Comparing crafting to IRL job has been very accurate from my experience. Sometimes it's pleasent and straightforward. Sometimes it's downright tilting and makes me question "Why even bother?". I have been accused of "lying", "ninja-ing mats" and other very ridicilous accusations.Luckily whenever someone wants to vent why they were "scammed" for 1k and didn't get r5 embelishment on first recraft and kept sending recrafts without mats...they get what they deserve. Crafter usually stick up for eachother and try to "kindly" explain why the "customer is right" isn't always true...A few tips for fellow crafters. You're NOT on payroll, it's NOT your obligation to explain/recraft/hold hand/do underprice. It's up to YOU to decide if it's worth the comission/tip. If someone threatens to accuse or "report you to Riot" just put them on ignore (irl or literally). Not worth your time.It IS the "customer" to do minimal research before demanding something, so you don't owe anybody nothing. They need YOU, not other way around.Usually when someone starts asking/demanding a 12 page essay on my inspire %, specialisation pts and similar I tend to ignore, unless comission is good and its worth my time. (Something about ppl asking for inspire on CLOTH that recrafts for 50g is tilting) Despite being fully maxed, which somehow is too "confusing: for them and they keep asking xd
For me one of the problems with professions is ranks. It's not a new system but I've never liked it. I saw people providing rank 1 or 2 materials and expecting a R5 item. Public orders are full of scammers, and unless you have the time and will to sit there and spam trade chat you are not making money with professions.
It can cost 6k+ just to buy ingredients, so 1k commission makes sense.
I just love the crests system, they provide the materials EXCEPT the Dracothyst and expect me to make the crest for 1000gold. While the Dracothyst alone is 7k-10k. Why in the world would they try to scam crafters so hard! Makes me mad. If the mats are provided I make everything from 100g to 2500g I do make the expensive ones first ofc.
Ugh. As someone who used to work in retail, this post rings so true to me.
I would sum up the problems with the profession system the same way I would sum up problems with Dragonriding; it's too engaging. You can't fly anywhere unless your attention is 100% engaged with the game, or else you will crash/stall. The only alternative is a flightpath with 0% engagement. Likewise, it's all or nothing with proffessions; either burn yourself out being 100% engaged with the system, or get nowhere because you can only craft scraps for minimal/non-existant ROI.Professions need a middle of the road option that is to this professions system what traditional flying is to dragonriding: go at your own pace, get to where you want to go eventually, without the risk of catastrophic failure if you can't give 100%, even if it's not as fast or as efficient as it is for the people who can/do give 100%.
I'm one of the few crafters on my realm who has most crafts at a high level, plays a lot and has a lot of the patterns. Yet I rarely engage with the Craft Order system simply because, on the few times I do engage with players outside my Guild, it's often an exhausting process explaining the entire Craft Order process (including for several people, starting with where, and how, to place a Craft Order) with all the complexities of Decay (yes, I can craft it, yes, I have to spend 10 minutes of my time flying to Brackenhide Hollow, remembering to renew the raid lock before I enter, and run to the end of the bloody dungeon to craft it), R5 not being a guaranteed proc and requiring a crafter to use their own time-gated material to increase the chance of an Inspiration proc, and requiring R3 materials to increase that chance when you (later on) recraft to a higher iLevel item. Then there's recrafting, optional reagents, five different types of upgrade items... The buyer shouldn't have to know this complexity, nor have to make several trips to the Auction House to buy the materials and recraft materials.My worst one took almost two hours, logging 5 characters to determine which weapon (BS and Scribe), LW for armour, and craft the various materials (enchanter for crests) , and two trips to Brackenhide and back (they wanted a stat recraft afterwards) - all for a total of 7,000 gold commission. It didn't help that they didn't really know what was BiS for their class. I'm pretty sure I could have made more from simply doing world quests on those 4 alts in that time.If this system goes forward, as a minimum it needs:
As for commissions, my rule is: if World Quest are like ~1000g, I pay as much as x4 that, depending on the rarity and quality. It's paying about what you could get in ~20min of outdoor in one click.
