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Professions: Where's the profit motive??
grogthemagnif
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,651 Arc User
The professions were hyped as rebuilding the businesses of Neverwinter after The spell plague and the Invasion.
Let's take a look.
Leadership - In most of the tasks you actually get paid more than you put in. that one works!
Leatherworking, Mailsmithing, Platesmithing, and Tailoring - For a shirt the thread, rock salt or charcoal costs 1 silver 20 copper and you can sell the shirt for 8cp (net loss of 1 silver, 12 copper) No profit there. In fact, the Professional Supplies vendor is making huge profits Millions of silvers and hundreds of millions of coppers (based on over 1 million players).
If you choose you can farm supplies, sell them through the auctioneer, use the AD collected to buy professional supplies and then make leather, cloth or metal goods. which you can sell. You can also get to level 20 by just gathering components for xp. It's slower, it will work, and it cuts out the Professional Supplies vendor but ist is also really time consuming.
For Alchemy you absolutely need Professional Supplies, not at the beginning, but soon after. Once again, you can farm for the potions needed and sell the unstable potions for 50 coppers each to buy supplies solvent at 20 coppers, quicksilver at 50 and Brimstone at 1 gold each. For Alchemy you cannot advance, just by gathering components, you have to extract their essence (vitriol) and experiment. Once you have done enough successful experiments, then you can do Alchemical Research and advance to the next level. This is how Alchemy should work. Alchemists still need to make a profit too.
I have heard that there may be a new profession - Weaponsmith. For now I expect it will be like the other two smiths.
Here is my proposal to give each of the non-Leadership professions (except Alchemy) a profit.
1. Since each character's inventory is part of a database put a "made not found" marker on made goods and multiply the payout from a Vendor by 16. (8 cp becomes 1 Silver 28 copper, 1 silver, 1 copper becomes 16 silver, 16 copper, etc.)
2. This gives a slight profit from each transaction and allows the Professional to make a living (and set aside coin for a business location once he makes the Master craftsman level by finishing Profession level 21 -The Master Work.
3. For Alchemists potions made (can be marked as "made not found") can be sold at 80% of potion vendor/quartermaster price.
Note: Professional Level 21 - The Master Work will be proposed later.
Let's take a look.
Leadership - In most of the tasks you actually get paid more than you put in. that one works!
Leatherworking, Mailsmithing, Platesmithing, and Tailoring - For a shirt the thread, rock salt or charcoal costs 1 silver 20 copper and you can sell the shirt for 8cp (net loss of 1 silver, 12 copper) No profit there. In fact, the Professional Supplies vendor is making huge profits Millions of silvers and hundreds of millions of coppers (based on over 1 million players).
If you choose you can farm supplies, sell them through the auctioneer, use the AD collected to buy professional supplies and then make leather, cloth or metal goods. which you can sell. You can also get to level 20 by just gathering components for xp. It's slower, it will work, and it cuts out the Professional Supplies vendor but ist is also really time consuming.
For Alchemy you absolutely need Professional Supplies, not at the beginning, but soon after. Once again, you can farm for the potions needed and sell the unstable potions for 50 coppers each to buy supplies solvent at 20 coppers, quicksilver at 50 and Brimstone at 1 gold each. For Alchemy you cannot advance, just by gathering components, you have to extract their essence (vitriol) and experiment. Once you have done enough successful experiments, then you can do Alchemical Research and advance to the next level. This is how Alchemy should work. Alchemists still need to make a profit too.
I have heard that there may be a new profession - Weaponsmith. For now I expect it will be like the other two smiths.
Here is my proposal to give each of the non-Leadership professions (except Alchemy) a profit.
1. Since each character's inventory is part of a database put a "made not found" marker on made goods and multiply the payout from a Vendor by 16. (8 cp becomes 1 Silver 28 copper, 1 silver, 1 copper becomes 16 silver, 16 copper, etc.)
2. This gives a slight profit from each transaction and allows the Professional to make a living (and set aside coin for a business location once he makes the Master craftsman level by finishing Profession level 21 -The Master Work.
3. For Alchemists potions made (can be marked as "made not found") can be sold at 80% of potion vendor/quartermaster price.
Note: Professional Level 21 - The Master Work will be proposed later.
Post edited by grogthemagnif on
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Comments
Don't agree with raising vendor payouts. Crafting ingredients such as thread/coal/salt etc. are meant to be currency sinks and are a good idea imo. Keeps the gold I have from being devalued.
Until you can make gloves, everything put into armor proffessions is basically an investment to get to the point where you can make gloves, I don't really see anything wrong with this since if there was no investment required to get to the point where you can make gloves everyone would do it and gloves would be worthless.
Making gemmed pants/shirts is pretty much the same deal. There's money to be made, but there is also necessary investment (much larger than making gloves mind you).
I personally think they should have made proffessions even costlier in terms of investment (aside from shirts/pants, i think they are fine) while including mid level items that are worth making and desirable to trade.
- JailBreak (in development)
This is rrue for everything pretty much - the less competition the higher the prices.
The main bar to entry for the non-leadership professions is the cost of buying the purple tools and craftsman which are probably a couple of million AD. Leveling a non-leadership profession to to 20 seems pretty easy - I recently got Platesmithing to 20 over the course of a week and it cost (I think) about 50G and can easily be done without spending any AD.
Leadership is the entry profession, which is why it is profitable with little time and effort. The others simply require more time and effort, as they aren't the entry profession. Returns on that time and effort are made later on.
Think of it as school or trade training. Just about anything one learns to do requires more outlay of cash and materials than what one earns with the skills he is developing, until such time and effort is expended that the person knows enough to get a job in his field or to become self-employed. Like always, you have to spend money... and time... to make money.
with their epic assets farmed from graveyard along with getting to level 60 in a couple of hours.
