Yup, not going to lie about the quote to make it fit the narrative better.
That said "low-end" PC's mean computers that are 4+ years old and just barely meet the minimum requirements for running the game, which have similar specification to consoles.
If you were to buy a new "low-end" PC today (the budget models you can get for $300-$400, those would not be considered the "low-end" that the devs were referring to in that video clip.
FlopsyPrince wrote: »Yup, not going to lie about the quote to make it fit the narrative better.
That said "low-end" PC's mean computers that are 4+ years old and just barely meet the minimum requirements for running the game, which have similar specification to consoles.
If you were to buy a new "low-end" PC today (the budget models you can get for $300-$400, those would not be considered the "low-end" that the devs were referring to in that video clip.
A bit OT, but my main computer is older than 4 years, but probably has as much processing ability as many systems today. I have not run ESO, but it runs many things just fine.
"Older machines" are not as weak today as they were 10 years ago, for example.
My PS4 is my PS4 however and not a PS4 Pro, if that even matters.
FlopsyPrince wrote: »katanagirl1 wrote: »I don’t think you can claim the above is true for console players. We don’t compare to PC because we don’t game on PC.
We buy ESO on console because we play all of our games on console.
I play ESO because I played Oblivion and Skyrim on console.
The base game functionality between the two are the same, add-ons confuse the issue because they are add-ons.
Please don’t take this down the tired old road that “PC players can’t have nice things because of console players.” So tired of hearing that.
I’m on the side of leaving things as they are as well, so don’t blame me.
Things are likely to get left as they are, but do you really not want ongoing improvements? Were the mini-map improvements bad?
katanagirl1 wrote: »Please don’t take this down the tired old road that “PC players can’t have nice things because of console players.” So tired of hearing that.
The one example I used... housing limits... ZoS explicitly stated as such in an episode of ESO LIVE that was the reason for them. I wish I could find the episode.
They said something to the like of...
"I know many of you have asked for increases in housing items limits. Unfortunately we are unable to increase the numbers because it would drastically impair performance on Console and low-end PC's to a point we're not comfortable with" or something along those lines.
And, as a result, many of the new furnishings are larger and more detailed (filled in bookshelves, etc...) so they are only 1 "item" but they require less resources to load.
Also, I played pretty much exclusively on Console before coming to ESO, my first MMO. Including Oblivion and Skyrim myself on my trusty PS3!! (I played some turn based games on PC previously, but nothing w/ action combat). I made the decision to play ESO on PC because I did some research before I picked it up, and learned that MMO experiences, in general, were far superior on PC.
katanagirl1 wrote: »FlopsyPrince wrote: »katanagirl1 wrote: »I don’t think you can claim the above is true for console players. We don’t compare to PC because we don’t game on PC.
We buy ESO on console because we play all of our games on console.
I play ESO because I played Oblivion and Skyrim on console.
The base game functionality between the two are the same, add-ons confuse the issue because they are add-ons.
Please don’t take this down the tired old road that “PC players can’t have nice things because of console players.” So tired of hearing that.
I’m on the side of leaving things as they are as well, so don’t blame me.
Things are likely to get left as they are, but do you really not want ongoing improvements? Were the mini-map improvements bad?
I’m not sure what you are referring to here, we don’t have a mini-map on console.
That would be a highly useful tool that I would gladly see the devs add to the base game instead.
FlopsyPrince wrote: »katanagirl1 wrote: »FlopsyPrince wrote: »katanagirl1 wrote: »I don’t think you can claim the above is true for console players. We don’t compare to PC because we don’t game on PC.
We buy ESO on console because we play all of our games on console.
I play ESO because I played Oblivion and Skyrim on console.
The base game functionality between the two are the same, add-ons confuse the issue because they are add-ons.
Please don’t take this down the tired old road that “PC players can’t have nice things because of console players.” So tired of hearing that.
I’m on the side of leaving things as they are as well, so don’t blame me.
Things are likely to get left as they are, but do you really not want ongoing improvements? Were the mini-map improvements bad?
I’m not sure what you are referring to here, we don’t have a mini-map on console.
That would be a highly useful tool that I would gladly see the devs add to the base game instead.
Perhaps it is not called the mini-map, but I am meaning the map enhancements we got a while back. It shows lots of details now (long press square on the PS4 to see more), can map to the next task in the zone, etc. The game was playable before, but that was a very good quality of life improvement.
I want more of those. I want to fully enjoy my play time, not just tolerate it.
FlopsyPrince wrote: »katanagirl1 wrote: »FlopsyPrince wrote: »katanagirl1 wrote: »I don’t think you can claim the above is true for console players. We don’t compare to PC because we don’t game on PC.
We buy ESO on console because we play all of our games on console.
I play ESO because I played Oblivion and Skyrim on console.
The base game functionality between the two are the same, add-ons confuse the issue because they are add-ons.
Please don’t take this down the tired old road that “PC players can’t have nice things because of console players.” So tired of hearing that.
I’m on the side of leaving things as they are as well, so don’t blame me.
