having a 25% chance to negate the commission cost. Every time, I was charged the commission.
Comments
Is there even a single non-masterwork item that is worth making for a lvl 70? Just one....that's all I ask. A fresh L70 can be assumed to have the Vistani gear. Are there any non-masterwork items that would be worth making for him/her?
At least, not now.
But they will probably add more recipes and more accurates ones in futures patchs, everything available on preview now feel like a placeholder, or a joke.
And hamsters can't do jokes. So, wait & see.
The current test build is more about the basic shell of the system.
I think the basic shell as it is on the test server is a HUGE improvement over the current system.
The new system allows you to craft items immediately if you have enough morale. And morale is regenerated each day. This is a HUGe improvement.
Also, you can task your artisans to keep creating/gathering something when you are away. You periodically clean out your chest and everything works without you having to re-assign your artisans. This is also a HUGE improvement. It would be nice if you could chain the tasks together. For instance, in making potions, if the artisan could make the 3 ingredients for the potion, then make the potion, that would be awesome!
That you have favorite tasks/recipes makes it very easy to assign your most used tasks/recipes. This is also a HUGE improvement over the current system.
I did not see any random epic recipes. I hope you took this randomness out of the new system, as it was horrible. If you have a recipe or task, show it to me all the time. Having an RNG for possible recipes did not work for me. I am glad it is not in the new system.
The turn in values for old assets/resources will never make people happy. As there is such a huge disparity in pricing for the different assets. That a purples asset on test is worth 100 times more than a green asset, seems fair to me. Given on live server the ratio is 12 to 1.
Overall, I think the new shell is a HUGE improvement over what we have currently. Thank you for letting us get a peek at it. The main confusion for me was that I did not realize the recipes were incomplete, the profession level transfer was not complete, etc. But that was all spelled out in the patch notes. So I guess I should read the patch notes. =p
1. I was hoping that the new system would expand on the guild donations. Since newer guilds don't have access to willing donors in the same way original Guilds did, I hoped to see the possible introduction of Treasures and so on from whaever Leadership morphed into... is there any sign or suggestion that this is happening?
2. If I have a character with Jewel, Alch, and say... Tailor at 25 that toon will have four rank 70 skills including the new Gathering, cos they would have leveled that up if they'd known... or something. If a toon has the same Alch, Jewel, but instead has Leadership... they get three professions with no direct compensation for the somewhat more labour and time intensive process of ACTUALLY leveling it rather than hypothetically. Is that correct? And if so... WHAT???????
I have more, but I'll stick with those first.
Cheers for any help with this.
2. Currently on test, Leadership seems to transfer levels to Gathering. So if you only have Leadership profession on your character, it should transfer over to Gathering.
- If you go to the merchant in PE and try to buy a Potion of Exalted Healing, the cost is 50 Silver - again, no crafting, just buying it.
- If you go to your workshop, and want to craft it, the commission cost is 1 Gold, 39 Silver, and 62 Copper, plus all the mats and the time.
That makes absolutely no sense. I'd expect that it should be cheaper (in gold) to craft something than to buy it, since I'm using mats and time.I checked a few other recipes and they were even crazier, for example:
Or am I missing something? I know they are tweaking costs and such, but that is just crazy.
Too logical maybe - logic does not seem to be in fashion these days.
I'll start with the positive. First, I think the new system is rather fun, and certainly more fun than the existing system. The idea of a workshop is good and adds a good deal of flavor and environment to the game.
Now we'll move on to what I don't like.
1. The workshop is an instanced zone, completely separate from Protector's Enclave. There are several reasons I dislike this. First, you can't put your character in there during the day and leave them between logons. Second, you can't talk to anyone else to ask or answer questions or make trades. Third, it makes getting there a pain. I avoid going to PE any time I can. Having a bunch of people milling around over here is going to make things much, much worse.
2. You have created the gold sink that the game does not need. In conjunction with how hard you've nerfed drop rates for gold and gear, and the fact you're removing things that are saleable strictly for gold, I can't see how I'm going to be able to afford to use this system. I also can't see how new players will be able to afford to do professions.
