Work Orders, and the need for management

Community WoW Community Council
1

It is great that people can now do Work Orders without their materials, but now we, the crafters, need to cooperate with Blizzard to apply a function of reporting obvious trickery and foul play.

We see a lot of Work Orders where it is just people hoping that the crafters press through the menu too fast without noticing that they accept that the customer has no useful materials of their own, nor is their tip befitting the cost.

We need management and reporting tools now for the Work Order system.

  • A function to sort who has materials, and who does not.
  • A function to sort for a minimum amount of materials needed (0%/25%/50%/75%/100%)
  • A function to disregard Primal Flux when making Work Orders (So customers cannot just drop X amount of flux to hope that is enough.
  • A function to report obvious attempt at trickery/foul play (Work orders where they just add 5 flux, 10g, and hope you use your materials by accident.
10 Likes
2

These are all great options to try to curtail attempts to trick crafters into using their materials.

Might I also suggest adding a warning message to crafters who take on work orders that states something along the lines of “You are about to use some of your own materials to complete this work order. Continue?” This will alert a crafter to carefully look over a work order before they proceed.

Just wanted to Edit my post: Apparently the suggestion I made has already been added in a more recent update!

8 Likes
3

Thank you so much for the feedback! We are aware of the issue where you cannot easily differentiate orders that provide reagents from ones that cannot and are working on a fix to get the same sortable column into the public orders tab as exists in the guild / personal order tabs, where it tells you if all/some/none of the reagents are provided. This should allow you to easily sort and avoid orders that don’t provide all reagents if you so wish.

As far as orders that don’t include reagents and have a poor tip, while it is possible that some players are intentionally trying to deceive crafters into making recipes at a loss, in most cases it is likely a matter of customers learning the changes to the system and experimenting with what orders will get filled. We anticipate that with time, players will learn what orders they can get filled and which ones will not.

It is important to make sure crafters have all the information they need to avoid accidentally crafting something at a loss if they did not intend it. We do predict that in some instances crafters will intentionally choose to do this in cases where they can earn skill from doing so. That said, we will be carefully watching how this change works out. We are also looking into improving the clarity of the order interface to make sure it is as clear as possible which reagents are being provided by the customer and which by the crafter. Meanwhile, you will always get a confirmation dialogue if you are about to spend some of your own reagents on an order to make sure you are aware of what you are doing.

Finally, philosophically we made this change for a few reasons.

  • We would like to open the system up as much as possible to player choice and allow the market to help determine what orders are fulfilled and which ones are not.

  • The primary purpose of the public order system is to have a low barrier to entry for players to get their items crafted. Removing the need to buy your own reagents helps with that, although it does leave the onus on the customer to provide a reasonable commission. This is something we will also be keeping an eye on.

  • We would like to see more public orders to allow more crafters to have a chance to fill them. Lowering the barrier to post orders should help with this. As players learn the system, we are also hoping the ratio of orders that include an ample tip to be worth filling also increases. Finally, we have been looking at adding new recipes that provide opportunities to use the crafting order system, for instance the Curios released in the latest patch.

  • To this point, filling public orders has required very little consideration, particularly if there aren’t many, because it was guaranteed profit as all reagents were provided by the customer (this section was slightly clarified through an edit). With the introduction of variations in reagents, the choice of whether to fill an order or not will hopefully become more interesting, where crafters are weighing costs of reagents and skill gains against potential profits or losses from filling the order.

Finally, while this thread has not mentioned the prospect of allowing public orders to specify quality, I have seen other posts that have. I want to re-emphasize that the reason we are not doing this is were we to, nearly all orders would move to be public, and most if not all would be set to require maximum quality. This would remove the opportunity for lowers skill crafters to fulfill public orders, as well as undermine the crafter gameplay and interaction that comes from building a business and getting customers to send you orders.

Thanks and as mentioned above, we will continue to watch how the crafting order system unfolds and iterate. Your feedback is always appreciated!

-Drough

6 Likes
4

Then you have to ask yourself, why have ranking at all? Players want the highest quality yes, but they also just want the path of least resistence to acquire that item.

Also from a crafter point of view, spamming trade chat saying that you can do 14 different max rank items just doesn’t seem like a fun time.

There has to be a balance of helping those who want to level, and for those who want to have max item, without looking at trade chat or relying on the lucky few who cornered the market.

This is a video game after all where we just want to enjoy nice things, not a business. Treating this profession system as a business just doesn’t seem right.