Things are likely to get left as they are, but do you really not want ongoing improvements? Were the mini-map improvements bad?
I’m not sure what you are referring to here, we don’t have a mini-map on console.
That would be a highly useful tool that I would gladly see the devs add to the base game instead.
Perhaps it is not called the mini-map, but I am meaning the map enhancements we got a while back. It shows lots of details now (long press square on the PS4 to see more), can map to the next task in the zone, etc. The game was playable before, but that was a very good quality of life improvement.
I want more of those. I want to fully enjoy my play time, not just tolerate it.
I think it's called the 'Zone Guide'.
FlopsyPrince wrote: »Note that those who complain that some would "benefit too much " from improvements in the crafting area fail to note that letting people craft more easily would probably also make more mats available, likely at cheaper prices over time, benefiting the entire playerbase, not just those crafting!
FlopsyPrince wrote: »Note that those who complain that some would "benefit too much " from improvements in the crafting area fail to note that letting people craft more easily would probably also make more mats available, likely at cheaper prices over time, benefiting the entire playerbase, not just those crafting!
I just want to play Devil's advocate for a second, and full disclaimer: I play solely on console (XB-NA) and am predominantly a crafter and casual overland PVE explorer so introducing any way to speed up crafting writs for console would directly benefit me.
That being said, one of the main reasons I don't see ZOS ever implementing this for consoles is it would create an even greater influx of "new" gold into the game economy when they are often trying to go the opposite direction and implement gold sinks. Right now I do writs on 10 alts which introduces 46k "new" gold per day into the economy. Not even factoring in any ornate items sold immediately to npcs, if you extrapolate this out over the entire console player base it is a phenomenal amount of gold dilution. Now, I'm going to assume the "average" number of writs turned in daily across the whole player base is far less than 10 characters/account, but introducing an add-on that greatly speeds this up may encourage more people to take advantage of this activity. Also, if it was a significant time saver, I would most likely go ahead and start doing writs on 18 characters/day making my gold footprint even greater.
Just another argument on why I think ZOS would be reluctant to allow crafting add-ons on consoles even if the technology ever improved enough to be able to handle it.
FlopsyPrince wrote: »FlopsyPrince wrote: »Note that those who complain that some would "benefit too much " from improvements in the crafting area fail to note that letting people craft more easily would probably also make more mats available, likely at cheaper prices over time, benefiting the entire playerbase, not just those crafting!
I just want to play Devil's advocate for a second, and full disclaimer: I play solely on console (XB-NA) and am predominantly a crafter and casual overland PVE explorer so introducing any way to speed up crafting writs for console would directly benefit me.
That being said, one of the main reasons I don't see ZOS ever implementing this for consoles is it would create an even greater influx of "new" gold into the game economy when they are often trying to go the opposite direction and implement gold sinks. Right now I do writs on 10 alts which introduces 46k "new" gold per day into the economy. Not even factoring in any ornate items sold immediately to npcs, if you extrapolate this out over the entire console player base it is a phenomenal amount of gold dilution. Now, I'm going to assume the "average" number of writs turned in daily across the whole player base is far less than 10 characters/account, but introducing an add-on that greatly speeds this up may encourage more people to take advantage of this activity. Also, if it was a significant time saver, I would most likely go ahead and start doing writs on 18 characters/day making my gold footprint even greater.
Just another argument on why I think ZOS would be reluctant to allow crafting add-ons on consoles even if the technology ever improved enough to be able to handle it.
And the price of guild vendors (a system I despise) would probably be more of a sync and use up this gold. Things balance out over time.
Multi-crafting helped make it easier to do daily crafting writs. Yet they still made it.
Multi-crafting probably had very little impact on most peoples' daily writs if they're crafting each day's items on the day it's given since only woodworking calls for multiples (bow/resto x2) for any given writ. Now, as @BenevolentBowd pointed out, I can pre-craft x5 of every item for a 15-day reprieve on my alts; but this is would not be feasible for any character that I would be actively playing, and probably not something most are doing.
Multi-crafting presented the most gains in two main areas: provisioning/alchemy where it was monotonous clicking and button pressing to create stacks of food and potions beforehand, and in the deconstruction/refine aspect (neither of which play an appreciable role in daily writs).
I'm not trying to be combative at all, just saying that introducing a console version of lazy writ crafter would create an unprecedented influx of new gold into the console economy that no other feature to date has provided.
FlopsyPrince wrote: »Multi-crafting probably had very little impact on most peoples' daily writs if they're crafting each day's items on the day it's given since only woodworking calls for multiples (bow/resto x2) for any given writ. Now, as @BenevolentBowd pointed out, I can pre-craft x5 of every item for a 15-day reprieve on my alts; but this is would not be feasible for any character that I would be actively playing, and probably not something most are doing.
Multi-crafting presented the most gains in two main areas: provisioning/alchemy where it was monotonous clicking and button pressing to create stacks of food and potions beforehand, and in the deconstruction/refine aspect (neither of which play an appreciable role in daily writs).
