As a player who is motivated by achievement points, I’ve recently been grinding my way through the Archaeology section, and while I know Ion and team have mentioned they have no real intention of bringing the triangulation mini-game back, I wanted to share my observations now that so many hours have been dumped in.
Using Data for Azeroth as a sort of reference point, it looks as though most of the existing Arch achievements were completed by between 1% - 7% percent of players. The new Azerothian Archives are also sitting at a 1% completion rate for the meta, where the Archivists Codex from Shadowlands is over 25% (there was player power connected to this IIRC).
Still, when you hear folks talk about this profession, most people like the concept quite a lot. And it has a lot of pretty cool rewards, mounts, toys, etc.
At the moment, I’m sitting at 11 of 67~ remaining achievements, and about 10 toy rewards missing. Here is my list of whats working and what isn’t:
Pros:
- The profession concept is very cool, and allows for lots of great little lore moments
- The size of the Pandaria digs is about ideal for the triangulation game. So much so that its the go-to for farming crates to complete artifacts from non-Panda zones
- The Legion quests and the reward structure there feels pretty good, its got tangible progress, and interesting story associated with it
- The Legion ‘pristine’ achievement seems to also be the most forgiving
- The green items that drop to help you complete items, and the random ghost mobs feel really rewarding
- The Archivist Codex currency was a decent iteration on Archaeology because it dropped from everything in Korthia, a bit like cloth would for a tailor. It was easy to collect (although it created bag clutter, and the vendor was a bit uninspired)
- The Azerothian Archives have great characters and a lot of cool cosmetic rewards that are really easy to obtain, if a little mindless
- The Draenei with the x-ray specs is probably the most successful of the Azerothian Archive quest styles
- Shoutout to the Tol Barad “Magnets, How Do They Work?” daily quest as a good way of finding hidden stuff in an easy and reasonably rewarding way
Cons
- The old achievements are brutal, the Pandarian ‘Pristine’ ones are a great example of this, the RNG is way too low and the possibility of repeat items is awful
- Repeat items also make it feel like you can never be ‘done’ or track progress
- The collect x20 of a thing achievements are too grindy and RNG
- The triangulation game itself is OK, but as a player I have very little control over what I’m finding and how long it will take. If there was better agency over the way this worked it would feel less ‘hopeless’
- As mentioned above, most of the Dig Sites are way too big and time consuming to feel rewarding.
- The interface is terrible, it is SO different from all the other professions and not intuitive as a result.
- Your progression isn’t represented well. I have no idea how much stuff is left to find without using multiple addons.
- The Archivist Codex rep grind was way too long, and there wasn’t anything on the vendor that I found memorable
- The Azerothian Archives feel incomplete, the Big Dig and the lack of rep rewards most of all.
- The Orc questgiver quests are barely intuitive and often hard to complete and/or buggy
- The story of the Big Dig doesn’t seem to fit in with DF as a whole
- The cosmetic rewards from the Big Dig, while cool - don’t have any aesthetic connection to what we are excavating
Suggestions (If Archaeology were to make a comeback)
- Let anyone with the profession learned have a chance to recieve fragments off all mobs (like in Korthia / Tailoring) but of one type, or as a currency
- Include Dig Sites for people who want to farm more specifically, but use either the Draenei X-ray Specs, or the Tol Barad daily mechanic (unless someone has a smart overhaul to make the triangulation game feel fun)
- Upgrade the profession UI to match the others more closely AND display what rewards are available/missing etc
- Keep the Azerothian Archive faction and vendors to let people spend their currency on specific items they want. Maybe a toy requires x1000 generic fragments, plus one or two mats you need to buy from the vendor, or make with other professions - but keep acquisition more deterministic than RNG (The new engineering gold-sink mount seems to have some good ideas for this)
- Bring back quests akin to the Legion weeklies for the cooler rewards (eg, ghost moose) and storylines
EDIT:
In case anyone ever sees this, I’ve also put together some mocks of what an updated version of the profession screens could look like.
We can’t embed links but it is available here https://imgur.com/a/z2IPG97
And, to save you the trip to Imgur, the idea is that the base Archaeology profession window mirrors that of say, Tailoring or Blacksmithing in that you can filter by expansion with a dropdown, and then drill down further in to say Zandalari or Drust artifacts on the left-rail of the window.
The larger, right-hand pane shows known/completed artifacts and indicates clearly how many items you are missing, and if they are common/rare/etc.
The middle tab, now used for specializations could have a variety of options like “Dig Sites” “Fragment Finding” and “Artifact Restoration” which can be applied forward and backward to make legacy Archaeology less painful, and future Archaeology more fun.
The example I’ve provided in the mock is for “Dig Sites” where you might have branched of the skill tree such as:
“Technoscying”
- Calibrate Zenata’s Technoscrying goggles for use everywhere. Find Dig Site
fragments more easily while activated. Each skill point increases the range
goggles are effective.
“Cartography”
- Discover additional dig sites across all maps, ensuring you always have access
to the artifact fragments you’re looking for.
“Memories of Bronze”
- Recall past discoveries, allowing fragment echos to appear when you
revisit a Dig Site. Each skill point increases the strength of these memories.
All of these would take the edge off the current Dig Site mini-game and give the player more agency as they interact with those zones, but are of course just examples to act as a springboard for those interested.