Profession knowledge point catchup mechanics

Gameplay Professions
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Since we are getting into S2 of TWW soon, this is a great time to talk about the current profession knowledge point catch up mechanics, their shortcomings and what players would like to see to improvement on. I would encourage anyone who has an issue and a potential fix suggestion to post it below.

My primary issue currently is the time and gold sink the current crafting profession catch mechanic entails. Currently once you have gone through the one time knowledge point items and weekly knowledge point activities, your only way to “catch up” is through patron orders. A lot of these have long turnover times to generate new orders, or incredibly expensive mat requirements that just aren’t realistic for regular player daily consumption. (basically turning profession catch up into a wow token shill) I would very much like to see these patron orders generate faster, with more of the materials provided in the order especially when the player is significantly behind the curve on knowledge points in their chosen crafting profession.

Gathering profs are pretty straight forward…if you go out and use your gathering skill after you do the weekly activities, you have an elevated chance to get a knowledge point items up to a certain pre determined number of times while gathering. its pretty quick for mining, skinning, herbalism etc.

The folks who were grinding profs out every week will still have an edge on latecomers under the current system even if we persuaded blizz to speed the patron orders up or give us something in addition to patron orders to augment what is currently already in place. This wowhead post summarizes the current system and how to go about finding out what is available to you to “catch up” your prof with. https://www.wowhead.com/news/profession-catchup-mechanic-in-the-war-within-wowhead-economy-weekly-wrap-up-346-347616
thoughts?

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Very useful post about the mechanics involved in getting the flickers to show up. So just delay the weekly crafting quest and the dirt search till Friday at least to get more flickers and make use of the glimmer WOs lasting 7 days.

Personally, I find the streamer in that vid seem to really like the sound of his own voice. Not a lot to go on there. I do not need the history of catchups or his critics of catchups, give the info!

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I started over halfway through the season, after being absent for all of Dragonflight.

I’ve not spent a ton of gold catching up, and I’m now at the point where I’m waiting days at a time for points from patron orders, meaning I am on par with most everyone else that’s kept up on it.

It’s not a token shill, it’s a matter of players not wanting to do the work to get the materials. Need a Profaned Tinderbox? Get to doing delves! Need Sunless Carapace? Get to skinning!

Players were given a more robust crafting system, but want to be lazy. No surprise.

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Kaladnei linked to the other thread where the Flicker (catch-up) generation is discussed in more detail so I won’t touch on that directly.

Patron Orders that offer Flickers generate daily at server reset. Depending on your profession, and how far behind you are, you can see anywhere from 0 to 4 Flickers offered daily. If you are just starting a profession, those are 2-4 Flickers per day, or 60 to 120 Flickers offered per month. How much faster do want them to spawn? Especially since the longer the expansion goes on the longer the maximum amount of Flickers will be offered each day instead of the gradual decline the closer a player gets to ‘0’ that is experienced right now.

Materials can be an issue depending on how an individual chooses to address the cost issue. I let Patron Orders rot that will cost more than 1k gold per KP (my threshold of pain) every day. I also know that is increasing the amount of time it will take to complete filling the wheels, but I have also been at the point where I can craft everything likely to appear on my servers’ markets at R5 since November. A person starting now can reach that same point much more quickly and much more cheaply unless they mindlessly say “This is offered. I’m behind. I must do it!” While I do sort of agree that offering partial materials for a WO would be nice (3/6 Sanctified Alloy for Everforged Guantlets would be an example), I don’t see the difference in offered materials (and therefore cost to complete the WO) making a huge difference in player’s mindsets of whether they need to, or will, complete that particular Patron Order. Unless what you really want is for more Patron Orders to provide All materials?

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I think id be content with a slight increase in how many spawned daily with a few more of the ones with big ticket mats having a few more of those mats included. An All mat included one more frequently would be nice but some more of those big gold materials provided would be stellar.

I started a leatherworker for S2 and am currently working on farming acuity for all the vendor books. this toon had zero profession progression as of the day 11.1 went live. 60 to 120 per month in catch up KP per months using the above numbers which I have not confirmed for myself…lets use a mid point number and assume that the most common of players isn’t going to to throw thousands of gold at a patron order for a single KP and say 90 per month. That would mean it would still take almost 5 months to “catch up” a profession. thats most of a season with the profession likely not really doing a whole lot for the toon in the interim. The speed of the current catch system is a wow token shill to the nth degree and given the amount of time it takes to catch up a prof it likely discourages a lot of regular players from even messing with professions at all if they weren’t around for the very beginning of an expansion. Having said all that I enjoy the format of profs as they are now more than I did the original system that was just grind it and forget it and the catch up system blizz improvised isn’t bad mechanically. I just feel it needs to be sped up a little bit as to not seem as punishing to catch up for returning players or existing players venturing into new professions mid xpac.