I'm not trying to be combative at all, just saying that introducing a console version of lazy writ crafter would create an unprecedented influx of new gold into the console economy that no other feature to date has provided.
That is not really true. I actively play my characters and crafted several days ahead. (Double on most, 12 days for enchants, 8 times boost for Alchemy.)
My point though is not that it is as significant of an impact, but that it is an impact. Anything making quality of life changes will have an impact. Arguing against it is a bit foolish in my view. I want a game I enjoy, not one that is a chore. We have strayed from the OP, but the title remains accurate.
FlopsyPrince wrote: »Multi-crafting probably had very little impact on most peoples' daily writs if they're crafting each day's items on the day it's given since only woodworking calls for multiples (bow/resto x2) for any given writ. Now, as @BenevolentBowd pointed out, I can pre-craft x5 of every item for a 15-day reprieve on my alts; but this is would not be feasible for any character that I would be actively playing, and probably not something most are doing.
Multi-crafting presented the most gains in two main areas: provisioning/alchemy where it was monotonous clicking and button pressing to create stacks of food and potions beforehand, and in the deconstruction/refine aspect (neither of which play an appreciable role in daily writs).
I'm not trying to be combative at all, just saying that introducing a console version of lazy writ crafter would create an unprecedented influx of new gold into the console economy that no other feature to date has provided.
That is not really true. I actively play my characters and crafted several days ahead. (Double on most, 12 days for enchants, 8 times boost for Alchemy.)
My point though is not that it is as significant of an impact, but that it is an impact. Anything making quality of life changes will have an impact. Arguing against it is a bit foolish in my view. I want a game I enjoy, not one that is a chore. We have strayed from the OP, but the title remains accurate.
Off-topic again, but why are you only crafting eight days out on alchemy? One potion or 100 potions take up the same level of inventory space. Lack of reagents?
The gold/materials (total value) earned from writs is already one of the best in the entire game on a per hour basis (PC or Console)... which is why I don't get this incessant need to "make them easier"
FlopsyPrince wrote: »FlopsyPrince wrote: »Note that those who complain that some would "benefit too much " from improvements in the crafting area fail to note that letting people craft more easily would probably also make more mats available, likely at cheaper prices over time, benefiting the entire playerbase, not just those crafting!
I just want to play Devil's advocate for a second, and full disclaimer: I play solely on console (XB-NA) and am predominantly a crafter and casual overland PVE explorer so introducing any way to speed up crafting writs for console would directly benefit me.
That being said, one of the main reasons I don't see ZOS ever implementing this for consoles is it would create an even greater influx of "new" gold into the game economy when they are often trying to go the opposite direction and implement gold sinks. Right now I do writs on 10 alts which introduces 46k "new" gold per day into the economy. Not even factoring in any ornate items sold immediately to npcs, if you extrapolate this out over the entire console player base it is a phenomenal amount of gold dilution. Now, I'm going to assume the "average" number of writs turned in daily across the whole player base is far less than 10 characters/account, but introducing an add-on that greatly speeds this up may encourage more people to take advantage of this activity. Also, if it was a significant time saver, I would most likely go ahead and start doing writs on 18 characters/day making my gold footprint even greater.
Just another argument on why I think ZOS would be reluctant to allow crafting add-ons on consoles even if the technology ever improved enough to be able to handle it.
And the price of guild vendors (a system I despise) would probably be more of a sync and use up this gold. Things balance out over time.
Multi-crafting helped make it easier to do daily crafting writs. Yet they still made it.
Multi-crafting probably had very little impact on most peoples' daily writs if they're crafting each day's items on the day it's given since only woodworking calls for multiples (bow/resto x2) for any given writ. Now, as @BenevolentBowd pointed out, I can pre-craft x5 of every item for a 15-day reprieve on my alts; but this is would not be feasible for any character that I would be actively playing, and probably not something most are doing.
Multi-crafting presented the most gains in two main areas: provisioning/alchemy where it was monotonous clicking and button pressing to create stacks of food and potions beforehand, and in the deconstruction/refine aspect (neither of which play an appreciable role in daily writs).
I'm not trying to be combative at all, just saying that introducing a console version of lazy writ crafter would create an unprecedented influx of new gold into the console economy that no other feature to date has provided.
Why the constant talk about "load screens" and "logging in and out". Nothing in here will change those. It's a red herring and distracts from any other discussion that may occur.
Why the constant talk about "load screens" and "logging in and out". Nothing in here will change those. It's a red herring and distracts from any other discussion that may occur.
BenevolentBowd wrote: »Why the constant talk about "load screens" and "logging in and out". Nothing in here will change those. It's a red herring and distracts from any other discussion that may occur.
When I switched to a fast computer with an SSD drive, the loading times dropped and I was able to do more writs per hour.
I really notice it when I switch to my laptop while watching the kids.
BenevolentBowd wrote: »Why the constant talk about "load screens" and "logging in and out". Nothing in here will change those. It's a red herring and distracts from any other discussion that may occur.
When I switched to a fast computer with an SSD drive, the loading times dropped and I was able to do more writs per hour.
