Lately I read that Blizzard felt that the new crafting system was successful in providing end game relevance to professions in the form of powerful gear. I personally feel that this system is frustrating at every level, and was not worth the trade-off.
All the system has managed to accomplish, from an objective point of view:
Returned Trade Chat to being exclusively about trade. If for some reason you keep this chat on in Dragonflight, you will be pleased to be barraged with 100 “LF X Profession CRAFT x Item” flooding your chatbox per minute. Even though last expansion we had systems like auction houses that could solve this headache of sifting and posting craft requests, for some reason Blizzard thought it would be better to invalidate that core system.
Provided the largest wealth transfer in Warcraft history. Basically a handful of people on every realm are sitting on multiple gold caps throughout alt accounts while everyone else had their gold stores drained.
This is the direct result of having a hyper specialized crafting system, with permanent knowledge point commitments, that can never be altered or reset, while providing significantly more powerful gear than alternative means (+ low pattern droprates).
Turned crafting into a 2 person lottery game. Most crafting encounters are now just two people sitting outside of a mailbox, and a station respectively, hoping for their recraft gamble to succeed.
If one party runs out of materials, they have to pause the dice game to buy more and keep rolling.
This is exceptionally frustrating for both parties because the receiver cannot see the odds, has to trust the other player, and risks their gold and materials based on this trust.
It’s frustrating for the crafter because they are risking their reputation and wasting their own time hoping for the jackpot.
Personally I would rather professions be removed than this become their legacy, but I know somehow Blizzard takes pride in these results and wants to keep the same core gameplay.
I cannot think of a possible way to salvage this system without radically overhauling how specializations are formed, how public orders work, and how success chance works.
Crafting is absolutely frustrating right now, and I hope Blizzard understands this.
Reading their post, there is too much PR speak regarding how this system is “succeeding”, and not enough about how they understand the pain points and are actively working on changes.
It sounds like they aren’t going to do anything to the system for a while, when it should be a priority to make adjustments.
I’ve enjoyed it over all, though I agree it isn’t perfect. I think the main issue is Blizzard has got to stop this idea of community channels being the main source of interactions with the system. The Guild and Private sections work well, but the Public system is rough with minimal controls.
A few fixes I’d throw in:
-Connect the Craft Order Requests to the AH, giving an option to be able to buy anything you’re missing rather than having to go back and forth.
-Add a Public section for upgrading gear, with controls on quality level.
-Honestly, maybe quality level was a bad idea overall, especially for the gathered materials. My poor bags… But could try and improve before dumping.
Definitely needs some more adjustments, I think a one time reset of knowledge points would have been a good idea, and not being able to max things to 100 because of the need for materials sucks.
That’s the entire expansion. To say this one was rushed is an understatement. They did do a fairly good job of making it stable in a short amount of time though
I absolutely LOVE the profession changes. I really hope they continue with this system and make it continue to be relevant.
My biggest gripe I had with the system were the reputation and exploit glitches that occurred within the first few weeks that gave people a huge advantage.
THAT was unfortunate, and I hope Blizzard is better at vetting those out in the future, and to punish the exploiters.
But as a consumer I am really enjoying the new crafting system. High ilvl customizable gear that is readily available and costs only a small fraction of what equivalent BoEs are going for. That’s a huge win in my book.
I also havent really had any issues maxing out alchemy and easily making my money back.
The entire system is VASTLY overcomplicated. I have yet to put in or complete a single crafting order on any character, mostly because I don’t have the intellectual wherewithal to wrap my head around this system.
And
Agreed. While it makes some sort of sense early in an expansion, where people are just trying to get their hands on “Good enough for now”, everything will always funnel toward everyone only wanting the highest quality or forget it.
Its a failed experiement for sure. They will never accept it and continue with it but it is what it is.
Majority of the playerbase does not even know what work order system is.
Majority of the playerbase does not even use the system.
Majority of the playerbase who tries to get work orders to complete their weekly by sending work orders from their ALTs to just to complete it. (This alone proves that its failed)
Pretty much all of this… The only thing I’ve used it for is to make BoP armor pieces for alts. I’m sure it sounded good on paper, but the execution of it simply is one of the worst systems I’ve ever seen put into this game.