The Professions help me get cool stuff and gives something to do besides combat.
Who cares about profit?? All kinds of other way to get AD and gold.
That was the case...but now it is basically worthless to do. A gemmed shirt for rogue sells for about 240,000 AD. It cost over 100k just for the egg to make, and even with a full purple set of tools their is only a 60% you will even get the gemmed version. If you don't you lost money, if you do you might make a slight profit if you rush, but not much.
The point is without income from adventuring or farming using just professions you'd go broke. To be true professions, they have to be able to stand on their own, and except for Leadership, they don't. Without outside income you could not do Alchemy. If I find something in treasure and sell it, my cost is zero and time spent and my profit is the 100%. If I MAKE the same item I could lose over 90% of my cost.
But they're not "true professions". They're MMO professions - generally a money & time sink (as well as another activity you can claim in your features list), that only becomes profitable 1. at the profession cap, and 2. for the first few people to get those top/rare recipes. This is how it's worked in most MMOs. Only thing semi-new here is the whole "time management game" style of crafting.
Each profession is supposed to end in a business, but in any business everyone has to make money every day, or eventually they go out of business. In the original time of guilds, apprentices were paid with minimal room and board, Journeymen were paid small wages so that when they were sufficiently capable and completed their Master Work - the project that told the other craft masters that this journeyman was their craft equal that the journey man would have the money to set up their own shop.
Knowing enough to get a job is the journeyman level. Becoming self employed is the Master Professional level.
If you do a business right, you start with a small outlay of cash, which unlike the Professions you never have to add to, and slowly and surely over time make money through repeat business.
Why should the journey be a huge gold sink? I don't think it should.
I disagree, the time and trouble to get to level 20 will stop most from even trying.
And how exactly are you disagreeing? The time and trouble would be why fewer would bother with crafting. Which isn't even what he said.
To narrow it down, only the level 60 gemmed purple version stands out in terms of selling. The rest are just fillers, even the lvl 60 non-gemmed version.
Alchemy: It is pretty trivial to level this up to 20 (unless you run into the dreaded gateway bug), but it is really, really, not worth the effort. Just about the only thing you can make profitably are the dyes, and they are only level 7 items - as for healing potions and such, it is simply cheaper to buy them from vendors. There is, however, one good reason to get alchemy to level 20 - and that is to unlock the last profession slot (get 3 professions to level 20).
Leadership: It works. properly designed, and has no real issues. It takes very long to get to 20, though, but that is just fine.
Crafting professions: Many, many flaws. Sure, you can make reinforced armour pieces and if you are lucky you can make a slight profit on those. You can also make gemmed pants/shirts, but even with 4 purple items you only have a 60% chance of getting the gemmed version - 40% of the time you get the non-gemmed version, and that may actually sell for less than the cost of materials - so the profit is minuscule - not really worth the effort any more. Also, the price of dragon eggs has gone up recently (from 130.000 to 150.000 on Mindflayer), and the prices of shirts/pants has gone down (more people with level 20 crafting, and fewer people reaching level 60 and need the pants, Demand going down, and supply going up - it's hardly worth the effort any more.
There are also some bad design decisions in the crafting professions. For example:
In platesmithing, the reinforced gloves are BoP, not BoE, meaning that you cannot craft them for others....stupid, stupid, stupid.
Many level 20 crafting recipes give crafting xp - why on earth - you have reached the maximum level, the crafting xp is useless at that point.
Sometimes there are differences between what the recipes say and what you actually get - if I remember correctly the elegant scale shirt task actually gives you elegant pants (or the other way around).
In short, the crafting professions are badly designed, and little more than a time/money sink, but leadership is nice.
Very well put.
I think there is still a decent amount of money still to be made in gemmed shirts/pants, but the investment in purple tools and fact you will have to undercut in the AH, means it is not a great money-maker compared to spending the same time, say, running tier 2 / 2.5 dungeons.
The level 20 crafting recipes that give crafting XP might be because they are planning for higher crafting levels in future. Or it is just yet another muck-up on Cryptic's part, of course, which admittedly does sounds more likely. But it is at least possible, if not probable, that there is a reason for the crafting XP on those tasks.
What I'm hearing is that Gold is money and you don't want it inflated, but AD is currency and you are happy with it's constant inflation through Leadership rewards and invocation rewards. Zen is also inflated, through outside purchases and through exchange with AD. Is this OK?
There should also be more AD sinks than there are to control the inflation there (I assume most people don't use the AD sinks that there are, such as rushing things and enchanting/removing low level gear enchants). This is even more important due to the ability to exchange zen and AD. My point is that all currencies should be subject to substantial sinks to limit inflation. Inflation in an online game is inevitable, really, but the game design can at least slow it down. That applies to all currencies, really.
The AH is a pretty big (10-12.5%) sink for AD, and there are other sinks.
The amount of ZEN is of course increased when people purchase it for real money, but it is also decreased when people spend money it the ZEN shop.
At present it is too early to say what the long term implications are.
What bug is this? Not that it really matters to me since I only want to get Alchemy up to Level 7 for the dyes, but I am curious nonetheless.
This would create a meta-market within the crafting community where you could choose to either make an item yourself, or make part of an item that could be sold to another player to allow them to make theirs..
The Alchemy gateway bug is that for some people (not everyone) if you do the xp-granting task through the gateway, you will get the xp required to level up to next alchemy level, but not actually get the new level. Moreover, you will get stuck at that level, and unable to level up, as you never get another xp-awarding task.
People have been complaining about this for a couple of weeks, but there has been no response.
Arggggghh......
Thanks for the info - that does sounds incredibly frustrating especially if you are high level in Alchemy when that happens. I guess I will make sure to do the XP reward task in-game.