Official Feedback Thread for Crafting Node Scaling

Lithium Flower

Enodoc wrote: »

Lithium Flower wrote: »

I am forced to level up a character I'd dedicated to crafting, [...]

How so? It sounds like nodes which scale to crafting passives and not character level would be very appropriate for you, as you wouldn't need to level up your crafter.

Why are you assuming I want to take a low level without enough skill points or proper gear to play Orsinium when I have fully leveled, properly geared playable characters to play with instead? If I wanted to turn my crafter into my main, I can do that any time. I *don't* want to be forced to play and level (for the drops) up the crafting character because that was never his purpose and he is not fun to take exploring.

But that's no longer viable if I want to be able to gather materials and make my own gear.

And this is not even taking into account the horrible Laurel drop mechanic that again forces me to play with a nonviable character I don't want to play with.

Islyn

DHale wrote: »

I do not like that is is scaling to the crafted level if I am vr 16 running around I should be able to pick up mats that are at my level. I made a crafting alt at vr6 with all my crafting maxed, it is too gimped to go farm as very little skill points into class or weapon trees. Conversely my vr16 has her points into weapon and skills and none in crafting. That said if you are going to do this on live give us the opportunity to acquire more skill points like more skyshards or quest lines. For example my vr6 can craft everything but cannot kill a single mob in Craglorn but my vr16 can craft nothing yet I can kill endless mobs in Craglorn. I feel that we are being punished for a new mechanic that has not been needed and has never been required since PC launch.

Yeah so people who have put zero work in can flit around and node ninja people who have, thus being even more unfair to actual crafters.

You're not being PUNISHED calm down.

Lithium Flower

Islyn wrote: »

Yeah so people who have put zero work in can flit around and node ninja people who have, thus being even more unfair to actual crafters.

You're not being PUNISHED calm down.

How can you assume that person has put in 'zero effort' and is less entitled to a public node than any one else. Actual crafters also like to do other things. Putting up obstacles between goals and how people want to play the game helps no one, least of all 'actual crafters'.

This isn't helping no-alters because level scaling doesn't disadvantage them in any way. This isn't helping people who want to have lots of specialised alts because it's making their noncrafting characters less rewarding to play on. This certainly isn't helping players who farm goods, sell them to obtain gold to fuel other activities. If everyone has to level up everything and perform every role themselves - why even have a trade system any more?

In fact the only group this node scaling actually benefits disproportionately are gold/mat selling farmers because they can now have unlimited access to the highest level nodes for literally 30 minutes of decraftng. They have no need to buy vet ranked accounts anymore. I wouldn't be surprised if Orsinium is quickly overrun with bots stealing nodes from real players.

Enodoc

Lithium Flower wrote: »

Enodoc wrote: »

Lithium Flower wrote: »

I am forced to level up a character I'd dedicated to crafting, [...]

How so? It sounds like nodes which scale to crafting passives and not character level would be very appropriate for you, as you wouldn't need to level up your crafter.

Why are you assuming I want to take a low level without enough skill points or proper gear to play Orsinium when I have fully leveled, properly geared playable characters to play with instead? If I wanted to turn my crafter into my main, I can do that any time. I *don't* want to be forced to play and level (for the drops) up the crafting character because that was never his purpose and he is not fun to take exploring.

But that's no longer viable if I want to be able to gather materials and make my own gear.

And this is not even taking into account the horrible Laurel drop mechanic that again forces me to play with a nonviable character I don't want to play with.

Which of your toons gathers the mats? Is it your main who then banks them for the crafter? That seems to be a common problem, as people don't want to spend crafting skill points on their mains in order to get the mats needed for their crafters, which is a slightly different thing to not wanting to level crafters. But in a scaled zone like Wrothgar, what use would a Level 25 main have with VR14 mats? They will want mats appropriate to their level and crafting skill, so they will want Level 25 mats.

Wreuntzylla

The frequency of drops should increase according to the progression of the crafter in a particular craft, not just based on passives. So, someone with 9/9 traits researched for woodworking, all woodworking skills and passives maxed, and every style available should have the greatest chance of harvesting top tier woodworking mats.

Crafting is not a required character progression for competitive play and should have unique perks. As opposed to, say, undaunted passives.

helediron

I Tested rune harvesting after 2.2.3 patch.

