Rare crafting motifs, is the "nerf" a myth?

Sendarya

First off let me say that this is all from my personal observation, during my personal play hours, and I realize that some of this is subjective. This applies only to the NA server where I play.

This concerns the nerf to motif drops, and the subsequent price hike.

Since it hasn't been stated outright anywhere how much the motifs drop rates were reduced, or event hat they WERE reduced (if I'm wrong about that, I'd love a link to a dev quote), some people have resorted to wild speculation, and a lot of people are taking extreme advantage of this and are now price gouging.

My personal experience is that every time I log on to any of the populous zones, such as The Rift, there is at least one of the rare motifs being advertised, and often times more. I play odd hours too, not prime time. Late morning/early afternoon in the middle of the week, and midnight to 2am pacific time are my most common hours, and that is when I see one or more of these for sale. The few times I log on during prime time (usually briefly to feed my horse or grab my 2nd hireling box), I have seen 3 or 4 for sale in chat, all at the same time, just in the 15 minutes I'm on.

I purchased Barbaric on Monday for 25k. I realize this was a good deal, but it wasn't outside of reason. So Monday, WELL after the drop reduction. I've seen it as low as 20k recently too.

Today I saw someone selling Barbaric for 80k. I pointed out that was a bit high for Barbaric, and most people agreed, 80k is more like the Daedric price (and even Daedric has dropped back to more like 60 to 80). Then one guy goes off about the drop rate "nerf" and how he's in the "1%" of people who pay attention to prices in this game. He claimed that all of the people saying 80k were too high were not "in the know". I had a recent similar encounter with someone selling Ancient Elf, told me 50k was the going rate before the nerf, and he/she wouldn't take less than 200k now.

I'd like to make a few points to counter this rampant inflation and outright price gouging:

1) Although they are rare, and the drop rate was reduced, they are not THAT much rarer than before, no matter what people try and say.
2) Even if you got someone to pay 200k for Ancient Elf (or 80k for Barbaric), that doesn't mean it is worth that much to most people, or that it is a fair or reasonable price.
3) These outrageous prices encourage gold buying, which is absolutely wrecking this game!

I know some people are tempted to blame Zenimax for reducing the drop rate, but again, it clearly isn't reduced THAT much. Can you find a rare motif once very 2 hours by farming a single house like you used to? No, nor should you! Should prices be so high that only heavy crafters or gold buyers can afford even one? NO.

I'm making this post to encourage some sanity. Don't buy gold. Don't give in and be gouged. Call people out for outrageous pricing.

These are only worth as much as the buyers are willing to pay. I strongly suspect a lot of people have bought gold in order to buy motifs because people are saying how rare they are (even though it is apparent they aren't THAT rare), and this perception of rarity + gold buying has artificially driven up the prices more than the drop rate reduction.

If one person STUPIDLY pays 200k for Ancient Elf, it is suddenly worth 200k. Or so the gougers would have you believe.

So I'd really like to hear other crafters thoughts on this subject.

Do you think the prices are currently fair? Do you see people trying to get away with selling them for FAR more than they are actually worth, using the "but they were neeerfed" excuse? Do you see wild price variations? And most importantly, what is the best solution?

P.S. I never wanted a global AH for this game, and I still don't, but I'm starting to lean that way. Maybe zone wide AH's? I just don't know anymore, but the current situation with motifs is wildly out of control.

Tarukmockto

@Sendarya, I agree with you that the price gouging is sad. Unfortunately it's purely a matter of a free market, where the price is set by what a buyer is willing to pay. If buyers wouldn't pay 200K, the price would come down.

As to why people are paying 200K, it's only partially because of the gold sellers. The economy of this game was broken from day one with the duping exploit that thousands took advantage of. Yes, lots of them got banned, but lots of them did not. Those people who benefited from this exploit and didn't get banned, have the massive gold reserves to inflate the prices of anything they want.

There's nothing that can be done in the short term. The economy will have to sort itself out over time. Probably months in my opinion. It still remains to be seen if the player base will stick around long enough for it to recover. I genuinely hope it does. I really like this game.