22 Likes
5

I agree with this statement.

The system has merits. It’s great for the common player who doesn’t want, or doesn’t have the time to do Raids or mythic dungeons and for Alts. However, the ranking system really hampers it. Right now, a new player, will absolutely have no way of completing orders without having a friend or creating alts to send themselves orders. And even when they get higher in “Skill” they’ll still have no way of competing to the players who have been playing longer. I still have a LONG way to go before I’m even maxed out on my professions, and I’ve played since day 1 and I was one of the people who put points into things I thought were great to find out that I was severely shooting myself in the foot later.

I also view the fact that we still have a weekly quest that requires us to accomplish up to 3 work orders thru the system isn’t what it should be. I can tell you, that every week since this expansion launched I’ve had to have an alt send myself work orders just to be able to suffice the weekly. This is really annoying, and brings about an amount of anger towards the system. Especially given that on many servers, the public order system isn’t even utilized at all, or when it is being utilized the minuscule amount of orders that do get populated are immediately taken.

13 Likes
6

I don’t believe the outright removal of the quality ranking is the right move when the shortcomings are evidently elsewhere, and as I don’t think they view it as a failure right now, I doubt it’s going anywhere. The quality is a goal to work towards, and is what the great majority of the profession talent trees influence, providing a degree of specialization between players. I personally view that as a good thing - among my group I had specialized in providing weapons, while another had done so for armor, and another phials. Maybe this is viewed as more of an advantage in smaller groups/guilds rather than an incentive to communicate with others and be able to bring something that others can’t, but it helps with the sense of community.

The public order issue is a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation when it comes to quality, so maybe you could instead sweeten the deal on both ends by providing some bonus to both the crafter and the customer. I don’t know what form it could take, but maybe a flat Resourcefulness bonus to incentivize further public orders. My other suggestion would be to have an “estimated minimum quality” based on the quality of the reagents provided, though I recognize that that would be prone to inaccuracies.

One final note, mainly in regards to Phenomenon’s mention of new players, but a way to catch up on some part on entire season’s worth of knowledge points would be welcome either by now or by 10.1.

8 Likes
7

Even on my super combined server, I havn’t seen public orders in a Long time. However, today I logged in and saw someone had placed public orders without any reagents trying to get someone to create 6 of the 34 slot bags for only 100g.

I honestly believe there is going to be more and more of this kind of behavior
 masked under the guise of “I didn’t know any better.” The new player who doesn’t understand the system, nor the cost breakdown of gathering/making the materials needed to make some of these items are going to get robbed. Especially given things like Bags, which very much have an after market ability to be sold for thousands more than what they could possibly get someone to be scammed into making for them.

12 Likes
8

We see it too often, and the solution isn’t cutting into the content but added layers/filters as to pull apart the availability of the people who keep doing this, in my book, obvious attempt at trickery.

2 Likes
9

I honestly think the system would be better off if they straight up removed the “Multiple Levels” of all the things. Go back to the way its been of 1 kind of reagent (not 3 kinds of the same), and have them create static items that can be upgraded using other things during creation or an upgrade system. Or both, both would be better.

They could then remove the private order system, It’d remove the spam in the trade chats about people screaming at the top of their lungs “LFW, I CAN MAKE LEVEL 5 (Insert 5 linked items) (Insert linked prof) Whisp for more details.”, and It’d actually make the public order system viable. I’d also remove the weekly do orders quest that many people absolutely abhor due to having to utilize alts to actually complete it. (Like myself, every week since launch).

But that’s just me. I think this new system is way too convoluted, full of the thing people hated from the WoD professions of requiring you to utilize other professions to make items in your profession, and I’m still trying to upgrade it to this day 5 months after launch. Lets not even mention that Enchanting literally still requires you to do exactly what you’ve been doing for years now, and this new system did absolutely nothing for it. You also don’t even get additional knowledge points for doing the weekly due to it literally having the most pointless crafting table ever.

6 Likes
10

I do not mind the tier crafting system, it is fine to me, it is more the other sides.

Work Orders are limited to a small catalog, should be the whole profession catalogue.

I think it is fine with the three methods of filing a Work Order, of course, the public should be 100% locked, so, no mats, no order, Guild and Private should make it available to be done with some or none of the materials.

4 Likes
11

Additional note, the ability to place people on ignore from the Work Orders, or have so you can’t see people on ignore’s Work Order.

1 Like
12

Still having to utilize alts in order to complete a weekly quest that shouldn’t exist.