No vr16 potencies from nearly 700 harvested nodes. Of them, 279 were potency nodes. Rare drop indeed. How rare, i have no idea. To collect those stones took about four hours.In IC to get 400 TV stones to buy one, ten minutes?

Recommendations:
I'm done with testing in PTS. While there are many smaller things i would like to see fixed, this is my top three:
1. Very much increase vr16 potency drop rates.
2. Very much increase rubedo leather drop rates.
3. Drop vr16 craft mats requirements significantly.

Reasons:
1. Timewise IC is more than ten times easier for vr16 potencies. Assuming that the next node would have dropped one vr16.
2. Beasts drop one shadowhide or rubedo leather. There are not much to kill, and overall leather drop rates are very much less than other mats - even for mass murderers.
3. The last issue is balance between acquiring dropped gear and crafted. Now vWGT is getting easier and receiving 250% boost in drop rates. I welcome very much this change as farming vWGT not easy at all (done 3-6 farm runs per day). Also TV-gear prices got halved. Why keep crafted vr16 gear basic mats excessively limited and more limited than bought or drop gear? The crafted vr16 basic white material limitation is hurting crafting and gear experiments. It's hurting the game longevity. Crafting white gear should be easy and improving should be difficult. Now it's the reverse. VR16 basic mats requirement is a failure at all levels and i want it removed.

Islyn

Lithium Flower wrote: »

Islyn wrote: »

Yeah so people who have put zero work in can flit around and node ninja people who have, thus being even more unfair to actual crafters.

You're not being PUNISHED calm down.

How can you assume that person has put in 'zero effort' and is less entitled to a public node than any one else. Actual crafters also like to do other things. Putting up obstacles between goals and how people want to play the game helps no one, least of all 'actual crafters'.

This isn't helping no-alters because level scaling doesn't disadvantage them in any way. This isn't helping people who want to have lots of specialised alts because it's making their noncrafting characters less rewarding to play on. This certainly isn't helping players who farm goods, sell them to obtain gold to fuel other activities. If everyone has to level up everything and perform every role themselves - why even have a trade system any more?

In fact the only group this node scaling actually benefits disproportionately are gold/mat selling farmers because they can now have unlimited access to the highest level nodes for literally 30 minutes of decraftng. They have no need to buy vet ranked accounts anymore. I wouldn't be surprised if Orsinium is quickly overrun with bots stealing nodes from real players.

How I can assume that is the direct correlation of the tonnes and tonnes of lowbies who flit about Coldharbor and couldn't kill mobs outside the gates if they tried.

I don't personally want to compete with mats for bots and others who only had to break a bunch of gear to get there. If you aren't the level to use them you have no business competing with those who are for resources we actually need.

I feel this way honestly mainly due to botting though - and don't really mind actual players so doing but how on earth can we separate the 2?

I think we're likely misunderstanding each other or I've communicated in an unclear way because my main issue is botters.

Lithium Flower

I have several max level playing characters that have nothing to do with crafting. This isn't because I'm lazy but because it's not their business/trade/purpose to craft things. They are 'adventurers' - they go out explore, find new things and are optimized for combat. I have plenty of skill points but they are required for maintaining maximum versatility. I have leveled every available skill on every combat oriented character.

I wanted to make a dedicated crafting character early on - I leveled him up to v1 to access Craglorn and hold up against most things adequately and poured all his skills into all 6 crafts. This is his purpose. This is his trade. I don't want to spread out my crafting because it makes no thematic sense to do so and is inefficient and disorganized. When the Node Scaling mechanic and the laurel drop mechanic were announced, I decided I will need to do pledges and Wrothgar with this character and it took me a week to get him from v1 to v16 playing 2-3 hours a day. I know how to speed level. I know it'll take me a few evenings to deconstruct loot and get my playing characters maxed in craft skills.

This protest isn't because I want to avoid a play-mechanic. This simply bad design with no discernible purpose.

A low level no-alt first time player has no need for crafting rank 10 drops. He needs flax and cotton and spidersilk and his level will give him access to this in Wrothgar. A high level player doesn't need node downscaling this way. They will simply carry themselves back to their home faction zones and farm away if they need low mats (or better yet purchase them from leveling players and stimulate the economy).