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I do see your point. But I have to ask…

Player profession skill: 100/100
Green profession equipment: 18 skill
Luxurious Leathers: 30/30 = 30 skill
Shaped Leather Armor: 30/30 = 30 skill
Total skill: 178

Random epic item: Base required skill to max: 380
Base skill breakline to R4: 304

Random epic item: Required skill to max with Crest: 410
Base skill breakline to R4: 334

R3 mats: 380*0.4= 152

178 + 152 = 330 skill

304 < 330 < 334

Without a point spent in any of the individual item wheels, a LW can craft R5 on the basic Epic items. And they are four skill (made up by an Apprentice’s Crafting License (AH for 10g)) short in the worst case scenario craft.

Luxurious Leathers and Concrete Chitin have the same layout of 30-30-20, so 90 KP in each tab allows you to learn all eight Epic patterns and craft them at R5. So at 90 KP per month a new LW could craft all learned epic patterns at max rank in two months.

This does not take into account first crafts from leveling LW, the 2 KP Glimmers offered every four days, the KP treasures per zone, weekly drops, or the books. Which if they put a modicum of effort to find and acquire will get them there in 3-5 weeks instead of 8.

Yes, people who started sooner will be filling in the wheels so they can do R5 crafts without Concentration. But from the basic standard of ‘they can do the craft at max rank’ the new player is tied with the longer playing player after at worst 60 days.

How much more of a ‘catch-up’ do they need?

I do think the KP acquisition rate should increase now that we are in 11.1, and should accelerate again at 11.2, but I find the ‘catch-up’ argument less than compelling because of the math shown above.

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I agree.

If you are very far behind, you get 3 flickers per day. Suppose you are a blacksmith. 3 per day + 16 regular kp (crafting order quest, glimmers, treasures). Additionally you have 1 kp from treatises. That’s 38 points per week.

And there’s an additional book to buy with acuity (which is easy to get thanks to gathering). That gives you 50 KP. (Three artisan consortium, 1 in city of threads, 1 with undermine, each giving 10 kp)

There’s 24 KP from one -time treasures (2 treasures per zone)

There’s 88 KP from first crafts.

That’s a mind-boggling 200 KP you can get on week one.

What all of you are missing with these calculations is that

  • You cannot catch up. The catch-up only represents a portion of the points available. You’ve missed treatises and dark moon faire and those points cannot be made up. If you started now even if you get your “catch up knowledge” to zero on your addon you still wouldn’t be “caught up”
  • Your math is wrong. This is not a case of “take the total points and divide by the points you get”. You’re assuming that the person you’re “catching up to” is standing still. They’re not. It’s like an SAT question “the green car is going at a rate of X and the red car is going at a rate of Y…” But one car is going at a different rate depending on how far it is from the other.
  • Currently I believe blacksmithing has 12-13 weeks left to finish for a theoretically perfect crafter. A person starting today, yes, they would take 19 weeks, or 4.75 months, not counting in DMF and treatises. But that’s only 6-7 weeks after a person who did everything at the start of the expansion would finish. For that person it took 40 weeks (it’s been 27 weeks so far and there’s 12-13 weeks left…for blacksmithing anyway).
  • You are arriving at “completely filled tree” in less than half the time of those who started at the beginning.
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I never understand that SJW argument. Crafter from the start aren’t punished? What about 12k tinderboxes? 9k-12k alloys( you need 12 oftentimes)? 100g per friggin ORE? That not punishing for you?

You join after 1 season, lets see… Vendor for tinderboxes, the downward spiral on mats is well underway… And you get showered in flickers every friggin days??

I leveled a scribe/alchy in the celebration period, in 2 months shes got a full set of blue tools, all the books are in AND the recipes! Hell I am polishing the last of a full set of SIX tools just for the hell of it(multi/resource/inge)! Wont go for crafting speed cause that one seems so asinine to me, but it could be done fast! Already got the accessories and the secondaries full blue, with a weaverline AND a fishing cap!! Shes got tabs fully filled already! There’s no ‘punishing’ there! Is there? WHERE? Shes got 2-3 more seasons to finish!

