[Clockwork City] major problem with furniture crafting

Vimora · October 2017

The furnishing plans that I saw require new style materials for crafting. These style materials are rare and expensive. If you learn a furnishing plan that's worth a mil, you might want to produce this furniture for trading in order to earn back the money you invested. However, you can't because you will not have enough style materials. So basically, if I learn a plan right now instead of selling it, I have to be prepared to lose all that gold.

In the past, furnishing plans required easily accessible normal style mats that didn't stand in the way of trading. The current system is different and it's not workable.

Wraithscream · October 2017

I predicted something like this would happen. They added over 100 recipes with morrowind. Know how many of those actually drop? About 15. The rest are so rare the common player will NEVER learn one.

I figured they would do the same money grab again and make the patterns unattainable just like morrowind. Seems they found a different way to force people to buy furniture for crowns. Just make the materials extremely rare.

God I wish the mods would address these furnishing problems. I send them questions and never get a response. Heck if all they said was "ya we do it for the money" at least it would be an answer.

Wreuntzylla · October 2017

Well, typically the way it works for rare recipes is that you can sell the product for enough to cover the cost of the style materials and make a decent profit. The only issue is usually the upfront cost.

This theory is a solid fail for the glass motif, not sure why, but otherwise holds true.

Vimora · October 2017

Wreuntzylla wrote: »

Well, typically the way it works for rare recipes is that you can sell the product for enough to cover the cost of the style materials and make a decent profit. The only issue is usually the upfront cost.

This theory is a solid fail for the glass motif, not sure why, but otherwise holds true.

In reality, people are rarely willing to pay more than 10-15k for a piece of furniture. Yes, this is decent profit, but not if you consider you could've made 500k-1mil by just selling the plan.

In an ideal market, you find a rare plan and you can mass-produce the item so you can make money and people can get what they want for a fair price. Right now, I can eat the plan, spend hours trying to snipe tempered brass and then post a few products for a really high price that would reflect the trade-off of not selling the plan + mat cost + my time spent sniping. People will look at the price and think, "Wow, what an ass!" not realizing why the price is so high. I won't even begin to participate in market like this.

Wraithscream · October 2017

I sell a TON of furniture. I usually have all 5 traders loaded up. I do give excellent prices but I make a good profit.
But if I was to recover say the 500k it cost me to buy a Vivec Tapesty pattern it would take me months since I probably only sell 5 out of the 8 I would list a week.

There is a problem with their system sadly. Love the game but I'm getting so disappointed with housing

vovus69 · October 2017

Answer is simple - find the recipe yourself. In this case your cost basis will be much smaller. Everybody knows that you can make infinite number of copies, this is why recipes are so expensive.
if they would make it of limited time - like for a year or month - or, like in EVE - limited number of copies, that would be another story, but ESO is actually very, er, "simple", and went to the simplest possible route.

-vovus

Jayne_Doe · October 2017

vovus69 wrote: »

Answer is simple - find the recipe yourself. In this case your cost basis will be much smaller. Everybody knows that you can make infinite number of copies, this is why recipes are so expensive.
if they would make it of limited time - like for a year or month - or, like in EVE - limited number of copies, that would be another story, but ESO is actually very, er, "simple", and went to the simplest possible route.

-vovus

First, it sounds like the OP did find the recipe and was arguing that it would have been better to just sell it than to learn it and then try to make money selling the furnishing pieces. They would have made more money just selling the plan than in creating the furnishing item to sell, due to the rarity of the style mat needed.

Second, the plans are so rare that it's not so simple as "find the recipe yourself." If it were, I'd be able to make all the purple MW furnishing plans I wanted instead of having to purchase the finished product from other players. I've farmed the tombs and am so sick of it, and have exactly four non-Telvanni purple plans to show for it.

vovus69 · October 2017

Nobody says that it should be easy or even possible. This is why you can buy it. But in this case the guy who found rare thing has monopolistic position. Remember Aetherial Cipher? 2.5M ave price. Some things are rare by definition because zos made it like that. We just have to deal with it.
Again - this is just the game. Do what you feel good to do. If you want to grind - do it, to buy - by no means! There is no best solution there are just some degrees of it....

