Mastering a Profession vs. Jack of all Trades Profession

Just wondering what you guys think professions will be like. From my understanding, there will be the option to go deep or to go wide with professions. For those that don't understand, going deep means picking one of the 3 professions and mastering that, and going wide means doing a little bit of multiple professions.

The way I understand, Intrepid wants to design it is that not many people will be masters of professions. Since you will need many of the lower profession items to make the higher profession items, you will need a lot more people making the lower items than the higher. Therefore, if a guild has a couple Masters in each profession, and many jack of all trades, then this kinda equals out?

I know this is highly speculative right now, just wondering what ya'lls thoughts on it is.

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CROW3

My hope is that we'll see more specialists than generalists, since this will help the shared economy. My guess is that we'll probably see a stair-stepped curve over time since you will most likely have more generalists in the beginning before nodes are developed and the broader macro economy has been established. As the economy settles, trading routes become more established, and there's greater stability across the crafting supply chain that you'll see much higher mastery levels.

As a master sword maker, meaning I only make swords and none of the non-sword components, I'm heavily dependent on the underlying crafters and supply chain to get the materials / components I need.

Just my two cents though. Good question - I'm curious to see others' responses.

ptitoine

I have High hopes and high Demand for crafting even tough i probably not gonna upgrade one XD

I plan to Master the religion of Verra and become a High Priest

McShave

CROW3 wrote: »

As a master sword maker, meaning I only make swords and none of the non-sword components, I'm heavily dependent on the underlying crafters and supply chain to get the materials / components I need.

That is also a question I have. Do you master sword making or more generally weapon making? I am interested to see how they implement this specializing. Would it be more like a profession "talent" tree, where the further you go the more specialized you get, or some other system?

I got too many questions lol

George_Black

My understanding is one character cant be self seficient in a game with social economy. See what happens in games like ESO. The market is a competition of who has the cheapest stack of items.

So, IS wants to limit a characters ability to only one profession besides the adventure class.

People should get ready to face the reality that only one profession will bring you wealth.

The rest is fancy words, pipe dreams and misunderstandings.

McShave

George Black wrote: »

People should get ready to face the reality that only one profession will bring you wealth.

Can you expand in this statement? Why do you think this, and which do you think will be the "one"?

George_Black

Because IS said they want to bring social gameplay back to mmos, instead of the singleplayer experience, and NPC gameplay.

There are designs for goods transportations, player made shops instead of auction house economy, raw material designation based on map areas, and an overall interdependancy of systems.

If people could make money from many professions, all the above are pointless. There would be unlimited items to sell and buy easily.

I dont think IS would sacrifice the game model just so that people can RP being a carpenter and a cook and a blacksmith and and and and...
Be ready to see that you will only progress at a meaningful lv on only one prefession.
Forget about masters and jacks ofthe all trades.

Enigmatic Sage

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Gathering
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Processing
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Crafting

lots of info there

McShave

George Black wrote: »

Because IS said they want to bring social gameplay back to mmos, instead of the singleplayer experience, and NPC gameplay.

There are designs for goods transportations, player made shops instead of auction house economy, raw material designation based on map areas, and an overall interdependancy of systems.

If people could make money from many professions, all the above are pointless. There would be unlimited items to sell and buy easily.

I dont think IS would sacrifice the game model just so that people can RP being a carpenter and a cook and a blacksmith and and and and...
Be ready to see that you will only progress at a meaningful lv on only one prefession.
Forget about masters and jacks ofthe all trades.

Oh, so you are saying that everyone will be specializing instead of going general. You are probably correct in that those that specialize will make the most money. You also mentioned a lot of reasons why I am so excited to get into the game, it is changing up the formula quite a lot.

It is important to keep in mind the fundamental principle of economics, supply vs demand. What happens in game will depend on how IS implement how much supply you will need to achieve your goals in professions. If you need 100 of a tier 1 resource to create 1 tier 4 resource, then how many people do you need making tier 4 resources compared to how many people making tier 1 resources?

McShave

Enigmatic Sage wrote: »

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Gathering
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Processing
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Crafting

lots of info there

yup. a lot of theoreticals, but we still don't know how it is going to practically play out. Hopefully they have an idea of what the final design will be like when Alpha 2 comes out.

George_Black

Supply and demand... hmmm...
In ESO you need a few things in order to function:
Base gear mats to craft the useful sets
Golden mats to enchance your set
Glyphs, to add stats to your gear
Potions and food

For the above you would need:
Blacksmith or leatherworker or clothier
Gatherers processing raw mats
Enchanters
Alchemists and cooks

My character has all the above professions maxed out. Mastered. I am a master crafter in all ESO professions.

Do you think I craft potions and food? Do you think I process raw mats to get golden mats?
I dont gather anything. I dont craft anything except glyphs and gear (which means I never buy glyphs and gear mats).

I only buy potions. That's my contribution to the economy because I cant be bothered looking for ingredients.

As a master crafter I dont sell anything.
Where does my gold come from? All I need is a couple raid drops a month which I sell to my random LFG raid group. And I buy my potions from the "auction houses"

This is what happens when you prefer quantity over quality. That is why IS will allow players to benefit from only one profession. You wont be able to go far with more than one. As for the concept of Tier 1 and Tier High goods, I seriously doubt that people will bother to compete for peanuts, switching between all their "Tier 1" professions. Why bother? Why run around to make peanuts from all your, rightly so, undeveloped professions?

