Comprehensive Provisioning Issues

Cogo

Great post OP!

And it shows they are not just listening to us, but when we come with really constructive suggestions/feedback/not-happy-with-something, Zenimax even take it to heart and put up a project for it to be rolled out.

Awesome post and this just makes me more excited about the next coming months and how the game is developing.

I am the guilds chef, so I know all about the problems with stacking, mats and the good buffs at veteran lvl having some of the same mats as lvl 35.

Hareth_Faehir

I am a V2 max level provisioner and I check EVERY box/crate/bag/sack yadda. I have never found a purple recipe. -and I also started in early access. Now to even think about buying one you have to have 200-300k gold. I am sorry but that's just ridiculous. When it gets to the point that you are forced to either give up entirely on your craft or buy new gear there's a problem.

What makes it untenable for a lot of us is that we are designated <enter prof here> for the group of people that we party with or our guilds and now we just can't do what we originally agreed to do.

Please fix the purple and blue (food) recipe drop rate so we can do what we've agreed to for our guilds/parties without having to sacrifice something like gear to do it.

and yes.. the prov ingredient loot in our vet maps is nearly enough to make the baby jesus cry

LonePirate

My first email today from Gavin was a frustrating one as it only contained 2 Barley. The algorithm for determining mats for the Provisioning emails needs a lot of work.

reggielee

being a guild provisioner is guaranteed to have your whole gameplay dedicated to just searching endlessly for ingredients. about as fun as a rash

Sendarya

So, I've been having a ton of fun provisioning, but now that I'm in Vet levels, I ran out of/sold out of all my lvl 50 foods. I don't feel like farming for hours in the zones behind me.

So Zenimax, tht #1 provisioning issue? Made me quit playing vet levels entirely. Part of my game enjoyment is derived from looting every barrel and crate and backpack I see, and right now there is no point doing it.

I rolled an alt and my main is now sitting waiting for you to fix this so she can make and sell food again (And eat it myself, too!). Until then, the Traveling Tavern is closed. I am a super sad panda.

Sendarya

Well, now I cancelled, just for now. I known they responded, but it does not seem like it is much of a priority fixing vet level ingredients and/or recipe drops, not to mention the rarity of epic ingredients (pepper, oats, tomato) even if you grind up 3 hirelings!

Until I can provision again, I cannot play. I really was spending half my game time or more gathering and crafting, which is why it took me so long to reach vet levels at all. I played slow, even have 2 alts now, both with 50 and 3/3 provisioning hirelings, but I find myself not wanting to log on the last week.

I love this game. I hope they address these major crafting issues soon, and I will happily return!

FunkyBudda

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hey guys! Just thought you'd like to hear an update on the issues you pointed out (please excuse some of the repetitiveness in the answers).

1. Veteran Content Ingredients - We are currently working on fixing this issue.
2. Coldharbour Ingredients - This will be fixed when the issue with Veteran Content Ingredients (above) is fixed.
3. Recent loot changes
4. Purple recipe drops (Lvl 50 & VR5)
5. Recipe Inconsistencies
   • For all three of the issues above, there were some deliberate changes made to the frequency of drops. That said, if there is a legitimate issue with not being able to obtain enough materials to make food, recipes not dropping at all, or extreme imbalances, please let us know with specifics and we can look into it.
6. Two Different Jazbay Grapes - This has been fixed internally and will be rolled out in a future patch.
7. Usefulness of Drinks - This is something that needs to be investigated and will probably take some time.
8. Fortified Mountain Lager Recipe - This has been fixed internally and will be rolled out in a future patch.
9. Inaccurate Ingredient Descriptions - This has been fixed internally and will be rolled out in a future patch.
10. Fishy Sticks Recipe - We're currently investigating this issue.

Please provide an update on where things are regarding the issue quoted, thanks.

Redwyrm

Tomatoes... increase the rate of which hirelings bring you tomatoes.
For one full month my hireling brought me 2 tomatoes. Thats 8 plates of food, and 16 hours of buff...
...16hour for one month X_X

Catches_the_Sun

Redwyrm wrote: »

Tomatoes... increase the rate of which hirelings bring you tomatoes.
For one full month my hireling brought me 2 tomatoes. Thats 8 plates of food, and 16 hours of buff...
...16hour for one month X_X

I have 6 hirelings per day (3 different 3/3 hirelings), and only have 20 tomatoes in the bank. Granted, 2 of these characters only reached 3/3 recently, but my main has been 3/3 hireling since the first week of release. That being said, there are 2 other recipe options, if one can ever find them. I'm currently sitting on 60 oats & 2 full stacks of pepper.