-vovus

Vimora · October 2017

Jayne_Doe wrote: »

vovus69 wrote: »

Answer is simple - find the recipe yourself. In this case your cost basis will be much smaller. Everybody knows that you can make infinite number of copies, this is why recipes are so expensive.
if they would make it of limited time - like for a year or month - or, like in EVE - limited number of copies, that would be another story, but ESO is actually very, er, "simple", and went to the simplest possible route.

-vovus

First, it sounds like the OP did find the recipe and was arguing that it would have been better to just sell it than to learn it and then try to make money selling the furnishing pieces. They would have made more money just selling the plan than in creating the furnishing item to sell, due to the rarity of the style mat needed.

Second, the plans are so rare that it's not so simple as "find the recipe yourself." If it were, I'd be able to make all the purple MW furnishing plans I wanted instead of having to purchase the finished product from other players. I've farmed the tombs and am so sick of it, and have exactly four non-Telvanni purple plans to show for it.

I can stop at every container to check if it has something for me, play like this the entire time CWC is a thing and end up finding 1-2 plans or none.

Or I can just say, "Eff this, I don't watch out for containers. I don't interrupt the flow of my play all the time just to end up disappointed in the end."

I decided that I won't be opening containers. C'est la vie. I wanna enjoy playing. Already posted the plan I found to the trader.

vovus69 · October 2017

Yep, I also don't open containers in CWC. They nerfed drops to zero basically. Drops from automatons are also very very small now. I've got like 4 green furniture recipes first day, but nothing since then. So I guess I am done with containers at least.

-vovus

helediron · October 2017

Housing and crafting overall has lost progression. ZOS is not developing anything, just pressing more graphics and they compensate it by lowering drop rates. I don't bother with housing any more. I skip containers because i know that instead of a purple plan the next thousand jugs just give ashes. I don't bother looking new plans in guild stores when all i see is Redoran Plate plan at 100k. A plate! I have about ten of the new style mats. Seriously, there is nothing to DO in housing any more.

Morrowind killed housing (among other things) for me and it seems that CC does not do any better. The good thing is that i'm saving real money. After Morrowind i'm spending only tenth of what i spent before it in this game. I hardly ever look into crown store. Why bother with any new house when plans and mats are random blips.

code65536 · October 2017

vovus69 wrote: »

Nobody says that it should be easy or even possible. This is why you can buy it. But in this case the guy who found rare thing has monopolistic position. Remember Aetherial Cipher? 2.5M ave price. Some things are rare by definition because zos made it like that. We just have to deal with it.
Again - this is just the game. Do what you feel good to do. If you want to grind - do it, to buy - by no means! There is no best solution there are just some degrees of it....

-vovus

People who think that the game should be fun. That things should be reasonably attainable through in-game activities. Those are the people who think that things like this should be reasonably easy. And I would say that most of the game's population would fit that description.

Drop rates in this game are anything but reasonable. It's frustrating rather than fun. But hey, it forces people to spend crowns...

vovus69 · October 2017

For those people you have crown store

-vovus

CaffeinatedMayhem · October 2017

vovus69 wrote: »

For those people you have crown store

-vovus

Ah yes, would you care to send me the several thousand dollars I'll need to buy all the stuff I want from the Crown Store? Still won't be fun though, as I'd rather craft it myself.

Katahdin · October 2017

The mats for the furniture dont matter if you cant get the recipes in the first place.

I have been playing in CWC every day since release. I got one furniture recipe the first day, and nothing since. I hae probably killed at least 100 factotums and nothing.