I really notice it when I switch to my laptop while watching the kids.
Oh, I know I have an m.2 drive in my PC and on my pure writ characters that are loading minimum add-ons, load screen times are very, very fast.
Poster is on a console. There's nothing they can do to change their load times. They are limited by the limited nature of the device they play on.
Temeraire507 wrote: »This post includes my take on this thread, sorted by topic.
Daily Crafting Writs, the time required to do them and the Impact of Add-OnsThis Thread carries a lot of misinformation and assumption. Imo it basically blames the Add-On 'Dolgubon's Lazy Writ Crafter' (and I assume it is also meant to target 'Daily Alchemy' and 'Daily Provisioning' along with it) for a difference in console to PC performance and economy. I will try to analyze this a bit more, so be warned of a textwall.
A few things need to be clarified from what I have seen. So first things first, what does that Add-On actually do what is also relevant to this thread (I guess diplaying the daily cooldown isn't for instance) given all the options are enabled by the player?
From my knowledge 1) The Add-On automatically takes the writ quests when you interact with the board. 2) The Add-On automatically crafts the required items for a writ when you interact with the matching crafting station. 3) The Add-On automatically claims the rewards when you interact with box. 4) The Add-On automatically opens the reward boxes. 5) The Add-On disables stealing while you do the writs. It does not support the auto-crafting for Provisioning and Alchemy, which is where the according additional auto-crafting Add-Ons come in. (Probably together with 'Writ Worthy' for master writs)
So how does it impact doing crafting dailies and time savings doing so?
I believe the best way to anaylze this is to compare crafting with the Add-Ons and crafting without the Add-Ons on the exact same characters, server and input machine. As I have done both on 10 of my characters on PC EU and at least one character on PC NA I will use that experience as a base.
1)When you go to the board with and without the Add_on it takes pressing the interact button 3 or 4 (depending on the board) more times and pressing a button that lets you close the window at the end to make up for not using the Add-On. Spamming buttons I generously assume you will take 2 seconds more than an Add-On user although admittedly getting this done in less than one second is more than easy. This step is also heavily influenced by your latency. Since I play on both the PC EU and the PC NA Server but are physically close to the PC EU Server this presents itself quite obviously to me. I would estimate from watching my watch while spamming the button as fast as I can that I need about half a second to take those quests on EU and about 4 seconds to take them on NA.
2)When you arrive at a crafting station it automatically crafts what you need. The video postet by Hotdog_23 shows a user of the Add-On crafting at a crafting station with it which takes them 6 seconds of time of video for the woodworking station if I am not mistaken. I believe it is possible to craft faster manually than with the Add-On and once you are acustomed to it it becomes relatively easy to do so at high speed. The Add-On however does never make mistakes where you yourself probably need to concentrate to make sure of it and even then do it from time to time. Slowing the process down and double checking makes this easier and safer so I will assume you will need 15 seconds for this instead which is a bit high from my experience as I have used both ways (Add-On and non Add-On), but probably represents the general player in a better way. This doesn't apply as much for jewelry crafting and provisioning and not at all for enchanting and alchemy. Given you need to search for the Reagents and Runes I will assume based on my experience when not using the Add-On it will take you about half of the time required to craft one of the other three professions for any of these four, so I will just round them up to 8 seconds each. An Add-On user will need about 4 seconds based on a quick check in the video.
3)When finally handing in your writs and unpacking them the video shows about 15 seconds of required time of which 10 are spent going to the chests. Given you need one more button press per box without the Add-On I would say 12 seconds should cover taking all of the boxes. Opening them then should be quite fast given you just alternate between spamming the required two buttons. After that you need to scroll down in your inventory and open the material chests that came from the boxes. I believe that can be done in about 8 seconds from looking at my watch while doing so. That conveniently puts us at 20 seconds.
So in conclusion it makes a difference of about 55 seconds per character given the additional time I estimated a player would need, although as I have said that time can be reduced quite a bit and will generally be lower as a player crafts the dailies more often. For the sake of human error and convenience in calculating we will now round this up to 60 seconds and say a character without the Add-On requires one additional minute of work in the game for the dailies.
Bringing the Add-On to consoleIf you have followed me until now you have probably realised yourself that the massive difference in required time presented in different posts in this thread is by no means covered by the time the Add-Ons save you, meaning that if, as suggested by the posts from console and PC users, there is actually an imbalance of time needed to complete these quests between PC and console it will remain even if this Add-On is brought to console. It will just be a little narrower.
While I absolutely don't support the idea of consoles being inferior in this regard as the economy there is different accordingly which was made clear in this very thread, one that draws such a conclusion will likely see no change at all from this as consoles would still be 'inferior'.
I assume latency and the input machines performance are responible for the gap between the platforms, given I need longer on NA compared to EU and on a laptop compared to my PC, both of which are aspects not positively influenced by bringing the Add-On to consoles. Thus fixing this imbalance between PC and console if possible requires a different approach.
