Official Feedback Thread for Crafting Node Scaling

ZOS_GinaBruno

This is the official feedback thread for crafting node scaling found in Orsinium. Specific feedback the team is looking for includes:

• Is it clear that crafting nodes are scaling to the passive, and do you find that more enjoyable that scaling to your level?
• Do Veteran Rank 15 and above materials still feel rare?
• Do you feel you could obtain the Ancient Orc and Akiviri chapters and style items fairly reasonably?
• What are your overall thoughts about the new crafted item sets? Is it fun?

Casdha

Feels a little weird to pick up Iron and maple with a VR12 toon but I see this as a good thing. Folks who devote time to crafting will have an easier time of coming up with the mats they need for High level items. Please ignore the complaints that may come from folks not getting their mats as easily. It was their choice to spend their skill points in fighting skills rather than crafting.

Finally some fair compensation for different choices in game play.

Ra'Shtar

After running around with my crafter i can say the new nodes are way too rare, you can find voidstone, voidbloom and nightwood in many many places but the new nodes only in Wrothgar so please increase the amount you find of the new mats trough out Wrothgar.

starlizard70ub17_ESO

Ra'Shtar wrote: »

After running around with my crafter i can say the new nodes are way too rare, you can find voidstone, voidbloom and nightwood in many many places but the new nodes only in Wrothgar so please increase the amount you find of the new mats trough out the world.

The new nodes are found only in Wrothgar, just one of the many reason to go there.

The node scaling is fine, but it also means, instead of spending time on the PTS, I'm going to spend the next 3 or 4 weeks leveling up my non-crafting chars in woodworking, blacksmithing and tailoring so they can all harvest the new v15/16 mats.

Ra'Shtar

starlizard70ub17_ESO wrote: »

Ra'Shtar wrote: »

After running around with my crafter i can say the new nodes are way too rare, you can find voidstone, voidbloom and nightwood in many many places but the new nodes only in Wrothgar so please increase the amount you find of the new mats trough out the world.

The new nodes are found only in Wrothgar, just one of the many reason to go there.

The node scaling is fine, but it also means, instead of spending time on the PTS, I'm going to spend the next 3 or 4 weeks leveling up my non-crafting chars in woodworking, blacksmithing and tailoring so they can all harvest the new v15/16 mats.

I'm not complaining about the scaling, (also edited something) the amount of the new nodes that you find is extremely ridiculous why would i want to go to Wrothgar to find Voidbloom when i can go to Craglorn and get a chance at nirncrux, i wanna go there and find lots of the new mat cose is just a crafting material is not a new motif or a new set to be this extremely rare.

Ra'Shtar

Also i have noticed the new mats are more ''common'' in the snowy area.

DobbaDeuce

Not really a bug, but an interesting side effect of scaling if you level up your skill during different stages of finding/looting a harvesting node:



- Step 1: Dwarven: The ore appears visually based on what your skill is when it loads on your screen.
- Step 2: Calcinium: The ore produces whatever ore corresponds to what your current crafting skill is at time of first extraction
- Step 3: Voidstone: The ores "container" name corresponds to what your current crafting skill is regardless of what it actually provides

I haven't tested with other players, but this could potentially mean that a low craft-skill player could go around clicking on nodes, but not taking their contents, and result in higher craft-skill player looting their lower tier rewards even though to them it looks like the node should be high-tier.

code65536

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Do Veteran Rank 15 and above materials still feel rare?

Yes. The vast majority of the nodes I found were the sub-VR15 tier. It felt like 1-in-6 or 1-in-7 were the new mats (I lost count after a while).

This is rather disappointing, though, because the rarity of the VR15/16 mats is not a good thing.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Do you feel you could obtain the Ancient Orc and Akiviri chapters and style items fairly reasonably?

Is there a way to acquire Akaviri by means other than AP from Cyrodiil? If not, then the 500K AP price for a single chapter is downright ridiculous.

Also, what this this Mercenary style that I see when I access a crafting station? There is no mention of that at all in the patch notes.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

What are your overall thoughts about the new crafted item sets? Is it fun?

Julianos is interesting, and a good competitor against Kagrenac.