What people want most is easier access to v15/16 nodes because the associated grind is tedious, unrewarding and needless. ZOS responded to this by making it worse - because now these players, myself included have to-

a) Grind and level up crafting on play-characters which is another unwanted and wasteful exercise for excessively scarce nodes made worse by a hyper material sink for v16 gear.

b) Grind a previously shelved character so they can play through the zone on their 'crafters'. Most people don't 'farm' on their dedicated crafters because they have other characters to 'play' with which are optimized for that purpose. Many crafters have a bare minimum of skill points spared for class/weapon skills for a reason - because we don't play those characters except to craft on.

We are annoyed because our choices are grind or grind.

And countering this by saying 'It's okay, the zone will scale down to the level of your least viable adventuring character' is exasperating because that is certainly not how I want to experience new content and obtain rare drops.

For nearly two years, we've had a system that worked - kill *** on your veterans, deconstruct on your crafter - have fun doing content and keeping up with crafting. ZOS managed to turn it into a grind for no discernible gain for anyone.

Except botters perhaps. Because now it's easy to access high-end nodes with least upfront effort investment. Get an account, roll a toon, level up crafting quickly and sell gold/tempers/raw mats. Profit.

And @Islyn : You are correct, we were talking about the same thing in a round about way.

malchior

It's a bit flawed in that players with crafting skill of 10/10 is still seeing Voidstone, Voidbloom and Nightwood. This needs to be fixed.

Enodoc

malchior wrote: »

It's a bit flawed in that players with crafting skill of 10/10 is still seeing Voidstone, Voidbloom and Nightwood. This needs to be fixed.

It's not broken, that's intended. I agree that it needs to be changed, but changes are a different kettle of fish to fixes.

Rosveen

Enodoc wrote: »

Lithium Flower wrote: »

Enodoc wrote: »

Lithium Flower wrote: »

I am forced to level up a character I'd dedicated to crafting, [...]

How so? It sounds like nodes which scale to crafting passives and not character level would be very appropriate for you, as you wouldn't need to level up your crafter.

Why are you assuming I want to take a low level without enough skill points or proper gear to play Orsinium when I have fully leveled, properly geared playable characters to play with instead? If I wanted to turn my crafter into my main, I can do that any time. I *don't* want to be forced to play and level (for the drops) up the crafting character because that was never his purpose and he is not fun to take exploring.

But that's no longer viable if I want to be able to gather materials and make my own gear.

And this is not even taking into account the horrible Laurel drop mechanic that again forces me to play with a nonviable character I don't want to play with.

But in a scaled zone like Wrothgar, what use would a Level 25 main have with VR14 mats? They will want mats appropriate to their level and crafting skill, so they will want Level 25 mats.

So you're in favor of scaling to character level instead of the current system, scaling to crafting passives?

Enodoc

Rosveen wrote: »

Enodoc wrote: »

Lithium Flower wrote: »

Enodoc wrote: »

Lithium Flower wrote: »

I am forced to level up a character I'd dedicated to crafting, [...]

How so? It sounds like nodes which scale to crafting passives and not character level would be very appropriate for you, as you wouldn't need to level up your crafter.

Why are you assuming I want to take a low level without enough skill points or proper gear to play Orsinium when I have fully leveled, properly geared playable characters to play with instead? If I wanted to turn my crafter into my main, I can do that any time. I *don't* want to be forced to play and level (for the drops) up the crafting character because that was never his purpose and he is not fun to take exploring.

But that's no longer viable if I want to be able to gather materials and make my own gear.

And this is not even taking into account the horrible Laurel drop mechanic that again forces me to play with a nonviable character I don't want to play with.

But in a scaled zone like Wrothgar, what use would a Level 25 main have with VR14 mats? They will want mats appropriate to their level and crafting skill, so they will want Level 25 mats.

So you're in favor of scaling to character level instead of the current system, scaling to crafting passives?

I really don't know. There are benefits and drawbacks to both. For me personally, I would like to have them scaled to crafting passive because I want to be able to craft immediately with what I find while questing, and at Woodworking 2 I don't want to be finding VR2 wood everywhere, because I won't be able to use it.... maybe there could be a way of scaling to Level or Crafting Passive, whichever is higher. Or just a toggle option of which one to use.

Scyantific

Tier 10 nodes are still hilariously rare. Re-do your RNG FFS

Nebthet78

With the amount of farming happening in Orsinium right now, those with 10/10 skills in crafting should be getting all V15/16 mats..