Sendarya

Catches_the_Sun wrote: »

Redwyrm wrote: »

Tomatoes... increase the rate of which hirelings bring you tomatoes.
For one full month my hireling brought me 2 tomatoes. Thats 8 plates of food, and 16 hours of buff...
...16hour for one month X_X

I have 6 hirelings per day (3 different 3/3 hirelings), and only have 20 tomatoes in the bank. Granted, 2 of these characters only reached 3/3 recently, but my main has been 3/3 hireling since the first week of release. That being said, there are 2 other recipe options, if one can ever find them. I'm currently sitting on 60 oats & 2 full stacks of pepper.

The problem is it is too rng. I have 2 3/3 hirelings, I was working on a third.

I have a 45 oats recipe, and one week I got 12 or so oats, yay me! But in the following 2 weeks I only received 2 oats, and about 20 jazbay grapes and 15 hops, some snowberries, a canis root and 4 tomatoes. All of those are useless to me (I actually have a lvl 50 purple drink, so I can use the jazbay grapes, but I don't use drinks, and I cannot sell them even at 75g each. I just ended up giving them away to people who order other things. 1 free purple drink with order! That you don't even want. lol)

Ok, so my point is, with the extreme rarity of purple recipes, coupled with the extreme rarity of mats to make them, most of us will end up with tons of stuff we don't need but are unwilling to sell or trade because what if we get a recipe that requires that ingredient??? How would you feel if you traded all your tomatoes to someone for their oats, and tomorrow you got the v5 recipe that requires tomatoes? This is causing every serious provisioned to do what you are doing, sitting on rare ingredients they cannot use and may never be able to use in the semi-vain hope that they will get one of those recipes some day.

Also, I would like to note that other professions always get mats they can use. True, some trait stones are garbage, but common racials are used to make the items required to grind up levels when trading for decon, and every raw mat can be refined for a chance at tempers, if nothing else. And if course the tempers themselves are ALL useful. A green temper is always a yay, a "rare" snowberry for us... not so much.

Provisioning is the only craft where hirelings are REQUIRED to make the best stuff, and yet our hirelings bring us useless stuff much of the time. Not to mention the problem of picking up 2 mails per day. Due to push, most of us miss at least one of those every 3 days or so.

Anyway, all those problems combined with the vet rank loot issue make high level provisioning very, very frustrating. It might not make baby Jesus cry, but it is a near thing!

Sendarya

Catches_the_Sun wrote: »

Redwyrm wrote: »

Tomatoes... increase the rate of which hirelings bring you tomatoes.
For one full month my hireling brought me 2 tomatoes. Thats 8 plates of food, and 16 hours of buff...
...16hour for one month X_X

I have 6 hirelings per day (3 different 3/3 hirelings), and only have 20 tomatoes in the bank. Granted, 2 of these characters only reached 3/3 recently, but my main has been 3/3 hireling since the first week of release. That being said, there are 2 other recipe options, if one can ever find them. I'm currently sitting on 60 oats & 2 full stacks of pepper.

Also, wow, 6 hirelings? That is impressive!

Should we be required to have 3 to 6 maxed out hirelings to get enough rare mats to make a reasonable amount of food for ourselves, our guilders, groups, or for sale? I should think not. That seems massively broken to me.

I have been a provisioned in any game that had the profession. I distinctly recall sitting on the bridge to Velious in EQ, just waiting for mammoths so I could farm up their meat. Next stop was picking up mushrooms, then the ingredients for picnic baskets. A few hours of farming up mats allowed me to have a stack of 3 popular food items for sale in the bazaar each evening. It was fun. This is not.

That is not the only game, just an example. Different games had different ways of provisioning, but even those that required a lot of time invested to do it like EQ were good, because it was up to ME how dedicated I was, how much I got to sell, not up to some RNG that requires no effort on my part after I grind up the required crafting levels on however many tons. As it stands right now, I cannot reliably farm appropriate level mats in the world even for lvl 50 and vr5 blue food, since it shares loot tables with tier 4 foods, and I cannot make my purple foods unless I win the hirelings lottery that day.

