7 replies to this topic

[WowRefugee]

Several recent posts have discussed various issues concerning the balance between gathering professions and crafting professions.   For example:
 

http://forums.hunted...showtopic=57540

http://forums.hunted...showtopic=57551

 

Another issue to consider is XP potion duration.   At 1 and 2 hours, they are fairly long.  While it is possible to spend an hour gathering something, 2 is a bit much.  Better if they were 1/2 and 1 hours (for a correspondingly reduced EP price).

 

More importantly, the 1 hour XP potion is way, way too much time for any reasonable concentrated crafting effort.   You simply can't carry enough mats, with the most lavish collections of large bags and lots of sacks to be crafting for even 20 minutes, usually far less.  The rest of the time will go to waste.

 

In addition to tuning the duration of potions to 1/2 and 1 hour, an additional possible solution that approaches all of this from a completely different direction is to increase crafting time and XP gain from crafting something.  By at least a factor of 5, and arguably more.   So (hypothetically) while processing gathered mats into crafting-ready goods happens quickly (at the current rate) and give some modest gathering-skill XP;  crafting finished goods is time-consuming, and by the principle that the amount of time/effort spent is  proportional to the XP gained, the XP yield from this effort the correspondingly increased.  This will improve the XP balance between the gathering and crafting professions in general.

 

The longer time spent crafting each item will also allow the XP potion duration to cover the full time spent crafting, justifying it's use.

 

This would be in addition to tuning crafting XP gain (and time, I suppose) to be greater for special recipes - those containing rare mats and generating special items (blues or higher).

[ernzor]

The crafting potions I bought the 1 hour long ones and like you said I was using up all my resources (1500) in about 20 mins, if that.

[Irradiated]

While I'd prefer to increase the crafting time/xp, I think reducing the potion time works better.  The change is much more straightforward.

 

Just increasing the crafting time/xp reduces the number of gathered materials necessary, creating an imbalance.  Increasing the number of materials required for each crafted item just puts us back where we started.

 

The only way I can see the increase time idea working is by reducing the drop rates of materials by a corresponding amount.

[Irradiated]

Just upped my leatherworking from 15 to 18, and so I'm amending my previous comment.

 

My opinion had been colored by the old 'repeatable' quests.  It was too easy to level, except when they required rare materials.  But now the pendulum has swung the other way.

 

Gathering the materials was an endless grind.  And even with an XP potion, I only advanced 3 levels.  When I think ahead to reaching 30, it will only get worse.  Reaching 30 should be a real achievement, and in the future some mats will be buyable from the AH/market, but this is still a bit much.

 

So perhaps increasing the time/xp will work, requiring less materials.  Some balancing may still be required, but reducing the amount of materials does make sense.

[thickenergy]

There's an easy way to level your crafting while gathering very few materials. Only raise your crafting skills by doing the repeatable quests. Spend the rest of your time doing other things, or perhaps gather materials and do the dailies for every craft.

 

As an example, I'm currently level 24 in armorsmithing. It will take doing the repeatable quest approximately 11 times to reach level 25. I can either go gather a handful of materials each day or make one trip for all the materials I'll need to do the quest 11 times. All I have to do is spend a very small amount of time each day, for 11 days, on my armorsmithing and I'll reach the next level.

 

Here's the thing. If you spend all your play time doing the same thing over and over endlessly, then OF COURSE whatever you're doing is going to feel like a grind. If you insist on leveling a crafting skill as quickly as you possibly can then that's on you. Nobody is making you do that. There are easier alternatives that don't require you to grind.

 

Just doing the repeatable quests every day, anybody can be a master craftsman in every craft in like three months time. With very little play time invested. That's without using XP potions. It doesn't get much easier than that. If you choose the path of the grind, that's your choice, but it's certainly not required.

[WowRefugee]

One main goal I have in levelling my crafting skills (or at least the ones I care about as a mage: Tailoring, Weaponsmithing, Alchemy, and Cooking) is to make things that are usable for my character.  If I just did dailies and was leveling and not level-capped, my skills would fall way behind.  This is not good.

[thickenergy]

If you're spending all day grinding out your crafting skill then you're not going to be leveling quickly anyway. In the early crafting levels it's very easy to stay ahead of the curve in terms of what you can actually use. It takes making around 30 or 40 items or so to reach level 5 in a crafting skill. Which is good for up to level 10 or 15 in adventuring levels, depending on if the crafted product is gear or a consumable.

 

The more you increase your crafting skill the more potent the rewards are from the daily quests. It takes fewer daily quests to level from 24-25 than it does to level from 2-3. So in the very early levels production quantity is a more important aspect. But you're producing very few items to see an increase in skill in those early levels.

 

Basically, you can do the same thing for hours on end needlessly and make the game feel like a grind or you can balance what you do during a play session. Keeping your crafting skills where you need them as well as questing, etc. all without any sort of grind. The crafting system in the game certainly isn't perfectly balanced but this whole grinding issue is a problem of mindset, not mechanics.

[Irradiated]

Seems I was starting to test your method anyway, without trying.  My CC is currently 13, and my JC is 11.  I put both aside for other crafts a couple of days ago, except for the quests.  I'll see how it goes.

 

Though I think WowRefugee is correct.  One level every 11 days sounds rather slow, even if that pace maintains.