Time will also drive the price down as more and more players acquire the items they desire, and there are fewer and fewer buyers for the 'rare' items. After all once we all have rare motifs, they have zero value.

Ferro219

Botters (I guess particularly the Coldharbour bots) buy these motifs to sell for real money. Since they have access to infinite funds, they can raise the price to any amount they want.

Gillysan

OTH the day you find one, well you just struck gold. There is no magic to this and even though their might be a nerf to drop rate, the fact remains they are still dropping. Which means you will eventually get one while playing the game.

KerinKor

Ferro219 wrote: »

Botters (I guess particularly the Coldharbour bots) buy these motifs to sell for real money. Since they have access to infinite funds, they can raise the price to any amount they want.

Actually in-game spam was offering Ancient Elf and Daedric Motifs for 100k on the EU server only a couple of days ago.

AlexDougherty

Of course Inflation is artificial, the in game system has none of the real-life factors to stabilise it, nobody deciding whether to buy the item or eat today for example. Eventually the prices will stabilise, it just takes longer.

Sendarya

Gillysan wrote: »

OTH the day you find one, well you just struck gold. There is no magic to this and even though their might be a nerf to drop rate, the fact remains they are still dropping. Which means you will eventually get one while playing the game.

I know they are still dropping. My entire point in the OP was to point this out, that they are dropping, and still at a pretty high rate, since there are always some for sale in chat. So I wasn't complaining that I haven't got one....

What I meant by Artificial Inflation is that there is NO PROOF of the reduced drop rate, yet everyone seems to be wielding it like a weapon to drive prices up.

My personal opinion is that they nerfed farming them by the log-in log out method, but not just randomly looting during regular play.

I guess my point is that the NERF to MOTIF DROPS is just a RUMOR. I'm tired of people acting like (and even incorrectly stating) that it is a dev confirmed thing that happened.

Sorry for caps, frustrated, and I wanted to shorten and clarify my point.

Mjoel

The prices got higher because vr motifs are very very rare now ppl that are selling them keeped them from before the fix and selling them now for much more than it was before... thats all and as long as ppl pay the price it will not change on EU Server at Dominion prices for motifs are:

Dedric > 200k+ (was sold for 500k highest)
Ancient Elf > 135k+
Babaric > 85k+
Primal > 50k+
Others > 1k+

Sendarya

balmung127eb17_ESO wrote: »

The prices got higher because vr motifs are very very rare now ppl that are selling them keeped them from before the fix and selling them now for much more than it was before... thats all and as long as ppl pay the price it will not change on EU Server at Dominion prices for motifs are:

Dedric > 200k+ (was sold for 500k highest)
Ancient Elf > 135k+
Babaric > 85k+
Primal > 50k+
Others > 1k+

So again, what proof do you have that anything was changed aside from the logging in and out style of farming (which needed fizing, btw)? Got a Dev statement or patch note? Or just anecdotal evidence from a handful of people, usually the people selling them? Yeah....I don't trust them. there are far too many being sold each day for them just to be "reserve" from before.

The prices on the NA server are roughly half of that, even after the supposed "nerf". I guess I'm glad I'm not playing on the EU server if you guys are getting THAT ripped off.

SadisticSavior

Sendarya wrote: »

Do you think the prices are currently fair?
Definitely. I think the prices are completely in line with demand.

Common motifs go for 400-600gp. Rares go from 20k to over 100k (have not seen any ask for over 200k in chat so far, though people on here claim to have seen that)

Do you see people trying to get away with selling them for FAR more than they are actually worth, using the "but they were neeerfed" excuse?

Nope. There is so much competition in chat that people who try to gouge are just laughed at...the prices are obvious and well known.

Do you see wild price variations?

On rares I do, but this has to do with demand. I've never seen any over 200k, no matter how rare.

And most importantly, what is the best solution?