Catches_the_Sun

Sendarya wrote: »

Catches_the_Sun wrote: »

Redwyrm wrote: »

Tomatoes... increase the rate of which hirelings bring you tomatoes.
For one full month my hireling brought me 2 tomatoes. Thats 8 plates of food, and 16 hours of buff...
...16hour for one month X_X

I have 6 hirelings per day (3 different 3/3 hirelings), and only have 20 tomatoes in the bank. Granted, 2 of these characters only reached 3/3 recently, but my main has been 3/3 hireling since the first week of release. That being said, there are 2 other recipe options, if one can ever find them. I'm currently sitting on 60 oats & 2 full stacks of pepper.

Also, wow, 6 hirelings? That is impressive!

Should we be required to have 3 to 6 maxed out hirelings to get enough rare mats to make a reasonable amount of food for ourselves, our guilders, groups, or for sale? I should think not. That seems massively broken to me.

I have been a provisioned in any game that had the profession. I distinctly recall sitting on the bridge to Velious in EQ, just waiting for mammoths so I could farm up their meat. Next stop was picking up mushrooms, then the ingredients for picnic baskets. A few hours of farming up mats allowed me to have a stack of 3 popular food items for sale in the bazaar each evening. It was fun. This is not.

That is not the only game, just an example. Different games had different ways of provisioning, but even those that required a lot of time invested to do it like EQ were good, because it was up to ME how dedicated I was, how much I got to sell, not up to some RNG that requires no effort on my part after I grind up the required crafting levels on however many tons. As it stands right now, I cannot reliably farm appropriate level mats in the world even for lvl 50 and vr5 blue food, since it shares loot tables with tier 4 foods, and I cannot make my purple foods unless I win the hirelings lottery that day.

I think the mentality of "since purple exists, only purple is good enough" is hurting the profession in terms of VR5 food. The recipes are ridiculous to find, and ingredients are not reliable. I focus only on blue foods for this reason & I still find it enjoyable. Of course, it would be much better if those ingredients dropped in VR zones, which is why I put that down as Issue #1 affecting our profession right now.

Anyways, hope you don't give up. I'll miss the Traveling Tavern messages that gave me flashbacks to old-school RP MMO'ing.

Jeremy

I agree with you that there needs to be some reliable way to get purple recipes. Because if players can never find them they just go to waste and there is no point in having them in the game to begin with.

Maybe add a quest line for provisioning that lets them choose one from a list or something like that. They could even make the quest long and difficult if they wanted. But to have a way to actually get them would be nice.

Sendarya

Catches_the_Sun wrote: »

Sendarya wrote: »

Catches_the_Sun wrote: »

Redwyrm wrote: »

Tomatoes... increase the rate of which hirelings bring you tomatoes.
For one full month my hireling brought me 2 tomatoes. Thats 8 plates of food, and 16 hours of buff...
...16hour for one month X_X

I have 6 hirelings per day (3 different 3/3 hirelings), and only have 20 tomatoes in the bank. Granted, 2 of these characters only reached 3/3 recently, but my main has been 3/3 hireling since the first week of release. That being said, there are 2 other recipe options, if one can ever find them. I'm currently sitting on 60 oats & 2 full stacks of pepper.

Also, wow, 6 hirelings? That is impressive!

Should we be required to have 3 to 6 maxed out hirelings to get enough rare mats to make a reasonable amount of food for ourselves, our guilders, groups, or for sale? I should think not. That seems massively broken to me.

I have been a provisioned in any game that had the profession. I distinctly recall sitting on the bridge to Velious in EQ, just waiting for mammoths so I could farm up their meat. Next stop was picking up mushrooms, then the ingredients for picnic baskets. A few hours of farming up mats allowed me to have a stack of 3 popular food items for sale in the bazaar each evening. It was fun. This is not.

That is not the only game, just an example. Different games had different ways of provisioning, but even those that required a lot of time invested to do it like EQ were good, because it was up to ME how dedicated I was, how much I got to sell, not up to some RNG that requires no effort on my part after I grind up the required crafting levels on however many tons. As it stands right now, I cannot reliably farm appropriate level mats in the world even for lvl 50 and vr5 blue food, since it shares loot tables with tier 4 foods, and I cannot make my purple foods unless I win the hirelings lottery that day.

I think the mentality of "since purple exists, only purple is good enough" is hurting the profession in terms of VR5 food. The recipes are ridiculous to find, and ingredients are not reliable. I focus only on blue foods for this reason & I still find it enjoyable. Of course, it would be much better if those ingredients dropped in VR zones, which is why I put that down as Issue #1 affecting our profession right now.

Anyways, hope you don't give up. I'll miss the Traveling Tavern messages that gave me flashbacks to old-school RP MMO'ing.