VincentBlanquin

Scyantific wrote: »

Tier 10 nodes are still hilariously rare. Re-do your RNG FFS

cyrodiil too

aidenmoore

I agree on most of the people that are complaining regarding the rarity of the Tier 10 nodes. They are extremely rare currently on live server. I just reach my first VR16 and I have been farming Tier 10 crafting materials and it is just awful experience for me and it makes me hate seeing other players walking around in Wrothgar.

Most of the nodes that I found in Wrothgar are Tier 9 and I have my crafting skills maxed out. And collecting Tier 9 around 90% of the times is just plain cruel, if I wanted to farm Tier 9, I would go to Craglorn or Cadwell's Gold zone. And each VR16 gear that I needed to craft right now require 120-160 mats.. each. And decon random VR15-16 gears only yield 1 mat.

I do not mind a little bit of grinding but this is beyond me. I do hope that they improve Tier 10 crafting. Either reduce significantly the materials requirement and/or scale ALL nodes in Wrothgar to your current crafting skills.

Nebthet78

aidenmoore wrote: »

I agree on most of the people that are complaining regarding the rarity of the Tier 10 nodes. They are extremely rare currently on live server. I just reach my first VR16 and I have been farming Tier 10 crafting materials and it is just awful experience for me and it makes me hate seeing other players walking around in Wrothgar.

Most of the nodes that I found in Wrothgar are Tier 9 and I have my crafting skills maxed out. And collecting Tier 9 around 90% of the times is just plain cruel, if I wanted to farm Tier 9, I would go to Craglorn or Cadwell's Gold zone. And each VR16 gear that I needed to craft right now require 120-160 mats.. each. And decon random VR15-16 gears only yield 1 mat.

I do not mind a little bit of grinding but this is beyond me. I do hope that they improve Tier 10 crafting. Either reduce significantly the materials requirement and/or scale ALL nodes in Wrothgar to your current crafting skills.

Plus having to deal with node snipers now.. while you are directly standing over a node and fighting an enemy they steal the node on you because the game has a damn cool down when you kill something so you cannot harvest it right away.

Anhedonie

All constructive and valuable feedback is already here, so I'll just add my opinion based feedback.

ZOS, you ***ed up. Drop is ***t.

MilwaukeeScott

Crafting becomes relevant instead of being an afterthought, thank you Z!

newtinmpls

So there are several ideas being thrown out:

Scale to zone (which is what we had up till now). I do kind of like being able to go to "lower" level areas and find lower level mats for my lowbie characters. Its also been fun to go to .. say Craglorn "too soon" and get massively killed by wasps trying to get "the good stuff".

Scale to character passives (which is what I understand Wrothgar has). I liked it much more in theory than in reality; I keep finding myself distracted by frustration of awareness of "if I had more skillpoints/passives, this could have been an [insert whatever the next level would be]" This is slightly and only occasionally mitigated by the finding of casserite sand ... which does not spawn AT ALL for my lowbie level 9 character who tried it.

Scale to character level, which has been suggested. To which I say no. No, no way and nope with a side of "I don't think so". I really really really don't like yet another thing to pour into the "grind" mill - and this would be it. It would be another way to reward the "grind to V16 ASAP" crowd and effectively punish the explore crowd.

On the other hand, if there was a 'scale to character level' grind-fest option, how about the opposite option. Something like a mechanism to count your DPH (damage per hour) and the more exploring you did vs fighting the greater chance you would have to find stuff, get "extra" drops, style pages and things. Weird stuff that RP and explore types would like.

FilteredRiddle

• Is it clear that crafting nodes are scaling to the passive, and do you find that more enjoyable that scaling to your level?
  • Yes!
• Do Veteran Rank 15 and above materials still feel rare?
  • Yes! But they don't feel totally impossible.
• Do you feel you could obtain the Ancient Orc and Akiviri chapters and style items fairly reasonably?
  • No. Ancient Orc, yes, but the Akiviri is so unreasonably priced in AP. It's ridiculous.
• What are your overall thoughts about the new crafted item sets? Is it fun?
  • I love it. I'm pretty freaking pleased thus far. The one thing that would have vastly improved this DLC, however, would be the ability to group with guildmates in all alliances (for dungeons).

newtinmpls

Thank you, @FilteredRiddle for indirectly pointing out that I had not actually answered the questions:

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,

Yes, that seems clear.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

and do you find that more enjoyable that scaling to your level?

No, it's much more annoying than I had expected - again with the caveat that a better (as in existant) drop rate of casserite sand (sp?) for lowbie characters would improve it a LOT.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Do Veteran Rank 15 and above materials still feel rare?