This is the best solution. They are not intended to be commonplace. Zenimax wants to force people to specialize to encourage a player economy and I agree with them. If the motifs are rare, it means someone is willing to pay for items in a specific style...there is no reason to do that if everyone can just make their own crap.

SadisticSavior

balmung127eb17_ESO wrote: »

The prices got higher because vr motifs are very very rare now ppl that are selling them keeped them from before the fix and selling them now for much more than it was before... thats all and as long as ppl pay the price it will not change on EU Server at Dominion prices for motifs are:

Dedric > 200k+ (was sold for 500k highest)
Ancient Elf > 135k+
Babaric > 85k+
Primal > 50k+
Others > 1k+

LOL, no one is paying over 1k for common motifs. Ever. Have not seen it happen even once. 700gp is considered very expensive for a common motif.

ChairGraveyard

Yeah, because rare motifs go up in cost by a factor of 10 for absolutely no reason.

Not.

meglon978ub17_ESO

There was an unannounced nerf during .06, which provisioners might have noticed with the spike in crates and such showing as "empty" instead of having something in them. I seem to recall a thread were it was mentioned, but it wasn't the patch note threads.... seems it was a pre-patch release from the test server (i may even be wrong there, but my memory ain't what is used to be).

That said, i'm not sure i saw all that much of a drop in books popping up.... i still get more than i can sell (except for the recent handfull of speculators that have shown up).

meglon978ub17_ESO

Just an update, as it got to nagging at my few remaining brain cells:

http://www.gamebreaker.tv/games/elder-scrolls-online-mmorpg/patch-notes-for-elder-scrolls-onlines-first-major-update/

....a touch more than half way down the list:

"Itemization

The rate at which you can earn racial motifs and provisioning recipes from lootable containers and furniture has been slightly reduced."

Whether that's gone live, or whether people are simply reacting to the odd spike in "empty" containers starting with v.06... well, i don't have an answer for that.

Enkil

SadisticSavior wrote: »

LOL, no one is paying over 1k for common motifs. Ever. Have not seen it happen even once. 700gp is considered very expensive for a common motif.

Some people do pay more than average. I normally sell them for 600ish in a guild store. Recently I decided to put one in zone chat... people started bidding and it got up to 900 and I closed it cause the tells were getting annoying. It's all about demand.

shiva7663

Anecdotal evidence of rarity is not very useful because it's not consistent.

vyal

It's not a myth, all recipe drops from furniture were nerfed down to at least 1/10th of what they were prior to 1.0.6.

It was trivial to see the difference, if you tried it even a few times before 1.0.6. As in, night and day / obvious to a blind man kind of difference.

Zenimax will never confirm it, because it means admitting they were caught, which arrogance forbids. The developers just leave the CS folks to post meaningless cut & paste messages on topics that are pointless, and they stick their head in the sand like every other MMO on the long slide to mediocrity has done.

Keep it up, Zenimax, you're reading chapter and verse from the book of fail.

Slantasiam

lol at a good drop rate...im a v10 I have looted everything for a month I have not got any of them I tried the log out and loot repeat for 8 hours one day(really bored when I hit v10) I got nothing...

Slantasiam

they are not rare as you put it if you have 500 bots opening crap for you all day... but for the average person they may as well not even be in game they are so rare botters and rwt =have real players =have nots...

esoone

They are skyrocketing cause the cabinets and chests etc who now are instanced to you wil be open to everyone so like now in the bank were everyone whom enters gets a run for all these soon wil find em empty.

redwoodtreesprite

SadisticSavior wrote: »

balmung127eb17_ESO wrote: »

The prices got higher because vr motifs are very very rare now ppl that are selling them keeped them from before the fix and selling them now for much more than it was before... thats all and as long as ppl pay the price it will not change on EU Server at Dominion prices for motifs are:

Dedric > 200k+ (was sold for 500k highest)
Ancient Elf > 135k+
Babaric > 85k+
Primal > 50k+
Others > 1k+

LOL, no one is paying over 1k for common motifs. Ever. Have not seen it happen even once. 700gp is considered very expensive for a common motif.