3. Due to #2, I'm really concerned about how much this will impact guilds. There are guilds that require their members to contribute a certain amount of profession-generated resources every week. While I haven't done that with my guild, if players can't afford to use professions to generate these resources, as they can currently, then small and mid-sized guilds are going to wither and die; even large guilds are going to struggle.
4. We cannot currently, on preview, perform enough Gathering tasks simultaneously, nor can we do enough crafting tasks simultaneously. Being limited to three of each is absolutely ridiculous. In my opinion, we should be able to run 9 or 10 Gathering tasks and at least one crafting task for each of the other professions. There is no logical reason to limit us in this way. Adventurers go out and gather things and so they don't take up any space in the workshop to do what they do. As for artisans working in the workshop, they aren't all going to be at that table; they have different work stations around the workshop and wouldn't crowd each other out.
5. Artisans. There is too much RNG involved here: random profession/craft, random proficiency stat, random focus stat, random commission multiplier, random speed multiplier, random special skill, and random percent chance for the special skill. In fact, I have had an artisan by the same name at the same time for Leatherworking, Gathering, Jewelcrafting, Armorsmithing, and Blacksmithing. So your claim that these artisans have their own personalities is just bunk! They're no less nameless than the crafters they're replacing. The only difference is they have a name, albeit a completely meaningless name.
When it comes to purchasing these artisans from the Zen store, they'd better be pretty inexpensive considering all the randomness that comes with their creation! I can tell you right now that, after having used several hundred of the playtest artisan contract scrolls, there is absolutely no way that I would ever purchase a single artisan from the Zen store given the infinitesimally small chance of getting an artisan with decent stats. How to fix this? First, I would say that you come up with more names for artisans. Second, each artisan only is good at one profession; get rid of the random profession assignment. Third, fix their stats. For example, Artisan A always has a fixed commission multiplier, speed multiplier, proficiency, focus, and special skill (or a small range if you really must have the RNG involved). The point being that when someone purchases Artisan A, then they know they're getting Dab Hand as a special skill and they know about how good that artisan will be. Fourth, when people buy these from the Zen store, let them choose the artisan they want that has the stats they want.
6. Speaking of artisan stats.... From what I can see, the best Gathering artisan/adventurer stats for most people are going to be low commission multiplier and 20% or 25% chance to get double results from the task. I noticed in training up a Leatherworker that their results are never doubled - and I ran about 200 crafting tasks to test this. So for crafters, I would be going for (again) low commission multiplier and a 20% or 25% chance to negate the commission cost. For people who are going to do masterwork, I would expect them to prefer 20% or 25% chance to refund materials on failure.
7. The commission multiplier is really a stupid stat. There is no relation between it and the quality of work the artisan does. Basically, we're hiring people and saying "This work pays X", and they're saying "No, you're going to pay me X*Y". This is asinine. The work pays what the work pays. Either the artisan wants the work or they don't. Now, if you change it so that artisans who charge more have a higher proficiency and focus, that might be a little different. However, at a 200% commission multiplier, they had better be significantly better than an artisan with a low commission multiplier. In the end, though, this is just a stupid tax that makes calculating how much you're going to spend to make stuff incredibly difficult. The lowest commission multiplier I have seen is 50%. Why not just make things cost 50% more instead?
8. The cost to make this stuff is much, much higher than what you can get back by selling it. Furthermore, for people like me who are going to be consuming basically everything they make (or will be making things they won't consume only in order to be able to make things they will consume), this causes professions to price us right out.
9. It's ridiculous that we have to level the workshop, the professions, and the artisans. So even though every character that I and my wife have will be level 70 in every profession, we're still going to have to make a bunch of garbage we don't need and that no one else wants or needs in order to get our artisans up to the skill level required to make the things we actually do need. I think you should ditch the leveling of artisans and simply create a focus and proficiency multiplier that gets applied to them based on the level of your profession.
10. The entire UI needs to be looked at. You can't really tell what profession a given crafting task is associated with. You also can't tell how much experience it will award until after you've done it. You can't tell how much you'll spend to make or gather something until after you've ordered it (because of the aforementioned pointless commission multiplier). You can't reliably tell how long something is going to take to do. I once ordered something to be gathered that the UI said would take 2 hours on the button, then when I ordered it I was shown it would take 3 hours and 1 minute. Where did that come from?