Oh, I agree. Personally, I think blue food is better anyway. But the purple issue is still an issue, mostly for the imbalance of it, IMO.

But that #1 vet zone issue is huge.
I am used to farming provisioning mats in order to make and sell food, and don't mind spending some of my game time doing it. However, the fact that I cannot farm as I play combined with the wacky mixed loot tables of previous zones such as Coldharbour and The Rift makes it very frustrating to gather the ingredients I need even for blue food. Combine this with half our stuff (drinks) being so useless you cannot even give them away, and I just don't feel motivated to do it right now.

I would like to point out that numerous games have kept me playing for months after I completed the regular content, just by keeping crafting interesting (and housing doesn't hurt either! lol). Including EQ2, Vanguard, SWG, and others. In some cases, such as EQ2, I subbed for up to 6 extra months just as a dedicated provisioner, that is almost ALL I did. My point being a well implemented crafting system actually serves as endgame content for some people.

I can't be the only person who finds crafting/housing/playing the market to be a good portion of endgame content.

Anyway, I spent about 2 hours farming mats a few days back, trying for mostly mudcrab meat, but also red wheat and fatback. In 2 hours I had only found 7 mudcrab meat.... maybe I just had bad luck, but I found more beef than that, and like 2 red wheat. Just running in and out of houses and around farms and such was also the least fun kind of farming, lol. I did not log-in/out, just covered the big areas of the Rift.

Anyway, thanks for your kind words As an old school mmo'er, I enjoy doing it! I will be back soon I am sure. The vet zone issue will be fixed, and then the Traveling Tavern will be back in business Possibly, summer arriving is also affecting my decision to take a break, but I am sure I will be drawn back in soon. I'd like to finish the vet zones at least!

Sendarya

P.s. Thank you for compiling our issues for the devs to see, and for your guides! You have been and continue to be a wonderful resource for all the provisioners of Tamriel!

Food4Thought

utzpretzels wrote: »

I got a purple recipe from a dungeon yesterday, but we are talking level 35.

I only have one level 35 purple recipe. I got it in a container about a week and a half ago.

Ralathar44

Catches_the_Sun wrote: »

1. Recent loot changes - The recent changes that have been made to make Racial Motifs more rare are having an adverse effect on Provisioners. For one, we don't have as many containers to loot for ingredients & our recipes have become more rare.
2. Purple recipe drops (Lvl 50 & VR5) - Yes, I understand that purple recipe drops are supposed to be rare. Again, due to the above issue with Motifs, these are even more rare than they were before. I'm not sure if they're dropping at all right now. Not one person in our Guild has found one & people that I've spoken to that have them got them back in Early Access when Veteran rank recipes were dropping in beginner zones.
3. Recipe Inconsistencies - I think that recipe drops in general need to be looked at. I have every blue recipe & looted multiples of the ones that I have, with the exception being Tier 3 drinks. For some reason, I found 3 or 4 each of all blue foods (in EP) but not 1 single blue drink recipe for this tier. I never saw one for sale & continue to look for them without success. There are others that seem to be "missing", such as a couple of level 10 green recipes that should be as common as rain.
4. Usefulness of Drinks - By the time people get to Veteran content, most of them have softcapped whatever regeneration they're aiming for in their builds. This makes drinks pretty much useless at these levels. I don't think allowing stacking with food is the answer as that would mean everybody would run around with all 3 regen stats softcapped. My objective here is just to point out the imbalance though, not to push for a particular fix.

I will add my post to the pile confirming these issues (most of the other isssues have been acknowledged or addressed.).

1. Definitely noticed this.

2. Never seen one drop or heard of them drop in my trade guilds or personal guild. What the heck is their drop rate? Do they exist?

3. There does seem to be a good deal of inconsistency.

4. This is true. Overcharging Max Magicka/Stamina/Health is far more effective than overcharging the regen thanks to the values involved and the important ones are always soft capped.

thelonghop

I'm trying to level provisioning and clothing and provisioning in general is much more difficult to level than clothing. It's not nearly as intuitive and the amount of ingredients is ridiculous.

HeroOfEvbof

Sometimes I feel purple recipes are meant to be vanity items like dragon mounts in WoW. Most serious provisioners I know have all three blue mudcrab recipes and all three blue honey comb recipes. On the way to vet we usually get all three blue beef recipes and blue shank recipes.
Purple recipes have a game value sure, more than just a dragon mount. But they arent necessary.