Some do sell for more than that, depends on what is available when a player wants it. Dark Elf ones do sell for 2K, I have sold 6 of them at that price since the game started. If we had a game wide AH, then they would be more available to buy, so the prices would be lower I think. And before anyone tries to insinuate anything, my highest character now is level 19, and I just got lucky on getting some Dark Elf motif books. I make what little money I do make on raw ore, at least I did until the bots took over the game. Now I just try to get enough ore to keep replacing my frequently decaying gear. If I have a stack extra now and then, I post it, but am pretty much broke most of the time now.

ArRashid

I bought an Ancient Elf motif for mere 40k a week ago (well, I had 48k so that was a giant hit to my wallet anyways) and was absolutely horrified, since it told me I can't learn it till I get to rank 8 (I think) of clothing or blacksmithing or woodworking... and I was at 4..
I wanted to learn it on my lvl 34 main (since I've abandoned my VR2 good for nothing NB) to craft myself some pretty staves (since basic ones, except maybe Maple Khajiit one) look really bad.

Now my laptop is broken due to tarded fan bearings which now generate so much heat it shuts down within minute of it turning on.. since that model is 3 yr old and is no longer being sold, I had to order a new fan from eBay and wait for it for next 2 weeks or so, and all I have left is this 8yr old piece of junk.... Although I wonder why I can run "modern" games like Tiberium Wars quite nicely but old/crap graphics ones like 1999's Tiberian Sun or a damn Runescape tear like hell...

(Well, now I can study for finals without distractions, but the worst of all is that I can't even feed my horses or research new traits in this 3+ weeks forced downtime.. and so I'll be helluva behind everyone else for a long, long time when I get back)

Sendarya

I'm looking for something more than someone telling us that they used to farm them and get 2 to 3 a day, and now get maybe one a week. I'm looking for some facts. So far those of you saying the drop rate has been reduced have nothing to back it up.

I appreciate the dev link! That is for a future patch, though.

I still see tons of them for sale, so I will continue to assume it is a player started myth/rumor until someone can provide some facts.

vyal

Here's some "facts", Sendarya, since you doubt anecdotal evidence.

I used to get over sixty recipes in an hour from opening furniture. (green, blue, motifs, whatever)

Now I get six recipes, or less, in an hour from opening furniture. (and only greens, rarely blues, never motifs)

In point of fact, personally, I have never seen a motif drop, since 1.0.6, across all characters, ranging from level 3 to 16, 24 to 31, and VR1 to VR3.

The difference in drop rate, for me, was at least a tenfold reduction.

But continue to doubt, right up until 1.1.x hits the public, and then you can say, "Look, look, here it is, now it's bad" when it's been nerfed since 1.0.6. Makes no difference to reality.

Oh, and any Zenimax dev who would care to dispute my claim that 1.0.6 nerfed motif drop rates by ten times? Feel free. I dare you.

Sendarya

You can make any claims you want, but it is still individual anecdotes.

Other people here have never seen a motif, before or after 1.0.6. Others in this thread and other threads on this topic are still finding plenty of motifs during regular game play. This includes me. Since you count greens, I can hardly go 10 minutes without finding a green recipe. I still find about one blue recipe per day, and about 1 motif every other day or so, which is the SAME for me as it has been since the patch after early release, where they did alter the drops of these items and it was in the patch notes.

So why is your experience more valid than mine or other players who have not noticed a change? Rng is Rng. Everyone goes through dry spells. Some unlucky souls seem to have bad luck with drop rates all the time, some have very good luck most of the time.

During beta, I remember I started my 3rd character, and 90% of all containers were empty right off the bat, and it stayed that way. My first toon still had normal drop rates.

The FACT is that we do not know exactly how the rng for containers in this game functions. Some people have guessed that each character is "seeded" on creation, and some people get a bad loot seed, as it were. But this is not confirmed.

My point is, a small sample of people on the forums having a string of bad luck does not make it a fact that these items drop rates were reduced across the board. It is pure speculation based on a small sample of anecdotes.