Blizz: Hey, you can get raid quality gear made by a crafter, so that you can be allowed into a raid.Also Blizz: the recipe requires things only found in a raid, BOP.
They designed leveling tradeskills around completing work orders, only for most profs outside of launch week, these are none existant. This means leveling tradeskills takes a looooottt of gold and/or effort, which outside of a few lucky profs is near impossible to recup.I think I liked the work order system at the start of DF, but it now it has turned into scammers, people who dont understand the system, or worse.. the constant trade chat spam (try being on a high pop server) - All fundamental failings of the UX.
In fact the public work orders are currently completely useless. When you want to order a high quality craft, first go to trade chat, ask for people who can do it, ask them what they want or need and then place a personal order.In public work orders you cannot ask people what skill they have, and you cannot require a minimum quality, so what you get in the end is completely random.So to fix public orders Blizzard should do:
My biggest issues with professions are the time sink (and time gate) involved in getting knowledge points, the time sink in getting enough rep with every faction to get patterns, the gold sink involved in raising your skill because skill ups were tied to the order system which nobody uses except for a few items (not engineering!) and if you went down the wrong tree you're doubly screwed, the time sink trying to fish up patterns or run raids in hopes that something drops, and the gold sink to buy them off the AH when that doesn't pan out. Also, the professions are not equal in burden. It's super easy to max out Alchemy skill with potion/phial research but leatherworkers are forced to craft spark-requiring work order armor to skill up. And why is the blacksmithing armor tree 390 KP while cloth armor is 240 and leather is 250? Or, why do some professions need a ton of artisan mettle because they cannot guarantee a five star even with everything maxed out while others have no use for it (like my gatherers). It's maddening to be a few points shy of the recipe difficulty with no way to improve that other than blow an insight on overkill.On the one hand, it's kind of cool that I got lucky with the lariat pattern and can make those for the guild and I'm one of the few crafters who stuck it out. On the other hand, it's a bummer that so many people gave up on crafting because it's too complicated and too much of a grind to get anywhere, especially with its reliance on work orders to skill up. I was able to craft gear for my alts but not everyone has that option. I think the concept is great but the implementation has problems. I also agree with others who've said this should have been integrated into the AH.Finally, I don't mind having the zero mat people in the public order system. I'll sometimes make an item if the compensation is high enough for me to sacrifice one of my four crafts for the day/week/whatever that is. While some people are scamming, others offer up things that are worth a skill point so maybe a crafter will make it despite having no mats and a bad tip.I forgot to add another pet peeve - no way to respec if you made a mistake. I get that they don't want people to slosh points around to max craft anything, but boy is it debilitating if you went down the wrong tree and can't skill up.
As soon as I did my first few work orders and realized how annoying both buyers and crafters are to deal with, I just started gathering weekly Knowledge on all my alts and maxed out all the branches I have any interest in, so I can just put Work Orders to my alts and never have to publicly interact with this system. If I ever need something crafted I can just do it at max rank, for free, without any waiting, and as for making money myself.. I just do it elsewhere, this system isn't worth the stress/annoyance for me.(This is not a "just do this lol" recommendation, I'm aware this takes more time than some people want to spend. Just stating my personal experience with this system)
If it takes me weeks/months to get the Knowledge points to max rank a craft, I'm going to charge based off that time investment and the time for me to stand there in trade waiting for someone to need a craft. People think crafting has 0 time investment. To max rank multiple crafts and multiple professions, it almost takes up all available time you would have to play the game. It takes weeks to get a crafting profession in the profits(enchanting, JC, BS) tipping 1k gold is cheap and you are cheap if you do that. 1k tip passes in classic when people arent inundated with gold, but witht he avg retail player having hundreds of thousands, 1k is super cheap and you just want your crafts at the lowest cost to you. Go learn the profession, get the recipes and the grind yourself in that case.
There is no thing like "work orders" on my realm. Zero. Nothing. No one puts up work orders, so no one can fulfill any. So the "Do X work orders" quests are totally impossible to do.