Hello all.
First i want to say that I like the new content, despite, as usual for any mmo, there are some concerns and some bugs.
I'm not worried of bugs, they are normal in any development cycle and they will be fixed soon.
Actually these are my considerations (i reached grade 2 in toolmaker and water carrier, both easy difficulty):
1. the general concept and downtime is not really bad, considering the real downtime is from the "practice" missions, because the NPC missions can be abandoned and retaken at will, so the 8h timer showed in the Journal is really useless and should be removed. Also, all the NPC missions I tested cycle thru
4 different requests, so it's easy to save a note into notepad for future reference.
2. [OBSOLETE] the fact you cannot do grade 1 practice when you advanced to grade 2 is not a good thing. In fact, most probably we will not see any low level potions/stuff because most people will choose exp and not to take the stuff. Advancing the components allows people getting half-half but due to the high number of components lost, i suspect most people, apart of testing them, will use just the basic components.
3. Lack of a merchant to sell potions/stuff to players encourage people just to get experience and we will not see, for now, any market around potions/stuff.
4. Of course, I don't know what will happens once a player reach the master occupation, if he will be able to craft different level potions or just the max, so I can't judge for now.
5. Special items should be available in less time I think. Also we should be able to decide when we want to use them. Actually (at least for the tool of toolmaker, but i suspect it applies also for the others, such the stimulant water) it is used even if it is not in your bag.
6. Final stuff from Occupations should have a level requirements, otherwise low grade stuff will be ignored soon. In this case you also encourage more new people to work on their skills.
The final result of a job have really good statistics. Actually I have taken some water-carrier potions and some toolmaker tools both grade 1 with advanced components:
potion: +400 sap regen and +200 hp regen AURA of 10 mt. for 10 seconds (u must sit)
tool: +300 your balance for 10 seconds (didn't tested but i suppose u must sit)
The water carrier potions are AURAS so, as I suspected, even if you need to sit to activate it, people within 10mt. will benefit from the aura even if they are in combat.
Rememeber, these are very basic potions/stuff so you can imagine what stats will have high end stuff.
I found minor bugs from toolmaker and found a workaround: when you see the NPC or the "object" refuse to start a mission or to get stuff, just abandon and click some other NPC (I clicked the NPC behind the master that also is a destination of one mission), and then the previous missions will work. At least they did for me.
I found no bugs in water carrier till now.
I have also choosen Scrollmaker, but, due the fact it's seems the most bugged, I didn't started it, except for collecting the Almati Wood tickets.
Final considerations:
1. [OBSOLETE] Give us more chance to get lower grade stuff, once we advance to the next, so we start looking newbies benefit from this new content, that's what you (devs) pointed out in the patch notes.
2. balance better the downtime with the experience/caps. Seems you (devs) understood that downtimes are bad (in fact the potions are here to remove or to mitigate them) but you still fall in the same mistake: it's always better to have higher caps and less experience but at higher rate than the contrary, with big downtimes. People will feel more rewarded and less frustrated. I'm not against downtimes in general (specifically timers on missions), but I think they need some tweaking.
3. Give us merchants for potions/stuff (barmans sound the obvious choice).
That's it.
Obviously, all these considerations are done with a partial knowledge of this new content, so it's possible some of them will be obsolete once more things will be more clear.
Just a note: I'm not english native but, for some reason, I found the name "Occupations" cacophonous and, in some way, a bit scholastic (i can be wrong, ofc).
I think "Vocations" would have been much better.
All in all, I like the new content and I congratulate to the devs for this job. My concerns are not complaints but just small suggestions, based on what I understood till now.
EDIT: I tested and we are able to practice lower grade with higher components. That's good and this means my concerns about points 2 and second 1, both marked [OBSOLETE]. This makes me more happy