HeroOfEvbof

Hah, zenimax redacted the word "sh@nk"

zhevon

HeroOfEvbof wrote: »

Hah, zenimax redacted the word "sh@nk"

You just got to sha@nk your head sometimes.

Muletide

Yesterday I found the VR5 Consummate Honey Pudding recipe from a desk in VR Shad Astula (VR2 Deshaan for me). It spurred me to power level Provisioning so I could use it. Very powerful at +270ish each stat for 2 hours.

danreckerpreub18_ESO

Random fun fact: I sold a guy a Tomato for 15k the other day. He claimed he wanted it in his inventory for the exclusive purpose of linking it, to prove they exist.

I'm tempted to become a wandering bard just to go from inn to inn, singing as terribly as I possibly can. I'm sure NPCs have free access to tomatoes, after all.

^ My master plan for maxing out bank slots. I hear bankers allow tomatoes as currency these days.

LonePirate

While not a severe issue right now, this game is a content update or two away from VR15 characters which would put them 10 levels above the current highest level recipes and provisioning items. We are going to need some new recipes that utilize the existing mats or we will need new mats and the recipes that use them.

Sendarya

LonePirate wrote: »

While not a severe issue right now, this game is a content update or two away from VR15 characters which would put them 10 levels above the current highest level recipes and provisioning items. We are going to need some new recipes that utilize the existing mats or we will need new mats and the recipes that use them.

Considering they still have not addressed our #1 issue of incorrect ingredients at vet levels, even in 1.1.4, I somehow don't think they even have had this thought cross their minds. Provisioning seems to be very low on their list of things to fix. Which is really sad. I wish the OP would add this issue to his list though. Can't hurt to try and bring it to their attention.

Fchu

HeroOfEvbof wrote: »

Sometimes I feel purple recipes are meant to be vanity items like dragon mounts in WoW. Most serious provisioners I know have all three blue mudcrab recipes and all three blue honey comb recipes. On the way to vet we usually get all three blue beef recipes and blue shank recipes.
Purple recipes have a game value sure, more than just a dragon mount. But they arent necessary.

Vanity items should be rare, essentials should not. WoW rare recipes are usually vanity/rp foods that make you bigger/smaller/look like a pirate. Recipes considered essentials are easily accessible by just doing dailies for the most part. Because these purple recipes are stat foods, raid groups will consider them essential and the recipes should be easier to get.

Alephen

woohoo! VR5 food recipe! oh it takes oats, nm

one good thing is the higher numbers for blue and then green food. if someone is say a magicka build, as most are these days, they can go to blue health/magicka food and receive noticeably higher numbers. (iirc, 50 points higher for health and magicka with blue food over purple food.) same could be for a pure dps build eating magicka/stamina blue food and sacrificng the health for more dps.

Catches_the_Sun

Sendarya wrote: »

I wish the OP would add this issue to his list though. Can't hurt to try and bring it to their attention.

Added.

Glantris

i agree with all of this. i feel like provisioning is a little overlooked, but its nice that they're responding to us.

as for finding tier 5 ingredients, from one provisioner to another, go to faregyl's farm in cyrodiil. if you're not into getting ganked, guest on a campaign dominated by your alliance - hopesfire for AD, volendrung for DC, not sure about one for EP though.

if you look in the storehouse there, there are a ton of containers. continually search these and you'll get a ton of t4 and t5 ingredients, and there are plenty of the produce containers, which seem to drop more honeycomb and mudcrab meat than the others. a few hours hanging out there and i can churn out a few stacks of vr5 food. its mind-numbing but it's the best i've found.

Cogo

I know all to well about how rare the tomatoes and oats are. I only play one char, this. I am the guilds chef and got a decent amount of mats, just waiting for the correct recipes AND the correct event to use them.

I do like that the most powerful food buffs are rare, so a group/guild can decide when and where to use these.

If we make it to common, that you always have the best purple food buff, it pretty much makes blues useless and green recipes would probebly be asked to taken out of the game.

Lets not make a WoW mistake and make the good stuff not rare.

It is one of many choices that ESO offers. In this case, when you choose to use the extra power for an encounter of your choice. Or to make gold maybe?

I know I might sound boring to most, but when a rare item becomes common, its not rare anymore and both looses its value, and fun/excitement to have them.

Right now, Blue food buffs are pretty good and actually in demand.
These buffs are not useless, even for Vet encounters. So its not like we do not have an alternative.

Think about it. Rare items, whatever they are, are fun, exciting, cool to get/have. That must be one of the main pleasures of this game?