Still seeing players attempting to scam players using the public order system when they have no mats included in the order.

Still lightyears behind in total knowledge. When are we expected to actually have our trees finished? When the next expansion is launching?

Also RIP my reagant tab and bag space with all of these various materials of various levels and requiring me to have materials from different professions to utilize my profession.

8 Likes
13

The weekly quest is fine, we can either use alts, or legit Work Orders - there are still a lot of them.

The scamming is the problem, hence I asked for more management tools (which they seemingly are bringing), and the mention of a ignore function, or connection to the ignore list. As well, a minimum level to place Work Orders.

Don’t think we’re meant to be done yet. I mean, I’m 12 points + a whole category still missing on my Blacksmithing, almost the same with my Engineering. There is a clear design view that we aren’t meant to be done with the tree fast, and the ones who are, have been stubborn as there are chances of knowledge dropping from world content (+1) here and there.

As for reagent bag and tab, I’ve gone so far as to give all gold (R3) to my two mains, all silver (R2) to level alts, and all bronze (R1) I almost give away to people to help them level their professions.

14

I don’t know where you’re seeing legit work orders. I’ve had to send myself work orders since week 1 of this expansion. Every. Single. Week. Unless you’re one of those players who’s actively spamming trade asking people to send you stuff and even then that’s not a guarantee to get work orders.

This Weekly quest has literally caused more strive, and hatred towards these new professions than anything else in my book. The fact that, given the math I did this morning for my tailoring alone
 I have another 30 weeks to go before I hit cap on knowledge. Which, will come out to be 48 weeks in total required to level Tailoring completely. Thats 1 month shy of a complete year. Why does this new system require nearly 11 MONTHS OF GAME TIME just to complete? And that’s just for tailoring, looking at my alt that has Blacksmithing it’s going to take a lot longer to max knowledge on it. And you’re applauding this?

The only reason this quest or the work order system hasn’t gone away is because it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s a quest that makes big numbers on blizzard’s end and they think “Oh this is a great system. It’s got so many work orders going thru”. Blizzard gets feedback saying system sucks, and they look at the “numbers”, see how massive they are because of self-fulfillment, and go “No changes are needed. but you know what, because we do have so many complaints we’ll reduce it to 3 work orders needed per week.”

The LEAST they could do is make the system not charge me for placing orders to myself. Nope, instead it’s even worse with the requirement to pay the system just for this stupid weekly quest. And If I didn’t do this weekly quest, then my 30 weeks remaining turns into 45 weeks. How this quest, alone, has so much power over how fast you can level your professions is mind boggling. Thus, it is a requirement to do if you ever want to actually finish the knowledge tree for your profession.

This new profession system has merits. It’s actually able to be utilized at max level. But My god
 The goods don’t outweigh the bads at the moment. I hope if they’re continuing on this line of thought for professions in whatever 11.0 is that they remove knowledge, the multiple levels of everything, and the requirement for me to have to utilize other professions for my profession. Keep the fact that players can craft high level gear for the common player that is up there in iLvl, but remove all of these gimmicks you placed into the game. Even with giving us a whole reagent bag, and only upgrading the total slots available with the max bags by 8
 I’ve had less space in my bags than I ever have before. It’s like they’ve taken the last decade of them trying to reduce the bag footprint and placed it into this expansion.

2 Likes
15

I guess you are playing on a slower operating community of a server, or? At least Argent Dawn EU has legit orders, not many, but still some, among the scam attempts. Most legit work orders are scalped through Trade Chat to the point where I’m almost tempted to press report for spam, if it wasn’t for the fact that they posted their profession advertisements on Trade Chat.

The Weekly quest has three functions, after all. To grant us simple and easy knowledge, to grant us simple and easy mettle, and to grant us reputation for the profession faction.

As for the total knowledge needed, we don’t know what the play is at. We just know that our professions are meant to lag behind that of end-game content until a new bone is thrown, just barely licking the next stage as the content moves forward. The reasoning of this decision, ask the developers. Most Professions will always be turned down at the party in the end, except for things like Jewelcrafting, Enchanting, or Alchemy.

We KNOW one of the reasons that the Work Order system exists though, or most should know by now, right? Unless you’re lucky that your server didn’t experience as much scamming as mine with crafting.

You are right though, Work Orders to yourself, should be free. As I’ve mentioned, Work Orders as well to Guild or Private, should have no restrictions at all. Public should be as strict as possible, get the mats, or get out, get the fee or make it yourself.