11. Way too many resources and ingredients. Way. Too. Many.
12. Why are you making a system in which your goal is to minimize the number of players interacting with it? I would think you would want as many people crafting as possible. If you have a minimal number of people crafting, there won't be much trade and it won't be very interesting or engaging. Even if you somehow got 100% of the playerbase to do crafting, there aren't going to be many that are going to go into masterwork. And we know you'll never get 100% of the playerbase to do crafting. Of the ones who do, you'll never have 100% of them making stuff to sell to other players. I would guess you won't even have 50% of the crafters making things to sell to other players.
When I first started interacting with this last Friday (21 September), I was having fun, enjoying it, and was excited about it coming to live. Now that I spent part of Saturday and Sunday working with it, it has too many flaws and is, once again, a Corrupt-A-Wish version just like I expected you would create. I feel like I'm being punished because I don't like farming (gold, salvage, whatever), and because I'm in a small guild, and because my only interest in crafting is providing things for myself, my wife, and my guild. If you don't make serious changes to this system and its costs, I am going to have to seriously reconsider whether I want to continue to play this game. I've already been thinking hard about it over the weekend. And that's a shame because the changes coming to SW (my and my wife's favorite class) are really good and will make the class even more fun than it has been.
1. If everyone who leveled any profession gets a matching level in Gathering, then someone who actually leveled Leadership should get to choose another profession to have leveled to a corresponding level as compensation for the game not having to level Gathering for them.
OR
2. The people who did not choose to level Leadership should have to suffer the consequences of their choices and go through the time, effort, and expense of leveling Gathering.
Personally, I choose option #2, even though option #1 would benefit me on four characters created right before the last 2x experience event.
For my part of tests when we have a critical success we create an item +1.
If for a recipe we use all +1 components, are we able to create an item +2?
Not in my tests, critical success done only +1.
In a future release, wiil we able to craft from +1 to +5?
Eleonore - CW Mof Renegade 17.5k
Harlgard le Vieux - OP Prot 18.3k
Valrik - DC AC 18.2k
Furiela - SW Temp 18.1k
Honestly, from reading all the stuff that has been put out by Cryptic, I doubt the system would stand up from day 1 live if toons who hadn't leveled Leadership were forced to run 70 levels of Gathering.
But to have no direct compensation for all the time and effort it actually took those who did do it is a bit of a slap in the face.
Its not really Leadetship has become Gathering...
From what I can tell, all the gathering tasks from all the professions have contributed to Gathering, so anyone with a profession at 70 requires Gathering to function.
Except Leadership, that just dissipates in a cloud of disinterest without a direct replacement or acknowledgement of lost time effort and resources.
I know there are a lot of people who have been running Leadership tasks for years and are sitting on literal mountains of virtual gold. One person in my alliance has told me they have over 60k gold across all their characters. I've only been playing for going on 18 months and have no more than 1k gold on any individual character, with most of mine having ~100g. My wife has only been playing since Thanksgiving last year and has 750g on her warlock and <50g on her other characters (mostly given to them by her warlock for the purposes of buying a few supplies to level Mailsmithing).
With them reducing the frequency at which gold drops and removing drops that are only able to be sold for gold, I can't see how new players (or players who don't twink their characters) can possibly engage with this system. I'm not sure how long <b class="Bold">I will be able to engage with this system.
Are Professions being taken out of a UI interface and getting a treatment that can only be described as: "respecting the idea of MMORPG professions"?
I know there is always going to be a UI somewhere to manage the necessary nuts and bolts of a game operations, but i want to see Anvils; i want to see Smelting stoves and forges with roaring fires.
When i first came into Neverwinter in it's Beta days, this is what i wanted to see in terms of game professions like Blacksmithing:
But instead we got this:
Now i would have settled for something somewhere in the middle of an Anvil and a spreadsheet, but why did we get full spreadsheet instead of what older MMOrpg's have done? I'm just curious about that.
