There’s already a mountain of threads regarding the terrible changes to refining material drops and then the huge increase in XP and adjustments to items crafted to reach max level. This post is not about those issues specifically.
In the most PTR announcement: December PTR Announcement - News | New World AGS introduces an entirely new system to crafting called Aptitude. This rewards players who have reached max level in their crafting with even more rewards. Those who either started the game late or didn’t rush crafting prior to the nerfs are already at a huge disadvantage. I’m glad AGS is adding more endgame content to create things for players to do, but this feels like another slap in the face of casual players (who make up the majority of your player base) who did not rush crafting skills to max level and only further widens the gap.
At a minimum, the XP required to reach max level crafting should be reverted back to the amount needed prior.
I think that you talk about it way too early and especially since we did not even see how the new system looks like.
It might as well be another 1-200 made in a different way above the 1-200 that we already did.
What it would be nice though is to give players rewards ( appropriate for their level of crafting ) when reaching 50+ then 100+ and then 150+ not only giving rewards for 200+ so that the entirety of the crafting system can become rewarding and not just only after the 200+ mark.
I agree with the milestone rewards but I don’t think it’s too early, they made it very clear in the notes that they are introducing a new system that you can only access after maxing your crafting which gives you additional rewards you cannot otherwise obtain.
Again, I’m not against the system at all, I think it’s a great idea, the issue with it is they already widened the gap between those who maxed their crafting before the nerfs to those attempting to now. Having crafting at that high a level already gives a huge advantage, if they’re adding even more rewards and ways to essentially level beyond max, they should allow other players to actually catch up.