The 'Get a job' systemThe other idea presented here (jobs) would in fact slow the process down, given you would need to walk to the job locations and wait there for 30 seconds, so if it required the same input material and produced the same outcome it would simply make it more time consuming for everyone. And if it didn't offer those and would only give XP and inspiration it would be an unused feature as leveling a character through dailies was never even close to effective same as leveling a profession that way, so noone in their right mind would use it.
Are crafting dailies too rewarding?Now this is a purely subjective question as it includes the question of what a rewarding experience in a game is to a player.
Crafting dailies require a lot of walking and pressing buttons because they are so fast meaning you will most likely not be able to do something else while doing them. Them always being the same and just being making selections from a menu and confirming them which has no real player interaction (as in a minigame for instance) means most players are not enjoying them and will see them as a chore. This means if they are meant to be used they need to offer something as compensation.
While playing a quest or a doing another daily a player is likely to engage in either story or combat and most likely both, both of which are what makes this content enjoyable to the player along the rewards.
From this one could draw the conclusion that the crafting daily rewards need to offer inherently better rewards than the other dailies.
They are also an easy means of acquiring gold and upgrade materials both of which are especially important to newer players who of course have it harder to take the alternative routes acquiring those. Of course crafting dailies will also need them to get a start but once they get them going they are extremely helpful. Even if they do not engage in them, those dailies are the main cause of upgrade material being relatively cheap. Even now many newer players told me it wasn't currently affordable to them to use fully upgraded gear crafted for them, so what would happen if the means of earning it would be harder? It would just make it harder to get into the game and give an advantage to everyone who is already at the point where it doesn't matter too much to them.
Being a good way earning master writs and upgrade materials they also play a great role in making housing affordable and even now it can be expensive even for endgame players.
The lower tier material acquired from them helps keeping this material affordable to players needing it as realitically without this it's sources are extremely limited being based on crafting profession for one half of it of it which next to all players have on either the lowest or the highest tier, and on character level for the other half, which players naturally progress and have no further control over (you can't reset it to get those materials, you could only delete and level a character time after time).
Because of all this I do believe that crafting dailies are in a good spot reward wise. Although it admitedly could be toned down a slight bit without hurting the game too much, given this doesn't apply to rewards that are already seen as rare and important or require serious investment (like jewelry mats and master writs).
Thank you for your attention and congratz if you have brought yourself to read all of this, otherwise TL,DR: no thanks, the Add-On is not the issue here and the alternatives given are inferior to what we already have while the current dailies are in a relatively good spot, which makes the changes proposed unnecessary.
Temeraire507 wrote: »This post includes my take on this thread, sorted by topic.
Daily Crafting Writs, the time required to do them and the Impact of Add-OnsThis Thread carries a lot of misinformation and assumption. Imo it basically blames the Add-On 'Dolgubon's Lazy Writ Crafter' (and I assume it is also meant to target 'Daily Alchemy' and 'Daily Provisioning' along with it) for a difference in console to PC performance and economy. I will try to analyze this a bit more, so be warned of a textwall.
A few things need to be clarified from what I have seen. So first things first, what does that Add-On actually do what is also relevant to this thread (I guess diplaying the daily cooldown isn't for instance) given all the options are enabled by the player?
From my knowledge 1) The Add-On automatically takes the writ quests when you interact with the board. 2) The Add-On automatically crafts the required items for a writ when you interact with the matching crafting station. 3) The Add-On automatically claims the rewards when you interact with box. 4) The Add-On automatically opens the reward boxes. 5) The Add-On disables stealing while you do the writs. It does not support the auto-crafting for Provisioning and Alchemy, which is where the according additional auto-crafting Add-Ons come in. (Probably together with 'Writ Worthy' for master writs)
So how does it impact doing crafting dailies and time savings doing so?
I believe the best way to anaylze this is to compare crafting with the Add-Ons and crafting without the Add-Ons on the exact same characters, server and input machine. As I have done both on 10 of my characters on PC EU and at least one character on PC NA I will use that experience as a base.
1)When you go to the board with and without the Add_on it takes pressing the interact button 3 or 4 (depending on the board) more times and pressing a button that lets you close the window at the end to make up for not using the Add-On. Spamming buttons I generously assume you will take 2 seconds more than an Add-On user although admittedly getting this done in less than one second is more than easy. This step is also heavily influenced by your latency. Since I play on both the PC EU and the PC NA Server but are physically close to the PC EU Server this presents itself quite obviously to me. I would estimate from watching my watch while spamming the button as fast as I can that I need about half a second to take those quests on EU and about 4 seconds to take them on NA.