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The issue I take with some of these points is that they seem to assume that because player A who was here at the beginning of the xpac is entitled to or more deserving of having more KP to fill trees out with than person B who showed up in time for S2 and plays out the catch up system. They are not or at least should not be treated as such. so one can assume any point I make is not sharing that assumption or belief. the hideous cost of items like tinderboxes for example was repaired because enough people called foul on a system designed to be abusive to shill for wow tokens sales and then it got changed…as it should. we as the playerbase just have to stay on top of those details so that blizzard will take what was learned from an expansion and pay that knowledge forward to the next one. (in the same vein as the debacle that has been S1 M+)

Let me be clear here though…I do like the system they have put in place for catch up on KP, the crafting professions could be just a smidge faster and little cheaper on the material/gold costs is all I’m saying… or at the very least metered to be faster and a little cheaper gold wise for the folks who are new to a prof/way behind and then tapered off to a little slower of apace the closer to teh end of teh catch up pool one gets. Somebody coming back to wow that missed a season, a player who is just picking up a new prof they had not engaged in prior or new players to wow in general. They would still have to level the first 100 points and grind out all the acuity to purchase KP books and craft blue tools/accessories. Cutting multiple months down to a month, month and a half tops for the more casual of players who isn’t grinding out every single available patron order isn’t a huge ask considering and the profession conglomerate style players who were present on day one still would not be in any danger of being dethroned since the catch up player would technically never be completely caught up to that tiny percentage of players.

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My dear dorf, get the sooth out of your eyes and read this: you are getting 3 flickers per day if you start a profession now! That is 21 flickers + the regular kps you get per week! Not to mention the one time treasures AND first crafts AND much more easy to get books! Its not fast enough?? There is no entitlement! You started later! There. You will finish later! There. Entitle this. We are NOT midway in this exp, we are at worst third of the way and at best a quarter of the way! As fast with catchups as it is, start now and you get pretty much everything covered by the end of S2. Some polishing MAYBE at the end if you really want to split hairs.

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my dear draenei, get the stick out of thee tail and read this: 3 flickers per day if all available patron orders are completed daily. A majority of players wont do a patron order if the materials required are ridiculous so that 21 flickers you are boasting of becomes a possible 21 flickers but chances are high its more like 8 to 12 on average actually acquired depending on what orders generate. which is where this discussion comes in…if the patron catch up orders generated say 4 or 5 a day with the epic POs having more of their mats provided then that 21 a week number becomes more realistic for the casuals and the try hards catching up still have a leg up. where we are in the expansion is only relevant when we get to the last season of an expansion where the catch up mechanic speed will determine if said person messes with the prof at all. arguably in this seasonal format, starting a new profession in what is known to be the final season of an expansion is a poor choice but im sure its still one that happens.

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8 to 12 flicker is still pretty good in my book. Compared to none at all in DF. That is on top of everything you get normally per week… Buut thats not enough for ya… You want a big button to jump on that gives 300 kps one shot, I see. Would prolly complain about it still anyway. Lazy, like Ellerina said. Lazy entitled late comer.

Enjoy crafting, I know I am.

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I almost want to post links to some of the various discussions regarding S1 M+ since your counterpoints pretty much mirror the naysayers that posted in those the most. Its about catering to a broader mindset towards the topic for casual players (and id wager majority), not installing an instant max KP button.

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There is a problem with it being “a little faster”.

If you start blacksmithing today, it does take roughly 5 months to complete .

If you had started at the beginning and did everything you still have roughly 3 months to go.

How fast does the OP want to go? Finish in 2 months if you start now? Then you would finish before people who started at the beginning.

Clearly that is not how a “catch up system” should work. Clearly they cannot finish before the 3 months remaining for those that started on week 1.

For smaller trees the catch-up system is even more aggressive… engineering for example, gives 21 catch up + 11 regular + 1 treatise per week = 33 kp/week. People who started from the beginning are done with this tree but the rate of catch up is 3 times. And because the max value keeps iterating in the hidden currency, they won’t slow down like someone who started a month late. They will keep getting 3 flickers per day all the way to the end of their tree, whereas someone starting a month late would have seen this dwindle to 2 then 1 then 0. In other words, the catch-up system already has an “acceleration mechanism” built in.

For trees that are done, like engineering and alchemy (less than 2 weeks remaining), I would not object to a “four flicker rule” being added. At the very least, having another boundary line would let people play the “go fish” game like the rest of us can.

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Thank you for providing how much you want to accelerate KP gain. Let’s work through what those would actually entail and cause.

I will use Blacksmithing. I have 575 KP after todays Patron Orders. Subtracting out books (40), treasures (24), and first crafts (75) leaves me with 437 KP from Patron Orders and other sources that your hypothetical player would need to catch up to me; and the people who truly have dedicated themselves to BS are even farther along.

Using your metric of 6 Flickers per day would take 437 / 6 = 72.83 days. A month longer than your goal of 1-1.5 months.

Using your metric of one to one and a half months would require:
437 / 30 = 14.567 Flickers per day
437 / 45 = 9.71 Flickers per day

Right now, my BS Flicker PO completion rate is about 65% due to material cost limits. Adjusting those numbers to account for that now makes.

72.83 / 0.65 = 112 days

14.567 / 0.65 = 22.41 Flicker POs per day
9.71 / 0.65 = 14.94 Flicker POs per day

That’s just to catch up to where I am today. Adding in another month of progress moves those numbers even higher.