I made the mistake of buying a house in Vvardenfell that I cant put zone specific furniture in. I will not buy the CWC house that I suppose I wont be able to funish because the zone recipes do not drop AT ALL any more. or if they do drop, they must be something like 1 in 10,000 factotums killed. That means a typical player that isnt chained to their computer 24/7, has a job and a life outside this game, it will take 20 years for them to be able to furnish a house in either CWC or Vvardenfell.

f047ys3v3n · October 2017

I think it is a part ZOS looking to make some recipes rare enough that you can actually make some gold crafting the stuff as with most MMO's. I can tell you that though I made a little on redgaurd bookcase full's for a while those stopped fetching enough to be worth the effort and I think they were the best of the original housing stuff to craft so that stuff was all really to common to make much on. ZOS seems to have wanted to reverse this with Morrowind and clockwork city. Having 10 to 1 original racial style to new content style drop rates will sure do this. It also makes it really not worth the effort to farm stuff. Yea, it's like most MMO's but ESO is not most MMO's. It is basically a single player game as that is what is done competently. Even well. As for the balance and such to actually have the raids and such to be an MMO. It is comically bad. Bottom line, I don't think it was the best idea to make these recipes needle in a haystack things. I don't even think most ESO players understand that people actually use crafting rare stuff as a profession in other MMO's because most ESO players have never played other MMO's. I think it just frustrates them.

On the other hand, super rare drop rates may drive people to the crown store. This may actually work. If it does good for them I guess. Hopefully you make more from the crown store than you loose from casual single player types getting annoyed and/or loosing interest and quitting. Who can really calculate that as you only know the income side of the equation and not the lost potential income.

Anyhow, for my part I just lost interest in crafting the stuff. I only have so much interest in housing at the best of times and currently I can't put anything in my house anyway as it is over limit and I refuse to resub with the stupid combat system morrowind changes. Meh, at least the achievement rewards are cool.

Vimora · October 2017

Katahdin wrote: »

The mats for the furniture dont matter if you cant get the recipes in the first place.

I have been playing in CWC every day since release. I got one furniture recipe the first day, and nothing since. I hae probably killed at least 100 factotums and nothing.

I made the mistake of buying a house in Vvardenfell that I cant put zone specific furniture in. I will not buy the CWC house that I suppose I wont be able to funish because the zone recipes do not drop AT ALL any more. or if they do drop, they must be something like 1 in 10,000 factotums killed. That means a typical player that isnt chained to their computer 24/7, has a job and a life outside this game, it will take 20 years for them to be able to furnish a house in either CWC or Vvardenfell.

It's worth remembering that it's not just you not getting them, virtually nobody is. Since release there has been probably less than 10 clockwork purples posted to traders and that's for hundreds of thousands of players playing. So this means the drop rate is not 1 in 10,000, it's more like 1 in 1,000,000 (if I'm being extremely optimistic). It's not for the individual to farm. Some random people will get lucky and that's it.

SantieClaws · October 2017

Khajiit has now completed the main task in the Clockwork City.

In the course of this, and during other tasks, she has found not one Clockwork City furnishing plan.

Part of the issue may be the layout of the city itself. There are few homes and very few wardrobes (Khajiit only found one) and nightstands etc.

Many barrels and kegs but you can only obtain ingredients and beverages from these.

Also overall the amount of loot found in remains overall seems to be very low. Most things Khajiit kills seem to drop nothing at all yes.

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

vovus69 · October 2017

I highly doubt that you saw tens of thousands or mill players at the same time. I think overall it was 10k players in CWC since they introduced the DLC. Player base is actually not that high. The majority of the accounts are dead accounts. And remember cyro - when you have 350 from all three sides, it starts glitching when you will have ~100 in one place. We see similar things in CWC, so I would guess, they don't have more than 1000 simultaneous users. It is just unbalanced drops. Remember aetherial cipher? Same thing.

-vovus

Azurya · October 2017

Vimora wrote: »

Wreuntzylla wrote: »

Well, typically the way it works for rare recipes is that you can sell the product for enough to cover the cost of the style materials and make a decent profit. The only issue is usually the upfront cost.

This theory is a solid fail for the glass motif, not sure why, but otherwise holds true.

In reality, people are rarely willing to pay more than 10-15k for a piece of furniture. Yes, this is decent profit, but not if you consider you could've made 500k-1mil by just selling the plan.

In an ideal market, you find a rare plan and you can mass-produce the item so you can make money and people can get what they want for a fair price. Right now, I can eat the plan, spend hours trying to snipe tempered brass and then post a few products for a really high price that would reflect the trade-off of not selling the plan + mat cost + my time spent sniping. People will look at the price and think, "Wow, what an ass!" not realizing why the price is so high. I won't even begin to participate in market like this.

well I am happy I can live without that humbug

Stopnaggin · October 2017

Why do you have to eat the whole elephant so fast? You can still make your money over time. Otherwise if its more value to you, sell the recipe.