2)When you arrive at a crafting station it automatically crafts what you need. The video postet by Hotdog_23 shows a user of the Add-On crafting at a crafting station with it which takes them 6 seconds of time of video for the woodworking station if I am not mistaken. I believe it is possible to craft faster manually than with the Add-On and once you are acustomed to it it becomes relatively easy to do so at high speed. The Add-On however does never make mistakes where you yourself probably need to concentrate to make sure of it and even then do it from time to time. Slowing the process down and double checking makes this easier and safer so I will assume you will need 15 seconds for this instead which is a bit high from my experience as I have used both ways (Add-On and non Add-On), but probably represents the general player in a better way. This doesn't apply as much for jewelry crafting and provisioning and not at all for enchanting and alchemy. Given you need to search for the Reagents and Runes I will assume based on my experience when not using the Add-On it will take you about half of the time required to craft one of the other three professions for any of these four, so I will just round them up to 8 seconds each. An Add-On user will need about 4 seconds based on a quick check in the video.
3)When finally handing in your writs and unpacking them the video shows about 15 seconds of required time of which 10 are spent going to the chests. Given you need one more button press per box without the Add-On I would say 12 seconds should cover taking all of the boxes. Opening them then should be quite fast given you just alternate between spamming the required two buttons. After that you need to scroll down in your inventory and open the material chests that came from the boxes. I believe that can be done in about 8 seconds from looking at my watch while doing so. That conveniently puts us at 20 seconds.
So in conclusion it makes a difference of about 55 seconds per character given the additional time I estimated a player would need, although as I have said that time can be reduced quite a bit and will generally be lower as a player crafts the dailies more often. For the sake of human error and convenience in calculating we will now round this up to 60 seconds and say a character without the Add-On requires one additional minute of work in the game for the dailies.
Bringing the Add-On to consoleIf you have followed me until now you have probably realised yourself that the massive difference in required time presented in different posts in this thread is by no means covered by the time the Add-Ons save you, meaning that if, as suggested by the posts from console and PC users, there is actually an imbalance of time needed to complete these quests between PC and console it will remain even if this Add-On is brought to console. It will just be a little narrower.
While I absolutely don't support the idea of consoles being inferior in this regard as the economy there is different accordingly which was made clear in this very thread, one that draws such a conclusion will likely see no change at all from this as consoles would still be 'inferior'.
I assume latency and the input machines performance are responible for the gap between the platforms, given I need longer on NA compared to EU and on a laptop compared to my PC, both of which are aspects not positively influenced by bringing the Add-On to consoles. Thus fixing this imbalance between PC and console if possible requires a different approach.
The 'Get a job' systemThe other idea presented here (jobs) would in fact slow the process down, given you would need to walk to the job locations and wait there for 30 seconds, so if it required the same input material and produced the same outcome it would simply make it more time consuming for everyone. And if it didn't offer those and would only give XP and inspiration it would be an unused feature as leveling a character through dailies was never even close to effective same as leveling a profession that way, so noone in their right mind would use it.
Are crafting dailies too rewarding?Now this is a purely subjective question as it includes the question of what a rewarding experience in a game is to a player.
Crafting dailies require a lot of walking and pressing buttons because they are so fast meaning you will most likely not be able to do something else while doing them. Them always being the same and just being making selections from a menu and confirming them which has no real player interaction (as in a minigame for instance) means most players are not enjoying them and will see them as a chore. This means if they are meant to be used they need to offer something as compensation.
While playing a quest or a doing another daily a player is likely to engage in either story or combat and most likely both, both of which are what makes this content enjoyable to the player along the rewards.
From this one could draw the conclusion that the crafting daily rewards need to offer inherently better rewards than the other dailies.
They are also an easy means of acquiring gold and upgrade materials both of which are especially important to newer players who of course have it harder to take the alternative routes acquiring those. Of course crafting dailies will also need them to get a start but once they get them going they are extremely helpful. Even if they do not engage in them, those dailies are the main cause of upgrade material being relatively cheap. Even now many newer players told me it wasn't currently affordable to them to use fully upgraded gear crafted for them, so what would happen if the means of earning it would be harder? It would just make it harder to get into the game and give an advantage to everyone who is already at the point where it doesn't matter too much to them.
Being a good way earning master writs and upgrade materials they also play a great role in making housing affordable and even now it can be expensive even for endgame players.
The lower tier material acquired from them helps keeping this material affordable to players needing it as realitically without this it's sources are extremely limited being based on crafting profession for one half of it of it which next to all players have on either the lowest or the highest tier, and on character level for the other half, which players naturally progress and have no further control over (you can't reset it to get those materials, you could only delete and level a character time after time).
Because of all this I do believe that crafting dailies are in a good spot reward wise. Although it admitedly could be toned down a slight bit without hurting the game too much, given this doesn't apply to rewards that are already seen as rare and important or require serious investment (like jewelry mats and master writs).
Thank you for your attention and congratz if you have brought yourself to read all of this, otherwise TL,DR: no thanks, the Add-On is not the issue here and the alternatives given are inferior to what we already have while the current dailies are in a relatively good spot, which makes the changes proposed unnecessary.
Temeraire507 wrote: »This post includes my take on this thread, sorted by topic.
Daily Crafting Writs, the time required to do them and the Impact of Add-OnsThis Thread carries a lot of misinformation and assumption. Imo it basically blames the Add-On 'Dolgubon's Lazy Writ Crafter' (and I assume it is also meant to target 'Daily Alchemy' and 'Daily Provisioning' along with it) for a difference in console to PC performance and economy. I will try to analyze this a bit more, so be warned of a textwall.