Didn't think much about The Trial By Fire. It's too situational--maybe if you know you're up against elemental-heavy enemies (VCoA?), you might use this. But it's not a set that my tank would wear for general-purpose tanking. And with the rarity of the mats and high mat cost of VR16 gear, I don't really want to craft a set that to carry around just for special situations.

And I can't access the third crafted set. I go to the crafting station location and it shows white as discovered on my map, but I can't see or find the actual stations.

Meshal

i haven't spend so much time farming them, but as a first glance i can see the rate is low + water level in the area is v10 >.< why is it not v15?

Teargrants

Crafting nodes should scale to character level, not the amount of skill points invested into the crafting proficiency. As it is, this forces ppl to spend another 30 skill points on their alts to be able to harvest useful mats.

tengri

Nodes should scale to your crafting skill - not to the (may or may not unlocked because of skillpoint shortage) passives.

Working with mats - of course, crafting passives are the gateway. But for harvesting... no.
This just stinks.

Xeven

Teargrants wrote: »

Crafting nodes should scale to character level, not the amount of skill points invested into the crafting proficiency. As it is, this forces ppl to spend another 30 skill points on their alts to be able to harvest useful mats.

I'm not sure if I actually care either way, but couldnt you just farm them up on your crafting character?

I do like the idea that only crafters can harvest the best stuff. We should be able to make money with our crafts.

Teargrants

Xeven wrote: »

Teargrants wrote: »

Crafting nodes should scale to character level, not the amount of skill points invested into the crafting proficiency. As it is, this forces ppl to spend another 30 skill points on their alts to be able to harvest useful mats.

I'm not sure if I actually care either way, but couldnt you just farm them up on your crafting character?

I do like the idea that only crafters can harvest the best stuff. We should be able to make money with our crafts.

And meanwhile, whenever I go through the content in Orsinium on my non crafter toons, I just have to walk through a zone of entirely useless low lvl nodes.

DobbaDeuce

I think it's exactly right how it is. Leveling crafting is extremely easy without any sacrifice on the players part. By at least requiring the player to put some skill points into crafting means that not everyone will be able to run around acquiring the best materials, thus these materials will still retain some rarity and value.

You could maybe make the argument that the nodes should level up with your players level up to Vet 14 since nothing pre-Vet 15 will really have any value, but I like that the rarest items are locked away for only the most talented crafters. Like they are the only ones who have the skill to know where to look or extract the ore without messing it up.

Phingers

I find the V15-16 Notes are perfectly rare enough. Not to easy for lower levels with high crafting to just drop in the new DLC and get free v16 mats, but easy enough if you are questing and doing stuff around the map you will find plenty.
I find the public dungeons to be a joke, and I mean that by difficulty level. But they are awesomely designed. Old Orsinium WAS SO BIG! Took awhile to complete it but it was very fun. I do want to comment that even though I finished the quest in it and got the achievement to kill all bosses, it stayed black.

Enodoc

DobbaDeuce wrote: »

- Step 1: Dwarven: The ore appears visually based on what your skill is when it loads on your screen.
- Step 2: Calcinium: The ore produces whatever ore corresponds to what your current crafting skill is at time of first extraction
- Step 3: Voidstone: The ores "container" name corresponds to what your current crafting skill is regardless of what it actually provides

So even if you exit the node, level up, and open it again, it'll only drop what was there the first time you opened it?

DobbaDeuce wrote: »

I haven't tested with other players, but this could potentially mean that a low craft-skill player could go around clicking on nodes, but not taking their contents, and result in higher craft-skill player looting their lower tier rewards even though to them it looks like the node should be high-tier.

So I think the question here is: how does crafting mat scaling affect other players if you leave the node without taking the contents? Or is each node directly instanced to the player?

Amarynth

code65536 wrote: »

Yes. The vast majority of the nodes I found were the sub-VR15 tier. It felt like 1-in-6 or 1-in-7 were the new mats (I lost count after a while).

This is rather disappointing, though, because the rarity of the VR15/16 mats is not a good thing.

I agree. I don't think they should be rare if they are required for writs.

trippingchrissy

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

• Is it clear that crafting nodes are scaling to the passive, and do you find that more enjoyable that scaling to your level?

