No more Discoveries

[Kevin]

Well, in principle having the recipes on the discovery system is not really different than making them rare world or dungeon drops. But it is just frustrating that for a person or a guild, there is nothing you can really do to get a specific recipe. It's like if talent points were given our randomly every 5-50 bubbles of exp, and when you got one it was randomly picked from the talents available.

Discoveries would be cool if they worked like I thought they did at first. If all discoveries were also rare drops (either world or in some dungeon) I think they would be really neat. It would mean that the alchemist who would never get into heroic Arcatraz or who doesn't have 300 hours to camp the 8 mobs in the entire world that can drop the pattern might still be able to get it. But that a guild or a person with a lot of time would have more control getting it to their alchemist.

Random isn't bad, but removing the feeling of any control at all is. The most frustrating thing for people in PvP is generally when they have no control. This is why many players hate really good rogues so much (the ones that can stun lock you for like 30 seconds) and pallies too since you can't do anything about that bubble. It doesn't matter what your skill is or what you do you have no control on it. But if you have a controlled way to do something + a random way, the random way suddenly becomes a gift not an annoyance.

It's the lack of control that makes people not like the discovery system. Even if they have as much control over it as any other method. You can't control if the mob will drop the recipe. Ask Treesh and all her kills of Warp Splinter or the mobs that dropped the bracer enchant she wanted. You can't control if making a potion will get you a discovery. The time to farm Warp Splinter or a world mob and the time to farm mats to make pots to get a discovery may be set to be on average equal. But it sure feels like you have less control trying to get a discovery. And for most it's a lot less fun to farm herbs than it is to farm a mob for a drop. Even though grinding mobs isn't fun for most people either.

But I think that is what the issues with the discovery system boil down to. It may be the same time investment but it doesn't feel as fun or controlled.