I'm sorry for the rant, but that bit has been festering in me since i first played Neverwinter Online, so i needed to get that out of my system.
At-rest artisans sharing a seat are clipping badly. I have also seen them catapult from the second floor rather than taking the stairs upon entering the workshop.
If you did not level another profession to 25, then maybe you should look into that over the next month. It is really quite easy by just using deep gathering tasks twice daily.
On LIVE, Leadership level 25 provides:
1. significant player XP for doing nothing but click a few buttons. This has allowed me to max out all 124 power points on my alts
2. significant Gold generation
3. significant RP generation
4. additional benefits from level rewards such as AD, XP tomes, etc
5. unbound items that can be sold
The issue is that the devs are selling this as Leadership becoming Gathering. When really, Leadership is just going away and you will be compensated modestly for your assets. If you have played for any length of time, your Leadership assets have benefited you considerably. So enjoy for another month.
The only constant in life is change. =p
EDIT: And just to give some context, i've been away from the game for quite some time now- the news of the Professions overhaul is what brought me back here and why i am even typing this.
This is the only memory i have of what Professions are in Neverwinter.
I am sooooo looking forward to this Professions UI burning in the depths of the Nine Hells of Baator
recipes are too cluttered, EQ2 did away with original recipe format since it takes too many slots in "refining" process into final product. they are now more streamlined and basic.
what you did was just bring the outdated versions from early 2005-2007 era back into more mess and much more time consuming process and now seeing +1 ores and +1 ingots.
Do we need that?
pricing on crafting the items are too "Sky-high" cost.
many said collecting potions from the drops was the source of income, you take away, and players get less income from the drops.
now, that is clear warning to devs, this would bring back "Gold Farmer-Sellers" back in business to sell gold for real money thru 3rd party sites again.
WE DONT WANT THAT! i am sick of getting mail spams again!
if we get limited gold drops and find ourselves short and cost restrictions, some other players may not had choice but to face the banning if they get caught or threw a towel and move on better game environment and more enjoyable and less grindy.
it is already on thin ice, once breaks, some players gone.
This does not sound fun to me. This sounds tedious and time consuming.
If you started the game, in a special room, and at the end of each day, your character got 10 trillion AD (transferable), but once you left the room, you could never go back, would it be a problem? Of course it would.
Saying "Let me play the way I want to play" is just saying you don't want to have to critically approach the concept of game balance.
Because the AH is a player market, the existence of funds from repeated monotonous tasks means that people who DON'T want to do repeated monotonous tasks are at a disadvantage due to the existence of those repeated monotonous tasks. If you're saying "let me play it my way" well my retort to you is, let me play it MY way, without being at a significant disadvantage.
The devs have to ask themselves what they want the game to look like. You can attempt to make the case that they should make it look like a game where you log in to click a few things then immediately change characters and repeat infinitely. If that's the type of play you actually enjoy, it is totally reasonable for you to make that case.
But the fact that you, the individual, enjoy that style of play does not mean that that is what the game should be, from the perspective of the dev team, that-theoretically-has some kind of goals as to the shape of the game.
It's not "elitest" to say that we should award players for "actually playing the game." It's just guiding the systems in the game to work towards the intended design concept of the game. These alternate means of playing the game are fine *when they don't have negative impacts on the core design of the game* and professions/invoking/Zen-market-manipulation are all ways that these "let me play my way" things are having negative impacts on the core conceit of the game.
If your playstyle mandates other people adopt it to be competitive, and your playstyle is not the desired playstyle of the game at a conceptual issue, that's a problem. Stop getting so defensive when people point out that leadership armies are problematic for the economy: it shows a complete lack of self-awareness for what an MMO is.
EDIT: Another consideration: either the old or the new professions system. If it wasn't part of Neverwinter, but its own, say, clicker mobile game, would you play it?
I just crafted 50 Aquamarines in a row with a purple Jewelcrafter with the Passion Project bonus, having a 25% chance to negate the commission cost. Every time, I was charged the commission.
The Level 70 Jewelcrafting rings/necks of Black Opal, Gold, and Drake all have the same stat distributions (Power/Recovery). Is that intended?