A few things need to be clarified from what I have seen. So first things first, what does that Add-On actually do what is also relevant to this thread (I guess diplaying the daily cooldown isn't for instance) given all the options are enabled by the player?
From my knowledge 1) The Add-On automatically takes the writ quests when you interact with the board. 2) The Add-On automatically crafts the required items for a writ when you interact with the matching crafting station. 3) The Add-On automatically claims the rewards when you interact with box. 4) The Add-On automatically opens the reward boxes. 5) The Add-On disables stealing while you do the writs. It does not support the auto-crafting for Provisioning and Alchemy, which is where the according additional auto-crafting Add-Ons come in. (Probably together with 'Writ Worthy' for master writs)
So how does it impact doing crafting dailies and time savings doing so?
I believe the best way to anaylze this is to compare crafting with the Add-Ons and crafting without the Add-Ons on the exact same characters, server and input machine. As I have done both on 10 of my characters on PC EU and at least one character on PC NA I will use that experience as a base.
1)When you go to the board with and without the Add_on it takes pressing the interact button 3 or 4 (depending on the board) more times and pressing a button that lets you close the window at the end to make up for not using the Add-On. Spamming buttons I generously assume you will take 2 seconds more than an Add-On user although admittedly getting this done in less than one second is more than easy. This step is also heavily influenced by your latency. Since I play on both the PC EU and the PC NA Server but are physically close to the PC EU Server this presents itself quite obviously to me. I would estimate from watching my watch while spamming the button as fast as I can that I need about half a second to take those quests on EU and about 4 seconds to take them on NA.
2)When you arrive at a crafting station it automatically crafts what you need. The video postet by Hotdog_23 shows a user of the Add-On crafting at a crafting station with it which takes them 6 seconds of time of video for the woodworking station if I am not mistaken. I believe it is possible to craft faster manually than with the Add-On and once you are acustomed to it it becomes relatively easy to do so at high speed. The Add-On however does never make mistakes where you yourself probably need to concentrate to make sure of it and even then do it from time to time. Slowing the process down and double checking makes this easier and safer so I will assume you will need 15 seconds for this instead which is a bit high from my experience as I have used both ways (Add-On and non Add-On), but probably represents the general player in a better way. This doesn't apply as much for jewelry crafting and provisioning and not at all for enchanting and alchemy. Given you need to search for the Reagents and Runes I will assume based on my experience when not using the Add-On it will take you about half of the time required to craft one of the other three professions for any of these four, so I will just round them up to 8 seconds each. An Add-On user will need about 4 seconds based on a quick check in the video.
3)When finally handing in your writs and unpacking them the video shows about 15 seconds of required time of which 10 are spent going to the chests. Given you need one more button press per box without the Add-On I would say 12 seconds should cover taking all of the boxes. Opening them then should be quite fast given you just alternate between spamming the required two buttons. After that you need to scroll down in your inventory and open the material chests that came from the boxes. I believe that can be done in about 8 seconds from looking at my watch while doing so. That conveniently puts us at 20 seconds.
So in conclusion it makes a difference of about 55 seconds per character given the additional time I estimated a player would need, although as I have said that time can be reduced quite a bit and will generally be lower as a player crafts the dailies more often. For the sake of human error and convenience in calculating we will now round this up to 60 seconds and say a character without the Add-On requires one additional minute of work in the game for the dailies.
Bringing the Add-On to consoleIf you have followed me until now you have probably realised yourself that the massive difference in required time presented in different posts in this thread is by no means covered by the time the Add-Ons save you, meaning that if, as suggested by the posts from console and PC users, there is actually an imbalance of time needed to complete these quests between PC and console it will remain even if this Add-On is brought to console. It will just be a little narrower.
While I absolutely don't support the idea of consoles being inferior in this regard as the economy there is different accordingly which was made clear in this very thread, one that draws such a conclusion will likely see no change at all from this as consoles would still be 'inferior'.
I assume latency and the input machines performance are responible for the gap between the platforms, given I need longer on NA compared to EU and on a laptop compared to my PC, both of which are aspects not positively influenced by bringing the Add-On to consoles. Thus fixing this imbalance between PC and console if possible requires a different approach.
The 'Get a job' systemThe other idea presented here (jobs) would in fact slow the process down, given you would need to walk to the job locations and wait there for 30 seconds, so if it required the same input material and produced the same outcome it would simply make it more time consuming for everyone. And if it didn't offer those and would only give XP and inspiration it would be an unused feature as leveling a character through dailies was never even close to effective same as leveling a profession that way, so noone in their right mind would use it.
Are crafting dailies too rewarding?Now this is a purely subjective question as it includes the question of what a rewarding experience in a game is to a player.
Crafting dailies require a lot of walking and pressing buttons because they are so fast meaning you will most likely not be able to do something else while doing them. Them always being the same and just being making selections from a menu and confirming them which has no real player interaction (as in a minigame for instance) means most players are not enjoying them and will see them as a chore. This means if they are meant to be used they need to offer something as compensation.
