So I really like how the professions operate just from a gameplay perspective. I like how they all connect into one another, and it was really fun at the start. Unfortunately, it gets kinda hard to really care about leveling certain professions once the shine of it all wears off. Part of it can be attributed to some professions being a lot more enjoyable to partake in than others, and ideally I would like those to be changed to be "more fun", but that's highly subjective and a huge undertaking. So I think an alternative solution could be to just add more incentives. And that finally brings me to the actual suggestion: add questlines to professions.

The very basic idea is just for every [arbitrary number] of levels have the NPC ask us to perform a specific task in exchange for a reward. Ideally there would be some storyline stringing these tasks together with your progression, but that's it! We already have a campaign that's building to something big, so I think having some more low-key plots could be fun. This will also give us an opportunity to get to know all the NPCs better. We're already going to be investing time and effort clicking around these pages, so why not shine some light on them too?

Though I think the bigger draw to this idea is probably going to be the potential for rewards. I think what would be most appreciated as a reward is Moonstones or MS shards, like how winning the pageant gives 10-30 shards. One common point of criticism since launch was having profession upgrades be locked behind MS. I'm vaguely aware the reasoning behind the upgrades has been something to the effect of "they're just for people who want more convenience" but considering just how much you are able to expand pots/minecarts, I think it's pretty fair for the average person to assume they're expected to upgrade at least once as a natural progression of the game. Therefore, it would make perfect sense for a players progression to directly lead into an upgrade instead of having to grind for weeks.

If Moonstones or shards aren't viable as even the occasional milestone rewards, other options include pebbles, vouchers, recipes, or apparel.

So yeah, that's everything I think! I'd love to hear what everyone thinks.

I like this as a starting point for the overhaul that the professions rather badly need, being able to finance your own upgrades over time with interactive quest elements (thus leaving the "premium option" to be more genuinely a "time saver" instead of something that shoves you so aggressively towards spending with the ever-increasing costs of... well, everything; Link has a guide for the full MS cost of upgrades here if you need more visualization of that data) would be a really welcome change to the heavy-handed monetization structure of the site. They need to keep the lights on, and that's totally fine and respectable-- but it would be better served with regular content updates-- markings, apparel and CA sales than through the closest thing we have to a "progression" system. A lot of Lorwolf's systems seem designed to annoy you into spending, and I think that's really unfortunate, doubly so if that wasn't the intended goal.

Fleshing out the site npcs and making the professions more worthwhile to participate in at the same time through little quests would be awesome if they were implemented well; giving players a lot of attainable, modest goals to work towards and not long, grindy busywork just there to make the paid option more attractive. I'd love to see professions become more polished and fun to engage with, and I'm sure we are not alone in that.

I think it would be very worthwhile even to delay other planned professions until something like this was tackled first, so they aren't playing catch up any longer than necessary.

Nudging this a little because while I see achievements are kind of filling in the gap of making aspects of the game feel like they have progression, it.. doesn't really do it for me. It still feels really disconnected and the amount of work you have to put in to get some of the higher achievements feels a little extreme. Maybe that's just me though.