I am a provisioner so I loot everything. I have seen less crafting stones and such, and more lockpicks, but still find plenty of rares including salt, hops, pepper, potato, etc to make food with. Like I said, I get about the same # of recipes and motifs as before, and I see so many for sale in zone chat at all hours of the day (I am talking the rare ones) it seems pretty clear to me there are still plenty to be found.

Debs have previously admitted to lowering drop rates on items post launch, and already admitted they plan to do it again in 1.1, so why would they keep it a secret now? It makes no sense.

I just want people to take off their tinfoil hats and look at the broader evidence, not just their own luck or lack there-of.

vyal

Since 1996 I've never seen a development team admit a stealth nerf until it was confirmed by decrypting the data stream or decrypting/memory scanning encrypted client side files, or dozens or hundreds of client side log files were posted as proof.

Every time that was done, the devs were forced to admit, yes, they had stealth nerfed a particular aspect of the game.
How many times has this happened, to me? Stealth nerfs have happened in every persistent multiplayer online game I've ever played.
How many times has the devs been caught doing it? I've personally seen it well over a dozen times.
Stealth nerfing is a standard practice, and requires no tinfoil hat, luck, or RNG speculation.

If the client supported client side log files, we would have the evidence required to prove, mathematically, what you're denying is true, Sendarya. But as you wish, it's your perception filter set to enjoy.

NoMoreChillies

opening week common motifs sold for 1k-1.5k. Now they sell for <700g.
why havent rare motifs dropped by the same percentage??

there is your answer

Sendarya

NoMoreChillies wrote: »

opening week common motifs sold for 1k-1.5k. Now they sell for <700g.
why havent rare motifs dropped by the same percentage??

there is your answer

There could be many answers, including that there are many people who are easily fooled by a few sky is falling chicken little's. Those who have access to those 4 motifs can only get them in vet areas, and can, clearly, easily fool people in the lvl 1-50 areas into paying a ton for them because those people perceive their rarity to be higher than it is.

What did Barnum say? THERE is your actual answer.

vyal

Yes, Sendarya, a conspiracy of thousands of strangers is FAR more likely than a stealth nerf.

Uh, no. That is tinfoil hat territory, sorry.

ZedalisDesign

Since the patch/nerf, I've received ZERO motifs or blue recipes in Reaper's March (A vet 10 zone). I've effectively tried to farm for 10+ hours now. The one time I tried to farm before the patch, I got 3 rare motifs in <2 hours. This isn't some conspiracy or just bad luck, it's a deliberate change.

I don't really understand the decision. Granted, things that are supposed to be rare should be, as opposed to the market being completely saturated with them...but I think they've gone a bit too far on the opposite side of the spectrum. Those people who farmed these consistently before the patch now have a significant upper hand against those who did not. And no, I'm not crying because I don't have the motifs (I'm only missing one), I'm more concerned with the player base who are now out of luck.

Had a change not been made, sure, everybody may have ended up with a motif but at least the bots wouldn't be making a pretty penny on each sale. I wish they had made these motifs unique to begin with. That way, you either couldn't get another after learning the style...or at the very least, you could only have one in your inventory/bank to prevent people from stockpiling them as much.

This change is unfortunate because I can 100% guarantee most players will have less incentive to loot containers at all now, considering (at least by my own statistics), it's a complete waste of time and you will get nothing of value 99% of the time. It renders another dynamic part of the game a bit useless.

ShADoW0s

balmung127eb17_ESO wrote: »

The prices got higher because vr motifs are very very rare now ppl that are selling them keeped them from before the fix and selling them now for much more than it was before... thats all and as long as ppl pay the price it will not change on EU Server at Dominion prices for motifs are:

Dedric > 200k+ (was sold for 500k highest)
Ancient Elf > 135k+
Babaric > 85k+
Primal > 50k+
Others > 1k+

I highly doubt it will stay like that, if someone is willing to buy for that amount then good, but I rather buy upgrade mats, and get someone who already know how to make the armor for 10k or something lol. IDK the reasoning of some people.