While playing a quest or a doing another daily a player is likely to engage in either story or combat and most likely both, both of which are what makes this content enjoyable to the player along the rewards.
From this one could draw the conclusion that the crafting daily rewards need to offer inherently better rewards than the other dailies.
They are also an easy means of acquiring gold and upgrade materials both of which are especially important to newer players who of course have it harder to take the alternative routes acquiring those. Of course crafting dailies will also need them to get a start but once they get them going they are extremely helpful. Even if they do not engage in them, those dailies are the main cause of upgrade material being relatively cheap. Even now many newer players told me it wasn't currently affordable to them to use fully upgraded gear crafted for them, so what would happen if the means of earning it would be harder? It would just make it harder to get into the game and give an advantage to everyone who is already at the point where it doesn't matter too much to them.
Being a good way earning master writs and upgrade materials they also play a great role in making housing affordable and even now it can be expensive even for endgame players.
The lower tier material acquired from them helps keeping this material affordable to players needing it as realitically without this it's sources are extremely limited being based on crafting profession for one half of it of it which next to all players have on either the lowest or the highest tier, and on character level for the other half, which players naturally progress and have no further control over (you can't reset it to get those materials, you could only delete and level a character time after time).
Because of all this I do believe that crafting dailies are in a good spot reward wise. Although it admitedly could be toned down a slight bit without hurting the game too much, given this doesn't apply to rewards that are already seen as rare and important or require serious investment (like jewelry mats and master writs).
Thank you for your attention and congratz if you have brought yourself to read all of this, otherwise TL,DR: no thanks, the Add-On is not the issue here and the alternatives given are inferior to what we already have while the current dailies are in a relatively good spot, which makes the changes proposed unnecessary.
I'm on XB-NA and I agree that an add-on would not really speed up my process as muscle memory from literal years of doing them on multiple characters has made the writ portion second nature.
I also pre-craft (formerly 9 days worth but now 15 days worth thanks to BenvolentBowd's suggestion and with the inventory pets) so this allows my alts to blow through writs in a jiffy. As many on console can relate, however, my battle is with the unpredictable load screen times and seemingly increasing frequent unending load screens on character logout that requires me to force-dashboard the game and re-login (which is typically a 3-4 minute loss of time for each occurrence). With add-ons most likely further impacting console stability and processor load I don't think I would utilize a lazy writ/provisioning/enchanting crafter even if it were available.
However, in the crafting side of things I do wish I had access to the master writ addon because there are so many variables with item, trait, and motif that are not visible during the actual crafting interface that I end up either writing them down on paper or taking a photo of my TV with my phone to reference. Not to mention I end up double and triple checking this before I finally hit the "craft" button, this takes a far greater amount of time than on PC where as long as you know what set table to run up to, the addon will do the heavy lifting and take mere seconds (probably a little more since the global cooldown on improving the item takes a few additional seconds).
Likewise with the master alchemy and enchanting writs, the variability between the writs is so extreme that an addon would save a lot of scrolling ingredient lists and verifying combinations.
Although I will admit that I don't know if the addons can look at "unopened" master writs or if they have to be an active quest for them to work. I generally stockpile 20-30 master writs before turning them in, and pre-craft all the items before rolling up to Rolis. If the addon only reads open quests, then this method wouldn't work since you can only have one quest active at a time for each profession and the 20+ enchanting master writs I have would still benefit more by pre-crafting them all manually.
TL;DR I basically agree that a standard lazy writ crafter addon would be fairly ineffective for myself on console, but do admit that the casual player who only does 1-2 character's writs a day and doesn't pre-craft might find it useful.
The Master Writ Add-On can only do active quests, so it is not very useful for the technique you use. I do them in the same way you do, stockpile them, craft the item for all of them and then turn them in all at once, I use the Add-On primarily to craft the most valuable items required, so that I don't make mistakes there and do the rest the same as you so it, screenshot or constant checking.However, in the crafting side of things I do wish I had access to the master writ addon because there are so many variables with item, trait, and motif that are not visible during the actual crafting interface that I end up either writing them down on paper or taking a photo of my TV with my phone to reference. Not to mention I end up double and triple checking this before I finally hit the "craft" button, this takes a far greater amount of time than on PC where as long as you know what set table to run up to, the addon will do the heavy lifting and take mere seconds (probably a little more since the global cooldown on improving the item takes a few additional seconds).
Likewise with the master alchemy and enchanting writs, the variability between the writs is so extreme that an addon would save a lot of scrolling ingredient lists and verifying combinations.
Although I will admit that I don't know if the addons can look at "unopened" master writs or if they have to be an active quest for them to work. I generally stockpile 20-30 master writs before turning them in, and pre-craft all the items before rolling up to Rolis. If the addon only reads open quests, then this method wouldn't work since you can only have one quest active at a time for each profession and the 20+ enchanting master writs I have would still benefit more by pre-crafting them all manually.