Extraction rates from raw materials

amdaak89ub17_ESO

I would like to bring some attention to an issue that I believe is creating considerable unrest in the ESO economy.

I am level 50 in Blacksmithing, Clothing, Woodworking, Provisioning, Alchemy, and 42 in Enchanting. Crafting and trading is my business. I can buy a stack of iron ore from a player for less than 1000 gold most of the time. Refining that stack of tier one ore gives me multiple upgrade items (dwarven oils, grain solvents, and even tempering alloys) and I can vendor the refined ingots for 400 gold, meaning that I am getting thousands of gold worth of materials for around 500-600 gold.

What's more, I have encountered players (who I assume are botters) selling hundreds upon hundreds of stacks of these raw materials for as little as 500 gold per stack. For some time (I haven't checked in the last two patches) there were jute nodes in Stonefalls respawning every couple of seconds, and the botters were farming them aggressively. I suspect that this is the result of a hack or an exploit, and is not exclusive to jute, because those same botters started producing stacks of the other materials (metal ore and rough wood) once the market had become sufficiently flooded with the clothing materials. I also witnessed the prices of these materials fluctuate across the game in sync with the availability of these raw materials.

A small percentage of the population has been allowed to amass vast hoards of upgrade materials, double or triple (or more) their money while undercutting the market by a considerable margin, and reinvest in raw materials to repeat the process.

This has caused the market price of these materials to fluctuate greatly every day, while steadily declining overall. While I have been hoarding my own materials in the anticipation of Craglorn, the knowledge of these mechanics has made me skeptical to buy and sell these materials, as they could be worth double - or half - of their going rate by the same time the next day.

I think that the chance to get the rarer upgrade materials should be reduced for refining the the lower tiers of raw materials, or the source of this seemingly endless flood of low-level raw materials needs to be discovered - or both.

amdaak89ub17_ESO

To give an example;
I bought 80 stacks of Iron Ore for 72,000 gold. I refined that ore and ended up with 26 tempering alloys, 100+ grain solvents, and 100+ dwarven oils. After vendoring the ingots for nearly 30,000 gold, I have essentially spent 42,000 gold. If I sell my tempering alloys for 2000 gold each (which is a pretty low price) I have already recouped my investment. If I sell the grain solvents for 750 gold each and the dwarven oils for 250 gold each (both also very low prices, from what I have seen) then I have made over 100,000 gold. A person could easily do this multiple times a day.

clocksstoppe

i think they nerfed the lower level ores but i might be wrong and just had bad luck. Not like i can even get them anymore since the guild store search got wrecked.

amdaak89ub17_ESO

Well, the example with the iron was just a few days ago, if they did nerf it then I didn't see it in the patch notes. Also bear in mind that you have to be maxed in crafting with 3 points in the extraction passive to get the best chance at rare extractions.

SexyVette07

I thought they did nerf the lower tier materials? I could be wrong, but even with VR level stuff, I get one purple or yellow per stack and MAYBE a blue. Its been this way for a few weeks now.

Yakidafi

Yes this is a problem. and offcourse someone having 80 stacks of iron ore is a cheater, someone who has not actually collected all that ore by themself and players should not support them.
Not even if they have stacked 10+ of the raw material, or who does that when everyone is biasing about the backpack/bank space

Bots will always, unless someone invents a good system to prevent them from operating, cause a shadow on the economy.

Some places are more crowded with bots then others, having a GM go there four times a day randomly would remove half the bots, with what I would call little work, not hard to tell bot from grinding player.

I thought there would be a higher drop chance on higher tier material from higher tier unrefined material, but I am not sure about that at the moment, or they should increase it.

Lupinemw

It also helps when people report them rather than say complain and do nothing which I've seen in zone chat.