As I stated earlier, I let any Patron Order with a gold cost over 1k rot. But what threshold would your hypothetical player use to determine whether they complete a Patron Order? Are they really likely to go above 1k per order? Especially as a ‘casual?’

Some server variation, but here are the current AH costs of the cheapest alloys.
Sanctified: 743.74
Ironclaw: 333.62
Charged 190.98
Core: 111.50

That means a PO asking for 2 Sanctified Alloy is a no go.
Even three Ironclaw is right at 1k, and most recipes take more than three Ironclaw.
Charged would let you go to 5 before breaking the 1k threshold.
Also, 1 Sanctified and 1 Charged would bring the cost to ~930.

These do not include Superb Beast Fangs or Storm-Touched Weapon Wraps which are about 180-700g each.

In effect you are asking for every Patron Order to provide all materials. At that point, why bother to even require materials?

But even if Blizzard redesigned the Patron Order system to provide partial materials to bring them down to the 1k threshold. Imagine being a ‘casual’ (different discussion of what is a casual), opening your Patron Orders and seeing 15 Orders offering Flickers, with each one requiring about 1k gold worth of materials. Plus the additional POs that award Acuity, and the every four day orders that provide Glimmers.

The way you are applying the casual concept, that person isn’t going to spend 15k (EDIT: or even 7k accounting for the portion of orders that would not go to the 1k limits) per day to ‘catch-up’ for 30 days. They are going to close their window and go right back to whatever they were doing before without engaging with the PO system.

All you did was accelerate the ‘try-hards’ even more and still did not bring the ‘casuals’ to participate with the system.

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Oh not to worry Solaria, the token conspiracy will rear its ugly head soon enough. Don’t you know that casuals are all crazy for token sales? That is how they pay EVERYTHING in this game… According to the lazys that is. So gold is no problem, see?

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My primaries are a blacksmith, engineer, alchemist and a scribe btw all of which have been present since day 1 of the TWW with weekly tasks completed for each week and most, not all available POs completed. using the weakauras available, two of them have no “catch up” KP available to them and other two are in low double digits and I am happy with where they are.

So i could see some fresh un modded numbers I logged in one my oldest chars that I leveled to 80 but did nothing prof wise with, it was a blacksmith in vanilla so I trained him in khaz algar blacksmithing and mining:

Not including DMF that is active currently, treasures and treatises for the week, one time treasures or any books whatsoever the weakaura shows available catch up KP through patron orders as 428 total. Naturally when one thinks of ways to speed up something to make it more useful to casuals, the mind would default to increases to the existing system. so since the couple of folks throwing numbers around here constructively believe that increasing patron order frequency and provided materials isn’t the way to go… what would your suggestions be to speed along that 428 KP a little more effectively to entice players to pursue it without it being so ridiculous to you?

Perhaps an approach inspired by the gathering profs to some degree?

Patron order system as it is now until somebody somewhere maxes all trees then allow for a chance to get a 1KP item every time you craft something? For a skill like blacksmithing I suppose a player would home on whatever has the lowest required mats and just make it until they get a specific goal or run out of catch up KP. That would still require some up front gold and time investment and not allow for a catch up mechanic to ever max a prof before somebody who has been on the grind since day one.

Obviously my goal with this discussion is coming up with feasible ways to make catching up crafting profession more desirable and useful to the more casual players of the playerbase so obviously a “what we have now is fine” isn’t constructive as my take is its too slow and expensive which has been countered with “even if frequency is increased and mats reduced to 1k g per PO the cost is still too much to entice a new/casual player to pursue it”.

whats the middle ground for you all?

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We are at the middle ground! 428 catchup means you get 3 flickers everyday for a goood long while! Try it! Do your daily flickers and regular Kps! Watch those wheels fill up so fast you will get caught up just like Elerina and my example with my scribe/alchy toon!

Watch that toon getting all its tools/accessories/books in record times sooo much faster than your first day crafter that had to scrape the barrels for every sliver of AA they could! Take another path with your second BS! Make it the alloy guy! Funnel those multicraft alloy to your starving first day crafting bs!

CRAFT!

Is that simple enough?

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Kaladnei, per my last post summarizing, as is and the proposed solution were unacceptable per all those contributing to the civil discussion. your contributions have been none of the above thus far. If you have something civil to add feel free, otherwise you know where you can stick it… elbow deep should suffice.

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And I summarize your whining posts as this: lazy crafter does not want to craft and wants a shortcut shorter than it already is! Lazy crafter also callously rope in the casuals and returning players into his delusions yet hasn’t been a casual in quite some time! Lazy crafter should go craft is all. And since lazy crafter barely crafted for his whole stay in WoW I daresay that resorting to insults is just on par for his arguments, they are lacking hence posturizing ensues.