Second hand (my husband has several vet16's, I do not [yet]) the whole "need a zillion of them, barely get any regardless of what mechanism (decon, node, whatever)" is ... seriously lessening game enjoyment.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

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

I'll find out next week when I start exploring more - my early 'dinking around' could answer your first questions, but I need time to work these out.
.

FortheloveofKrist

Question: Does this include Legerdemain passives? Meaning, if I have all, or a certain set of, Legerd passives, then am I more likely to loot blue and purple stolen objects?

Also, I do like the scaling of nodes. Makes it more interesting.

newtinmpls

Okay, been exploring Wrothgar ( a bit) and here are a few more thoughts:

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?

I'm finding it more aggravating than I expected. Maybe just a getting-used-to it stage, but I'm having a lot of trouble with frustration here.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Do Veteran Rank 15 and above materials still feel rare?

Yes. Very. As an example I spent a few hours wandering around Wrothgar the other night with my clothier. Had ongoing aggravation issues when I would find wood/ore because it was all mostly so low that few of my characters use it (iron and maple) any more. And the contrast when I did find clothier stuff.

As for those clothier things (my character has clothier at 50 and everything maxed in it, except keen eye which is only 1/3) I got voidbloom for all plant nodes except 1 ancestor silk. Got a total of 3 drops of rubidite scraps. Annoyingly rare.

Oh and two whole casserite sands. I have not yet found ANY casserite sand on a character below level 10.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

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

Done a few dungeons, fought some random mobs. Have not gotten any Ancient Orc or Akaviri at all. With any character. Nor has anyone in the groups I was with.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

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

Haven't yet explored enough crafting sites to evaluate... so I'll come back to this later.

Altogether the RNG is low enough that for me, it's causing extinction behavior, not engagment behavior.

Dagonthir

Hey, I finally got around to going into Wrothgar and wanted to comment on the scaling of crafting nodes, and noticed this thread so figured this is the place for it even though it hasn't been posted to in a while. I didn't read through all the pages, and besides it's possible things have already changed since this thread was originally created. Anyways, onto my opinions...

I think that the scaling needs to be account wide and scaled to your highest level crafter in a skill. Or, alternatively, maybe it could scale to either that or your current character's level (as in the one you're playing at the time). For example, I'm currently playing on my vet 5 toon (a sorcerer), and he's maxed out on enchanting and alchemy. So getting reesources for those two professions works fine (although if I collected vet 5 nodes to match my character's level, that would be fine too). But I have a different character that is maxed out on blacksmithing, woodworking, and clothing. I do not like that on my sorcerer the only nodes in those professions that are available are level 1 to 14. I think that they should scale off my other toon who is maxed out in those skills. So my sorcerer should be able to collect nodes that are either level vet 15 to 16 (if scaling to my highest crafter level) or level vet 5 (if scaling to my current character level).

So in conclusion, I would propose one of two suggestions:

1.) Scale to max crafter level on the account.
or
2.) Scale to either max crafter level on the account or current character level, which ever is lower.

Please change this. Currently on my sorcerer I'm just skipping over all these delicious resource nodes, and it's so disappointing.

notimetocare

No. This was a dumber decision than AoE caps, and you know how the community feels on that
Irritatingly rare because RNG sucks.
No. RNG is a *** mechanic, and do you even pvp?
Sucks miserably. I love wasting 30-50 skill points just to obtain material for my level...

ThaJollabyb14_ESO

I know this is an old thread but it seems relevant again with the TG arriving on PTS soon and the zone will use node scaling as well.
Is it clear that crafting nodes are scaling to the passive, and do you find that more enjoyable that scaling to your level?
I took crafting on my main, so I enjoyed the node scaling until I realized how frustrating this was for most players who have numerous characters.
Do Veteran Rank 15 and above materials still feel rare?
The enchanting mats for V15+ seem exceedingly rare in nodes but the ruby ash and others seem rare enough but still reasonable.
Do you feel you could obtain the Ancient Orc and Akiviri chapters and style items fairly reasonably?
No, I believe the ancient orc motif drop rate is entirely too low and the akaviri style is too expensive. I spoke to a guy on Xbox One server and he has been grinding bosses and farming for the Ancient orc motif pages in Old Orsinium for 10+ hours a day and says he gets one or two per day. I have never had an ancient orc motif page drop for me.
What are your overall thoughts about the new crafted item sets? Is it fun?
I enjoy the new crafted sets like Julianos and especially morkuldin. I love the morkuldin set and it feels very rewarding as a nine trait set. I always like to see new craft-able sets available.

spoqster

I think it is a bad idea to scale the nodes to the levels of the passives.