I have to say since hitting the Vet areas the chances of Bots is hugely decreased as it takes some effort to get up there and often the nodes aren't free from mobs.

amdaak89ub17_ESO

I would disagree that someone who has 80 stacks of a raw material *has* to be a cheater - who is to say that he doesn't spend all day buying them for 50g cheaper on another faction and upselling them in bulk later in the day? It is suspicious though. One of these players even had the audacity to bring his alt (by the name of ghxxlkkp or something like that) over to open trade window when he had run out of jute on his main.

Yakidafi

@amdaak89ub17_ESO‌

Why do you not try that for yourself, see how many you can buy.(I tried writing in zone chat, not many will respond) or are they in a guild where you are only allowed to sell it for extra cheap.
The amount of bots on the low level areas farming all the nodes, how are they getting along with normal players.

But it is hard to distinguish a "legal" selling player from an "illegal" selling player.

amdaak89ub17_ESO

@Yakidafi‌

When I first found out about the infinite jute nodes - I took to calling it "The Fountain of Jute" - they were being camped by lowbie players and botters (or at least, players with faceroll names) alike in every instance I joined.

I tried to loot one of these jute nodes, and was successful for several attempts, but the next time that the *botter* succeeded, he simply left his loot window open on the jute node, making it inaccessible until I ran away.

So I pulled a betty necht onto him and used my nightblade invisibility, and the mob hit him with an AoE attack (which I was not able to pull off again in future attempts). He actually fought it off and killed it, then said something to me in chinese. I mean, it isn't illegal to be a Chinese gamer... I wasn't sure what to think, but I reported several of the suspected botters that I saw there that night.

Honestly though, with as cheap as everyone was selling the jute, it wasn't worth the time I would spend farming it when I could just be buying it and refining it.

Yakidafi

Is that not an exploit and should be avoided or seen as malign for the gameplay by players and could possibly be bannable?

And in your example someone know they exploit the jute but still buy it from them.

R0M2K

If devs applied common sense then:

The chance to get improvement mats when refining should be definitely tied to the raw mat level.

Ie: Refining Quicksilver= higher % chance of obtaining a tempering alloy than refining iron ore.


Man, so many "Fails" in just 1 month.

KerinKor

amdaak89ub17_ESO wrote: »

I would disagree that someone who has 80 stacks of a raw material *has* to be a cheater - who is to say that he doesn't spend all day buying them for 50g cheaper on another faction and upselling them in bulk later in the day? It is suspicious though. One of these players even had the audacity to bring his alt (by the name of ghxxlkkp or something like that) over to open trade window when he had run out of jute on his main.

Tell me if I've got this right .. you bought from a character who has an alt with clearly a bot name, so the trader is RMT and you knew it?

And no, no one 'plays the market' for a trifling 50g a stack of tier 1 materials, it's a damned sight more than suspicious.

KerinKor

amdaak89ub17_ESO wrote: »

So I pulled a betty necht onto him and used my nightblade invisibility, and the mob hit him with an AoE attack (which I was not able to pull off again in future attempts). He actually fought it off and killed it, then said something to me in chinese. I mean, it isn't illegal to be a Chinese gamer... I wasn't sure what to think, but I reported several of the suspected botters that I saw there that night.

Pretty sure MPKing is treated as griefing in this game so you'd better be 101% SURE it's a bot .. and LMAO at the "illegal to be a Chinese gamer", W-T-F is that nonsense?

Food4Thought

The sad thing is, you shut down one thing that people consider an exploit, somebody else will try somethign else. Get rid of the tier level crafting items dropping from raw resource conversions and players will shift how they exploit. Instead, they will focus on low level dungeons to exploit item drops so that they can deconstruct the items on the hope of getting those crafting resources.

Because these are items in the item loot tables, players and farmers alike will find ways to get them in efficient matters. Take away an outlet and you make items rarer which only increases their market value which leads both types of players searching for other means to aquire them.

So no crafting tier items drop from conversion, they all bottleneck at boss spawn sites and the average questing player can only hope to get in a shot before the boss drops over and over again.

Quite frankly, I would rather have these bots competing with me over resource nodes than competing with me in a room waiting for a boss to respawn every couple of minutes. I have already been down that road and it wasn't fun.