Punishing by default

Gameplay Professions
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When did crafting become so punishing?

Some examples:
I didn’t play a lot of DF and stopped early-mid BFA so I didn’t know much about the crafting systems but I always enjoyed tailoring.

So, in TWW, I went Tailoring again. However, I learned it at lvl 80 because dumb me didn’t know that NOW SUDDENLY I have to learn tailoring at lvl 70 to even gets mats.

Then, I use my specialization skills (because the game tells me to do so at every given opportunity) only to now realize that I can’t even change anything and I’m basically stuck with what I chose early. Only solution: Relearn the profession, waste like 4h and tons of gold.

Now today I got my spark and I was thinking about crafting a nice piece of gear but lo and behold: My guild tells me I should wait for heroic raid.

Why is the game like this? Literally all of these scenarios is punishing by default for someone who doesn’t have full knowledge of every single part of the game.
Why does the game encourage you to skill specializations, just to then punish you for months because of your lack of knowledge?
Why does the game not auto-learn the profession that I had last expansion to not punish me for not knowing something changed?
Why does the game give me sparks and upgrade points (valor, etc.), when it’s best to just hold onto them and not use them anyway?

I really don’t understand how all these systems are implemented in such a bad state where at like every step of the way you get punished if you haven’t done multiple hours of prior research. I swear none of these WoW Devs actually play the game.

Also just to be clear; I’m not saying the game is “too hard” or not “casual friendly”. If WoW is supposed to be game where you pre-learn everything, then it might as well just not hand out rewards until they are meant to be used. Don’t tell me 10 times to skill my specializations in crafting if it’s just gonna bite me in my a** later. I don’t understand this game design.
How is it fun to have a spark in my inventory for multiple weeks? Same thing with people hoarding Keys for Delves… why Blizzard?? This doesn’t feel good.

I’m I the only one who feels this way?
Sorry for the rant, I’m just mad that my tailoring specializations are beyond repair…

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To be fair, it’s very VERY early in the expansion, I would always hold on to stuff at this point… I think a lot of what you describe is part of the discovery, part of playing the game and figuring things out as you go. While it would’ve been nice to get stuff as you level up, there’s still tons of things to do, quests, delves, dungeon - plenty of opportunity to get cloth drops.

However I fully agree with you on professions. While the lack of ability to change points makes sense (else I’d craft a robe and then re-allocate my points for some other extra stuff… clearly not intended) but the game / trainers / NPCs should to a better job at warning you that you are stuck with what you pick.

Also, the “spend a crazy amount of mats to raise skill points” system like Enchanting is just… meh. It makes me want to not even care about professions which are usually one of my favourite parts of the game. It’s hardly different from “pay 10k g for a skill point”.

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Yes and it was 100% my fault for just going in head first and trying to enjoy my time.
But then again, I really despise that all these systems were created in a way, where “holding off” is almost a must.
Like I remember people going mad about “time-gating” and it seems we now have actual time-gating but on top of that, we also have all these systems that soft time-gate too. You can use it, but you don’t really want to use it. So in effect it’s still time-gated.

Yea you’re 100% right and not getting the cloth drops is the least of my problems. I’m not gold-starved, so I can just buy the mats and I don’t really care too much.
I mentioned it more so to paint the picture of how Blizzard has messsed this all up imo.

Yes, this. I wish I could find almost all Info that I need In-Game. But that never really was the case and I’m really not sure if it’s worse now than it was in classic/tbc.