The system is many things simultaneously and some hopes we have as players may not be things they intended it to be.
I’m enjoying it a lot. I have small episodes of impatience on this long journey towards eventually maxing everything out, but that’s to be expected (I’m very happy with my new bow and have it quite a bit sooner than I anticipated)
I’d really like to be crafting more than I am (not for personal gain, but just for the fantasy of being a crafter), but I’ve never found auction house or /2 to be particularly fun to engage with. The craft order system feels is a nice quick interface that seems like a lot of fun. Alas, the player economy just isn’t generating enough demand to satiate the appetite of would-be crafters like myself.
(but to be fair, it would make mission tables look like chump change if it was generating my dream levels of demand, so that’s not a realistic hope)
I had to laugh a bit that Blizzard mimicked the FF14 system but FF14 removed the quality of gathered materials, which I wish Blizzard had followed as well.
But yeah, overall I do think the Quality part of it isn’t a good idea, especially since it controls ilvl.
I have never seen a work order for any of my professions for a pattern I have. I‘ve seen a couple pop up for patterns I don’t have, though.
Imo if they need to have quality levels, the quality should be determined by items that are added to the material cost much like how the spark is an item.
A crafter of sufficient skill will be able to craft the 5 star “upgrade” item (soul bound), which would then be a required material to add to the higher ilvl craft.
This should be transparent to both the crafter and the buyer. It would also allow a buyer to get an item made at whatever quality, and then easily find a crafter to upgrade it with the “upgrade item” with a guaranteed success rate. Because it’s a crafting material just like anything else.
In my opinion it has the same flaw as Classic’s LFG tool. It’s backwards from what it should be. In retail you start a group and people apply. In classic you wait till a group applys to you. Crafting is the same way. You don’t know what the price is because its not listed Epic SuperCuffs X gold.
From my perspective, crafter orders seem to work very well provided you have a trusted crafter whether it be a guild member or a personal contact. Public crafting orders are really where the main problem lies. The biggest disconnect I’m seeing is where we get this weekly quest to do some amount of crafting orders and I just… don’t see what they expect me to be crafting. Public crafting orders are non-existent because why would you trust a stranger and can’t guarantee the quality? All of my crafts are coming from guild members when they get their spark of inspiration and want to make it into something I specialized in.
I’m not the only leatherworker in my guild, but all our leatherworkers did coordinate in order to specialize into different things so that the guild as a whole has every option available. But how many crafting orders do you think that makes for me personally every week? Someone needs to have a spark they want crafted, they want it crafted into a leatherworker item, and they want it crafted into the thing that I specialized in. That’s not 3 orders a week like the quest seems to think, that’s more like one a month, even in a medium-sized guild.
The main problem I see is that most of the crafting orders are for one-time crafts that a customer will need once and then never again. How do you build a repeat customer-base when their future business requires them to get more sparks?
It seems to me like the crafting order system was built with two types of crafts in mind. One which I’ll call “day to day” crafts and one which I’ll call “special order.” Day to day crafts would be things like Inscriptor’s treaties. Every crafter needs a Treatise and they need one every single week. Our guild inscriptor has no problem completing his work orders quest every week because he’s making 2 treatises for every crafter in the guild every week. As far as I’m concerned, every crafter should have some kind of “day to day” crafting order available to them. But for some reason we can’t put in crafting orders for Drums or Armor kits.
“Special orders” seems to be what the current crafting orders system was designed for. A singular unique order that will only happen a couple times a raid tier because it’s limited in some way, in this case by Sparks of Inspiration or by the primal infusions for recrafting. Stuff that people will splurge on because they only need to get it right once. These will go only to the most specialized crafters that you can trust. The existing system I think works well enough for these kinds of orders but the game around them seems to be confused as to their main purpose since it’s pushing me to be fulfilling orders more frequently.
On the subject of public orders… I wonder if there should be a notification system for crafters for them? Unless I sit there babysitting the menu, I never see a public order I can actually fulfill. They disappear way too quickly. The only time I see public orders is when someone wants a high-end recipe that no one on the server has access to yet. I have that with my guild orders since someone on our guild Discord will say, “hey, placed an order for such and such” but I can’t imagine fulfilling public orders with any kind of regularity. It seems to me that the demand for work orders greatly outstrips the supply.