The biggest attrocity with the Work Order system is Mettle and Primal Chaos. And they missed the ball at alt-players due to Mettle and Primal Chaos - they should’ve added some 10 silver box crafting material at a vendor so that you could box up a possible BoP, turn the box to BoA, and send to an alt.

The biggest downsides to Work Orders in my book is the following:

  • Primal Chaos (Is luckily to disappear).
  • Mettle.
  • Epic Items turn BoP (No gifting, no granting to an alt (atm) without a Work Order from them).
  • The catalogue is too limited. Work Orders should include ALL tiers of crafting, from Vanilla to Dragonflight.
  • Currently too easy to make scam attempts due to open materials.

The biggest downsides to Dragonflight Professions in my book is the following:

  • The unknown state of knowledge (Unless I’ve missed it, I see no non-addon function of telling us available weekly knowledge).
  • Past level 50, we’re hitting bumps which needs Work Orders (This should be an open choice, either a WO or DO).
  • Multi-Crafting and Multi-Gathering players are crippled more than Crafting/Gathering due to a problem I’ve mentioned in another thread, we cannot designate the knowledge we find, it is locked.
  • Some Profession talents are too hidden for how powerful they are (I.e. Herbing/Mining while mounted, many fell into that hole).
  • There are no Knowledge Reset.
  • There are no Knowledge storage (I.e. Changing Professions means you lose the knowledge).
  • There are no Knowledge Catch-up (So, if you didn’t start working from week one, you’re forever going to be behind).
16

Not sure if this is the best thread for this or not
 but one thing that has never made sense to me in this expac is the treatment of multicraft in work orders.

Why does the orderer get to keep extras that are procced through multicraft, but the crafter keeps any materials saved through resourcefulness?

Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

I’m not an alchemist proccing 70+ extra 3* Ultimate elemental power potions, but I could have saved a lot on the gems I’ve cut for other people if I had been able to keep the multicrafts.

I don’t understand the logic here

2 Likes
17

I am seeing more and more people trying to abuse this new system every single day. Just today there was 9 different workorders in public to make Chronocloth bags without any reagents at way below market value.

Additionally, there was an additional 6 to make chronocloth and Azureweave without any reagents for only 55 silver.

When are we going to get actual management on this system? Or is it just a lost cause at this point to which we should just avoid this system like the plague that it has become?

I still, TO THIS DAY, have to have an alt make work orders for me just to complete the weekly quest you STILL have not removed or modified in any way. Edit: Besides the one modification of lowering it from 5 to 3. If you wish to keep this quest, it needs to be reduced again down to 1. if not all together removed entirely and players just given the knowledge it gives freely. Lets not even mention that this quest fails to even want to give anything to Enchanters.

This system needs serious work. It is not working. It has not worked. And is currently being utilized in a very wrong manner.

1 Like
18

You’re maybe throwing the baby with the bath water, here.

Is there some abuse of that system ? Yes.
Does that need work ? Indeed.
Is the system not working ? Nope. It does work. It still requires some fixes, some upgrades, but mostly, it works way better than previous iterations of crafting.

This is just a side effect to fix.

4 Likes
19

They’ve made the icon for ‘You are using your own mats’ bigger, there are multiple pop ups. I’m personally completely okay with being able to list a public order without the materials although I do think they should add a toggle option so I can choose whether I want to see them.

Another suggestion could be to make it autopopulate the commission with the current AH price of the material that you’re missing out + 10%. Of course you could go in and change that. Not sure what it’d be set to for things like mettle.

I have to say though, before we had this change and you could fulfill unlimited orders, we had another problem in which the list was completely empty. You are never going to solve this problem because the whole point of the system is to incentivise private orders.

You are meant to be advertising your profession in the Trade Channel, you are meant to be building a rapport with people who need your services as a Blacksmith, as a Leatherworker or as an Enchanter. It’s an MMO after all. I like the fact that I know who on my server I can send an order to and he’ll do it for me. I have people in my guild who can do primary stat gems, people who are skilled in Blacksmithing, people who made our Lariats in 10.0 and the guild alchemist who we try to gamble with multicrafts.

Public Orders aren’t meant to be perfect, you should be using private orders as much as feasibly possible.

I do agree that I think the weekly quest for orders should be removed or reduced to 1. People should be filling orders because they want to fulfill orders, not because they need to finish their quest for +3 Profession Knowledge.

4 Likes