First argument: Most players use crafting alts. These characters have high values on their passives, the other characters usually have no skill points in crafting skills. As a result players will only find max level mats or iron and jute.

Second argument: To craft gear for a character you need level specific mats, but you don't need the passives, as other players can do the crafting for you - that's the beauty of playing an MMO.

Elsonso

All hail the revival of the long-dead thread. I think that this will become an issue once Hew's Bane becomes more explored and people discover that the resource nodes there operate the same as they do in Wrothgar. For many, this won't be an issue, and may even be preferred.

For me, it is not preferred because I have grown up my entire life believing that the the world is not staged for my personal convenience. In Texas, I expect to find cattle. In Iowa, corn. In Kansas, wheat. I don't expect that, because I am skilled in raising cattle, when I go to Iowa and Kansas that I will find no wheat, and no corn, because the world is wall-to-wall Cattle.

Nothing to do with "immershun"... the world of Tamriel is largely an analog to the real world, and the level 1 to 50 zones have made it clear that this world behaves by placing resources on the ground by location, not by personal convenience. I get that this is a game, but they started out trying to make the game into an analog of the real world in this respect. This is about the expectations that they set with the base game and how they are now going off in a different direction.

I know that they want to make Wrothgar (and presumably Hew's Bane) open to all character levels, but what, exactly, is wrong with low level characters picking up high level materials? The low skill level characters can still get their skill-appropriate materials from the base game zones. I used to regularly farm Craglorn on characters that are not skilled in Void Bloom, Voidstone, and Nightwood and I can't really see any reason why this would be a bad thing. Now I farm Maple, Jute, and Iron in Wrothgar because that is what is offered.

I assume that Hew's Bane will be the same, and whatever high level materials are available will be level locked to characters with that precise skill level. This will only add to the tedium of the world.

On this path... The rides in this park are increasingly being geared to what they think my interests are. If I want to be more challenged or less challenged, or play outside of what they think are my optimal settings, it is going to be getting harder to find a ride in this park that allows me to do that.

Dagonthir

I guess I ddin't answer the questions from @ZOS_GinaBruno in my post yesterday, so I'll do that here:

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?
  @ThaJollabyb14_ESO and @spoqster pretty much nailed it with mentioning alts. I'm one of the people who has crafting spread across multiple alts (enchanting and alchemy on one, clothing, woodworking, and blacksmithing on another, and provisioning on another) and so for me it's frustrating to be going through Wrothgar on my enchanter/alchemist and only encountering jute, iron ore, and rawhide. I want the nodes to either scale to my max crafter level on my account, or to my character level, or just do what @lordrichter suggested and put just the top tier nodes in the new areas. The scaling to character passive skill level is very undesirable - I'd rather there be no scaling than scaling to that.
• Do Veteran Rank 15 and above materials still feel rare?
  Based on what I'm collecting for alchemy, I guess so. It looks like I'm getting vet 15 potion water in about a 1:3 ratio to vet 10 potion water. Not sure what you're shooting for here though - as more of a casual player (in attitude - I still play a ton) it's not really important to me that materials be rare.
• Do you feel you could obtain the Ancient Orc and Akiviri chapters and style items fairly reasonably?
  Nope, haven't found either of those. In fact, I've never found any of the non-common motifs in all my playing (I gotta be up to 100 or 200 hours at least, long enough to max out all the crafting skills and get a character through each of the alliances). I only have some of them (not the two you mention here though) because I bought them with Crowns that I got from being a subscriber. The drop rates seem atrocious on the rare motifs.
• What are your overall thoughts about the new crafted item sets? Is it fun?
  I haven't played with them yet, but they sound cool, particularly the Morkuldin set. I appreciate you adding new crafted sets in the DLC.

Please stop scaling resource nodes to character passive skill. I'd most prefer scaling to my character level so that I could obtain materials that can be used to craft gear for that character since I can always have someone else craft the gear (in my case, it would be my alt, but people who don't have crafting alts could still have other players craft gear for them). But I also wouldn't mind scaling to max passive on the account or just having top level materials because at least I could look forward to using those materials later when I reach max level.