It was clear to me because I read the patch notes, but there were quite a few folks asking what was up in zone chat - most expected that because they were V16 to see V16 mats and/or that ALL nodes would scale up, not just some of them.

• Do Veteran Rank 15 and above materials still feel rare?

I had a pretty decent RNG run today - I felt like the amount of V15 mats I found was acceptable, though of course I'd like to see more of them.

• Do you feel you could obtain the Ancient Orc and Akiviri chapters and style items fairly reasonably?

Not at all. I did one public dungeon (Old Orsinium), which was great, but I got zero chapters. If AP is the only way to get Akiviri, I'm screwed. I ended up with ... 2? of the sand.

• What are your overall thoughts about the new crafted item sets? Is it fun?

I think Julianos is intriguing - do I want the spell crit from that or the recovery and health bonus from Kagrenac's? Not sure, but I like that I have more than one crafted set I can consider.

fiske

DobbaDeuce wrote: »

I haven't tested with other players, but this could potentially mean that a low craft-skill player could go around clicking on nodes, but not taking their contents, and result in higher craft-skill player looting their lower tier rewards even though to them it looks like the node should be high-tier.

A guild mate and I tested this earlier today (can't remember if I filed this one yet), both as a group and splitting from the group, she opened up what I saw as voidstone and saw it as Iron. I then opened up the node and got iron. No idea what the timeout is though, so it may not be as bad as it seems.

Casdha

I like that the nodes level off of crafting level/skill point use rather than character level. This way if you want them you have to level crafting / spend skill points to have access to them from a node. If it were scaled off of character level crafters would get no advantage again.

Again I like this idea.

mlstevens42_ESO

Answer 1 makes no difference either way to me though would not mind terribly it being to char level then to passive. Though can see the reasoning behind the change. Means if you do not have the skill you can not get the mats yourself.

Answer 2 the new mats seem a little to rare over an hour of looking with each char I looked with. One node of ore one of wood and one of cloth mats at v15/ 16 level seems just a little low to me. WAs like 3 hours looking for things and only found that much. The leather is all right... random chance to get leather off leather baring critters with decent chance for it to be v 15/16 stuff.

Answer 3 N/A did not try and find or deal with motif type for chaps and such though did get mats for the ancient orc style easily enough.

Answer 4 also n/a did not attempt to craft anything was to busy trying to find level appropriate mats see answer 2 for my results on that. So few that I did not have enough to make anything.

helediron

I don't like that mats scaling at all. We have all the different materials in different areas. As a crafter i need supply of every available material. What happens in future? I want to know how to farm certain level mats. Currently i know that easily, each area has their own stuff. How is it after Wrothgar?

Trying to make vr15 basic crafting material rare is still stupid. We saw that in IC. Getting gear to legendary is difficult and ok, Limiting basic crafting mats is not. Vr14 mats were never a problem. Writs take out all extra supply. Why break a well working system?

Before IC people were asking me to craft all kinds of weird gear combos. Now they just want e.g. a nirn Torugs sword. Instead of having fun with crafting, now people grind the mats and order that one vr16 item. All this because of throttling basic crafting materials. People have completely stopped experimenting, and that is bad sign for long term fun. No one in pledges announce their newest gear-combo-in-test because there are none. People do not experiment with vr15 gear either. They go straight to vr16 and hope for the best.

My suggestion is to either throw away the whole scaling or turn it to drop 100% mats people put into their skill points. Scaling to character level is not good because it lacks possibility of choice. Make vr15-16 abundant like in Craglorn. Change top tier writs to use rubberducks to suck out oversupply.

pema

Dear ZOS,

I'm happy with orcinium coming so fast, and much new content and things to do.
The one thing that realy stood out to me in a not so happy way is the node scaling.
I would prefer this to be scaled to your lvl not to the points you spend in crafting.
Like many I have one master crafter, my awsome argoninan nightblade, and have my points invested in that.
To get the crafting leveled we have to invest a lot of skillpoints, and we might never use them again.
It's a skillpoint sinkhole.
How I play now, I enjoy the game and my mats go into my bank for my crafter to use on writs etc. Because I have several characters, don't we all, I can collect materials when I play and that way am able to craft.

I hope you change this set-up, and keep making awsome new zones and stuff for us to do.