Enigmatic Sage

McShave wrote: »

Enigmatic Sage wrote: »

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Gathering
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Processing
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Crafting

lots of info there

yup. a lot of theoreticals, but we still don't know how it is going to practically play out. Hopefully they have an idea of what the final design will be like when Alpha 2 comes out.

There was mention of being able to master three professions in each artisan tree while being able to do basics in others or at very least within same artisan tree. There are quite a few threads similar to this one already with similar information.
What you're talking about with guilds having multiple crafters is no different than most MMORPG games with crafting. Yes, there could multiple people in the same guild and node that master similar things. Crafted items and PvE drops were mentioned to be on par with each other with the possibility of PvE items being slightly better. By how much? who knows right now.

BaSkA_9x2

McShave wrote: »

From my understanding, there will be the option to go deep or to go wide with professions. For those that don't understand, going deep means picking one of the 3 professions and mastering that, and going wide means doing a little bit of multiple professions.

Just to be clear because the nomenclature can be a bit confusing: Artisan Skill Trees are the big three options I believe you called profession: Gathering, Processing and Crafting. The Professions are the paths in each Artisan Skill Tree (for example in Gathering: woodcutting, farming, fishing and mining).With that said, I think your premise might be incorrect:

Players must choose a path in the artisan skill tree for each character. Within each of the three parent artisan paths (Gathering, Processing and Crafting) there are different professions. A character may only ever master one of these parent paths.

From my understanding, you'll only be able to choose one out of the three Artisan skill trees. So you can either chop down a tree or turn logs into arrow shafts or turn arrow shafts into arrows, only one of those.

Once you choose an Artisan skill tree, you might be able to master all Professions in it, but it's not decided yet:

It is possible to master multiple professions (but not all) within a parent artisan path, but this will be a long and labor intensive feat, requiring many resources.
A player may only master a profession if they have achieved the artisan path mastery.

Based on testing, it may be decided to limit profession mastery certificates to a capped value.

Gathering is a parent artisan path, along with processing and crafting. Within each of the three parent paths lies different professions. You may only ever master one parent path. But you may spend time mastering each profession within the parent artisan path.

Becoming a master Crafter or a master Processor or a master Gatherer should be a significant time investment and resource investment; and because of that it should also be something that when you achieve that status it's like people on the server know who you are.

Maybe you'll be able to perform extremely basic actions in all three Artisan skills (jack of all trades), but I don't think that information has ever been confirmed.

McShave wrote: »

The way I understand, Intrepid wants to design it is that not many people will be masters of professions. Since you will need many of the lower profession items to make the higher profession items, you will need a lot more people making the lower items than the higher. Therefore, if a guild has a couple Masters in each profession, and many jack of all trades, then this kinda equals out?

Not really, honestly. The way I see it a guild will probably focus on only one player to master each profession in Processing and Crafting, but they'll need a lot of people to feed resources to these players before they reach Master status. And I'm not sure people will be able to reach such status by processing/crafting tier 1 items repeatedly, it's probably gonna be exponential. Gathering will probably be very profitable, but I'm sure high tier resources will be camped 24 hours a day.

Tyranthraxus

It feels like our casuals and occasional players will largely be useful in the lower parts of the supply chains. If it's really going to be akin to Star Wars: Galaxies crafting system, there will be few people who are making the highest-end stuff, given the time and resources it would take to churn out the biggest stuff.

All-in-all, it feels like it's heading in the right direction. Those of us who will invest more time in the game will have it show, in our capacities.

McShave

@BaSkA13

Thank you for your post, I have learned a good amount, including the correct terminology. I think my whole argument was based off a misunderstanding from this quote:

Players can dabble in all professions at a "beginners" level before they decide to master a particular pathway.

From what I understand now, you can only ever partake in one artisan skill (gathering, processing, crafting), but you can generalize inside that skill before picking a specific profession (specialization of that skill). What I though is that you can "dabble" in all artisan skills before choosing one, which I guess is incorrect.

Well, at the end of the day, it will all become clear in testing. I understand that Intrepid wants players to pick and specialize in one of the 3 artisan skills, which will create interdependencies, but I still think it would be valuable for a single character to partake in the basics of each (like tier 1 gathering, processing, and crafting) for reasons mentioned in my op.

getpatxi

McShave wrote: »

@BaSkA13

From what I understand now, you can only ever partake in one artisan skill (gathering, processing, crafting), but you can generalize inside that skill before picking a specific profession (specialization of that skill). What I though is that you can "dabble" in all artisan skills before choosing one, which I guess is incorrect.

.

I think you can choose one of each
Let's imagine that 5 professions of each

1 collection level max 1 processing level max 1 manufacturing level max
2 collection level 50% 2 processing level 50% 2 manufacturing level 50%
3 collection level 20% 3 processing level 20% 3 manufacturing level 20%

Ravudha

getpatxi wrote: »

McShave wrote: »

@BaSkA13

From what I understand now, you can only ever partake in one artisan skill (gathering, processing, crafting), but you can generalize inside that skill before picking a specific profession (specialization of that skill). What I though is that you can "dabble" in all artisan skills before choosing one, which I guess is incorrect.

.

I think you can choose one of each
Let's imagine that 5 professions of each

1 collection level max 1 processing level max 1 manufacturing level max
2 collection level 50% 2 processing level 50% 2 manufacturing level 50%
3 collection level 20% 3 processing level 20% 3 manufacturing level 20%

You can dabble in all 3 trees at a beginners level to try them out, but you can only master/max professions in one of the trees (gathering, processing, or crafting).

We don't know what 'beginner' really means or the exact number of professions within a tree you can master.

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