They have repeatedly promoted the idea of an economy of niche specialists, so I presume that’s what they are trying to engineer, both by forcing commitment to a path and by drawing out the progression across half the expansion.
I feel like many of us are wading uphill through the snow in defiance of their stated intent in our determination to become generalist-completionists.
you have hit your daily keypress allotment for the day
don’t worry net neutrality isn’t needed either
Yep, I edited my post prior to this reply with the correct math.
WoW is a timegated game, it has been for years now. Though I agree that it’s kinda dumb to timegate something like this, it’s the system we have to work with.
There are ways around the timegate if you’re a sweatlord. For example you have a ton of AA on the table with skinning and enchanting that you can go get. Once you max them out drop them and get your mining or herbing (whatever one you dropped) again. All your points will still be there, you will just need to re level it from 1 to 100. And that don’t take long at all.
But like I said - - I 100% agree with you that time gating professions is kinda dumb. But it is what it is.
it’s okay not to understand some decisions. You’re not a game developer so it makes sense not to understand some things.
Time-gating isn’t a solution to that percieved problem.
That problem doesn’t even exist, we already have niche specialists. I’m a smythe. I can’t make potions.
All the time-gating of knowledge does is make dedicated generalists work four times as hard. I could very easily have multiple smythes who specialize in different things. One smelter (I hate that’s not part of mining any more), one tool-maker, one armour smythe, one weapon smythe. That actually used to be a thing even back in vanilla (weapon/armour smything). But around WotLK (the height of WoW’s popularity and profitability) they decided it was dumb and stopped doing it.
This game can’t be EVE Online, and while it could learn a thing or two from EVE’s market UI and function (::cough buy orders cough sales price graphs cough:: ), it’s never going to have the same economic aspects that game has without SERIOUS over-hauls that probably only about 0.0001% of the player base wants.
WoW should be content with being WoW and not try to be other games.
I hate the whole crafting system. It’s neither fun nor engaging. I don’t need another job.
In DF, acuity was mainly a time gate since we got some free every week.
In TWW, it is a time gate and a gold sink.
But, gathering the required mats is already a time gate and a gold sink. Acuity just adds more unnecessary complexity and cost.
Let’s not forget that many crafters need to also spend acuity on profession recipes, turning those into another resource sink … for which there’s very little return. You’re stuck in a loop of acquiring and spending acuity if you want the recipes with which to make things. Not insurmountable, but annoying. Especially if you have a double crafter.
And meanwhile, people game the system with the acuity shuffle, which feels like a vastly unintended consequence and really imbalances things.
There could be a better balance between acquisition of artisan’s acuity, and what you spend it on. Or heck, make it warband transferrable.
(Except then people would just create alts, and mail it all to their mains. An even worse version of the shuffle. Ugh.)
I agree its not a good look that for the second time in a row, crafting started with a major exploit live at launch.
What is this “acuity shuffle”?
Learning/unlearning professions to collect the treasures and do easy first crafts on each to gain artistan’s aculity before learning the profession you actually want to use.
I didn’t participate in it because (a) it seemed like an exploit and (b) I don’t want to lose all my legacy recipes/progress. So I don’t have details on how much AA can be earned this way, whether it still works or whether there any other quirks one needs to be aware of. But at one point it was being recommended in several TWW profession guides.
It adds nothing but time gating grind - so it has no player value to the game.
Bliz is pretty much giving away champion gear so why are they making crafting like it is some elite hard to get gear. I have been a Blacksmith like 20 years and maxed out all expansions except DF and TWW. The artisan’s acuity is the worst let alone hundreds and hundreds of skill points required and if you put points in the wrong place you’re screwed and can’t make much to level. You used to level up by crafting and learn from the trainer as you go. Elite drops from bosses got you the finer recipes so simple but now. SIGH…
They’ve timegated it way too much and being stingy with the knowledge points. I’ve been staying on my blacksmiting daily and am STILL behind. The other crafts I do that I dont work on daily, I have stacked points into the moneymakers, that’s it.
On most of my alts i have the blue profession gear on their primary profs, and starting to have left-over acuity. Which is a good thing right? Wrong you cant buy any KP with it after you’ve visited every NPC who has those boosts. I’ve already been to the City of Threads etc. You can only buy mats with it that you get from the Artisian’s Consortium guy in Dornogal.
On my engineer I’ve been chasing the PVP bracers dragon for a couple of weeks. Saw a public order, turned in my honor for the recipe, learned it and the public order was gone. Ok I missed the boat on that one, it happens.
A week later not one but two orders popped up for the PVP bracers, but I couldn’t craft them because i hadn’t piled 20 points into bracers for the extra embellishments. So another order passes me by while I somehow try to grind 20 KP points into a niche item I may never see posted again. So goes crafting.