Enodoc

helediron wrote: »

I don't like that mats scaling at all. We have all the different materials in different areas. As a crafter i need supply of every available material. What happens in future? I want to know how to farm certain level mats. Currently i know that easily, each area has their own stuff. How is it after Wrothgar?

It'll be exactly the same everywhere else as it is now. The scaling only happens in Wrothgar, so if you want Orichalcum, for example, just go back to Zone 3 like you've been doing all along.

Elephant42

I spent about an hour roaming all over Wrothgar to test out the new harvesting nodes. I kept a log of every node, whether it was an "old" node or a "new" one - new meaning it yielded VR15+ materials.

I didn't bother logging solvent nodes as it quickly became apparent that they are split evenly between Star Dew and Lorkhans Tears.

I treated one hide bearing animal as a node.

I found 65 "old" nodes and 10 "new" nodes. I found 6 Essence runes, 1 Aspect rune (Ta) and 1 Potency rune (Kuta).

From this I draw the following conclusions.

If you are an alchemist you are fine.

If you are a clothier, woodworker or blacksmith you are a bit screwed. If you have the patience for hours of farming you might be ok.

If you are an enchanter you are royally screwed.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for crafting node scaling found in Orsinium. Specific feedback the team is looking for includes:

• Is it clear that crafting nodes are scaling to the passive, and do you find that more enjoyable that scaling to your level?

It's clear and I do find it better scaling to the passive rather than level.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

• Do Veteran Rank 15 and above materials still feel rare?

They feel far TOO rare. I would prefer to see every node produce V15/16 mats if the crafting passive is maxed, but if that is too much to stomach then 1:3 or 1:4 would be more easily digested.

angelyn

They have already added 3 things to increase rarity, compared to V14 materials:

IC DLC ( V16 mats compared to availability of V14 mat availability )

Systems that increase rarity:
*You need 10 times as many mats to craft V16
*Deconstructing items will give you 1 piece only
*Hireling seem to send 1 piece every now and then
*No V16 mat nodes

Systems that decrease rarity:
Crafting writs don't require V16 materials

Orsinium DLC ( V16 mat availability compared to V14 mat availability )

Systems that increase rarity:
*You need 10 times as many mats to craft V16
*Deconstructing items will give you 1 piece only
*Hireling seem to send 1 piece every now and then
*Crafting nodes will now only drop those materials, if you have the passives invested.
*Even if you have the points invested, it isn't guaranteed that higher level materials will drop from nodes in DLC, they also may drop lower level materials
*Writs will now use the new materials(?)

Systems that decrease rarity:
*V16 nodes have been added (but will still result in less mats than V14 node availability )

Is it really necessary to increase the rarity yet again with this DLC?"Do V15/V16 materials still feel rare?" From the above they will be even more rare.I swear if V16 V15 crafting mats end up in the crown store after the above(already got malachite and gold scale incoming) ...I will self combust. I only say this becuase lately, items that have been introduced with more grind than they had before (motifs, style materials) ..seem to end up in the crown store...

Suggestions for improvements
EDIT: I could possibly see that they are introducing scaling in order to reward crafters. However, crafters will still suffer with the rarity increasing exponentially from V14 to V16. If rewarding crafters is the true intention, then I have the following suggestions if the rarity is being increased yet again.

*Increase the amount of V16 that the nodes drop/or increase the amount of nodes.
* Ensure that all nodes in DLC will drop the highest material that crafters can craft. (Ie no chance of low level mats).
*increase the amounts of V16 that hireling send. Current level is pitiful.
*increase the amounts of V16 mats (not style materials or traits) that crafters can get from deconstructing V15/V16 drops. They already have skill points invested into this- however it doesn't seem to affect V15/V16 drops? You only get one piece no matter how many skill points invested into increasing decon loot.

All of the above would ensure increased access to the materials for dedicated crafters. Or they could have a look at reducing some of the impact of all these rarity inducing systems.

EDIT no 2: reading further in this thread that people are finding very little if any V16 mats at all (with all passives maxed.)Therefore I ask please could my feedback above be passed on @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_RichLambert

I'm really hoping that perhaps making crafting materials this rare (as described in the comparisons above and with the extremely low drop rate) was perhaps an oversight or an accident.