SGT_Wolfe101st · October 2017

vovus69 wrote: »

I highly doubt that you saw tens of thousands or mill players at the same time. I think overall it was 10k players in CWC since they introduced the DLC. Player base is actually not that high. The majority of the accounts are dead accounts. And remember cyro - when you have 350 from all three sides, it starts glitching when you will have ~100 in one place. We see similar things in CWC, so I would guess, they don't have more than 1000 simultaneous users. It is just unbalanced drops. Remember aetherial cipher? Same thing.

-vovus

So a thousand people play this game? Across 2 servers (NA and EU) a thousand players? On PS4/NA across 2 guilds I have almost a thousand people on and/or in Cyro alone (not dead accounts). I must literally play with everyone on the US server. I believe the statement was to insinuate that across all players and all attempts the drop rate is extremely low. A person can be unlucky, but in this case no one is finding them. This isn't luck, it is a drop rate of 1 in 100,000 or more. Take the player base in totality.

vovus69 · October 2017

May be it is a bit more overall in all zones, but in CWC it is 1000 max. I don't believe in larger numbers here. And I also in guilds - in 5 of them - and the most active are trading guilds which are 80-100 users simultaneous max. At any time. So forget about 500 per guild. Those are 50-70% dead meat.

-vovus

Vimora · October 2017

http://steamspy.com/app/306130

Make of it what you will. 13k concurrent plaers based on Steam. My best guess is actual concurrent players must be 30 times that.

vovus69 · November 2017

Thanks for the link. So 10k concurrent across all platforms and servers and median time is 5 mins. It means that half of the users spend less than 5 mins. Which gives us 5k of normal players. Others are usually 1:3 - 1:5 not 1:30. So it is ~15k-20k across all servers and all platforms. This is about right... PC NA will be ~3-4k. and in CWC you can see may be 300-500. So your data is confirmed what I said

-vovus

Katahdin · November 2017

vovus69 wrote: »

May be it is a bit more overall in all zones, but in CWC it is 1000 max. I don't believe in larger numbers here. And I also in guilds - in 5 of them - and the most active are trading guilds which are 80-100 users simultaneous max. At any time. So forget about 500 per guild. Those are 50-70% dead meat.

-vovus

The server makes multiple shards of the same map so its not overcrowded in any one copy.
Most active and high profile trading guilds have a 7-14 day activity policy. If you dont log in for that time, you get kicked and replaced fast.

vovus69 · November 2017

Did you ever been in Cyro when at least 40-50 guys are in the siege? If you do - forget about this BS regarding shards for the SAME piece of the map. zos did shards splitting the map - one server per one piece of the map. And if you have a peak of the users in this location, there is nothing that they can do . This solution is not scalable in this case.

Re guilds - try to read more carefully. I told about simultaneous users.

-vovus

Katahdin · November 2017

vovus69 wrote: »

Did you ever been in Cyro when at least 40-50 guys are in the siege? If you do - forget about this BS regarding shards for the SAME piece of the map. zos did shards splitting the map - one server per one piece of the map. And if you have a peak of the users in this location, there is nothing that they can do . This solution is not scalable in this case.

Re guilds - try to read more carefully. I told about simultaneous users.

-vovus

Yup, been in Cyro lots and lots of times.
You are comparing a PvP map to a PvE map. They are set up and behave differently when it comes to population.

Cyrodill/IC is the only map that does not have shards, which is why Cyro has a que to enter when they get full.
Having shards of a huge AvAvA PvP map makes no sense whatsoever.

ALL of the PvE maps have shards when there is a lot of people going there. When one instance gets full, the server creates another one for the overflow. I have been in one instance of Craglorn when members of my guild were in another instance.
Just tonight, a friend of mine was in one instance off CWC and I was in another instance. Standing next to each other, we each looked like we were in the ground to the other. One of us had to travel to the other to join up.