Enodoc

angelyn wrote: »

They have already added 3 things to increase rarity, compared to V14 materials in the last DLC:

*You need 10 times as many mats to craft V16
*Deconstructing items will give you 1 piece only
*Hireling seem to send 1 piece every now and then

Now it will be:
*You need 10 times as many mats to craft V16
*Deconstructing items will give you 1 piece only
*Hireling seem to send 1 piece every now and then
*Crafting nodes will now only drop those materials, if you have the passives invested.
*Even if you have the points invested, it isn't guaranteed that higher level materials will drop from nodes in DLC, they also may drop lower level materials
*Writs will now use the new materials(?)

Is it really necessary to increase the rarity yet again with this DLC?

They're not really increasing the rarity since V15/16 mats weren't available from nodes at all until this DLC. I do agree that the drop rate seems too low though.

angelyn

Enodoc wrote: »

angelyn wrote: »

They have already added 3 things to increase rarity, compared to V14 materials in the last DLC:

*You need 10 times as many mats to craft V16
*Deconstructing items will give you 1 piece only
*Hireling seem to send 1 piece every now and then

Now it will be:
*You need 10 times as many mats to craft V16
*Deconstructing items will give you 1 piece only
*Hireling seem to send 1 piece every now and then
*Crafting nodes will now only drop those materials, if you have the passives invested.
*Even if you have the points invested, it isn't guaranteed that higher level materials will drop from nodes in DLC, they also may drop lower level materials
*Writs will now use the new materials(?)

Is it really necessary to increase the rarity yet again with this DLC?

They're not really increasing the rarity since V15/16 mats weren't available from nodes at all until this DLC. I do agree that the drop rate seems too low though.

Actually, that is a fair point .However I was comparing the rarity of V14 materials to V16 materials.(V14 mats much easier to obtain from nodes than V16 mats) I'll edit my post to make that my comparisons clearer, as I can see now how they might not be coming across the way I intended them to )

Even if I was looking at the increase in rarity from IC DLC to Orsinium DLC - it would still mean that overall we have 1 thing introduced to decrease rarity and 5 things introduced to increase rarity.

I've had a think about what could be done if their intention is to try to reward crafters, and added some suggestions into my first post

byrom101b16_ESO

Removed as it wasn't pertinent.

Weberda

code65536 wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Do Veteran Rank 15 and above materials still feel rare?

Yes. The vast majority of the nodes I found were the sub-VR15 tier. It felt like 1-in-6 or 1-in-7 were the new mats (I lost count after a while).

This is rather disappointing, though, because the rarity of the VR15/16 mats is not a good thing.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Do you feel you could obtain the Ancient Orc and Akiviri chapters and style items fairly reasonably?

Is there a way to acquire Akaviri by means other than AP from Cyrodiil? If not, then the 500K AP price for a single chapter is downright ridiculous.

Also, what this this Mercenary style that I see when I access a crafting station? There is no mention of that at all in the patch notes.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

What are your overall thoughts about the new crafted item sets? Is it fun?

Julianos is interesting, and a good competitor against Kagrenac.

Didn't think much about The Trial By Fire. It's too situational--maybe if you know you're up against elemental-heavy enemies (VCoA?), you might use this. But it's not a set that my tank would wear for general-purpose tanking. And with the rarity of the mats and high mat cost of VR16 gear, I don't really want to craft a set that to carry around just for special situations.

And I can't access the third crafted set. I go to the crafting station location and it shows white as discovered on my map, but I can't see or find the actual stations.

The crafting station you couldn't find is actually semi-locked behind a quest. There is a door in the area will allow you in and from there you can get the quest but I think the quest actually originates in the Orc settlement way to the west. Locking a crafting a station behind a very interesting quest line I found to be a really good idea. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and I hope they do more of this kind of thing.

Heathenpride

As a one toon player with all crafting except wood & enchanting maxxed out I am happy with this idea.

I am on console though so can't answer all the questions but I am definitely looking forward to this and am happy that my decision to max out my crafting first, instead of combat, will pay off. I just have wood to throw points in (it's at 0) and about 7 more into enchanting.

About time us crafters got a break.