Writs at home

matcumb · June 2020

So I was thinking, we have crafting stations to place in our homes, but we still need to go to a city to pick up / return writs. Why not have a way to add these features to our homes?

Possibilities:

Writ boards as found in cities purchasable using writ vouchers to place at home
Hireling style skill point feature where we receive them automatically
Other custom options such as a table (also purchasable using writ vouchers to place at home) where we find writs placed there by a hireling
Pile of boxes (purchasable using writ vouchers to place at home) to return writs in

Any other ideas which could make sense?

This all also ties into the fact that we already can have a banker, merchant and fence at home; why not also writs?

Feric51 · June 2020

I'm not sure ZOS has ever explicitly said this, but I imagine they want to force you into population hubs to do writs so that, especially if you do them on multiple alts a day, the game is given the impression of a large player population. If we were able to do writs in our houses (which are isolated instances), then many players would never venture their crafting alts out.

I do writs on 10 alts a day which means I'm visible to other players for around an hour inside a major population center (and since my characters all look entirely different, to the casual observer it might look like 10 totally different accounts) that I would not otherwise be in if I was able to do them in my house or even if I didn't do them at all (my main would be out overland questing or in dungeons where the player population is much sparser.

It's all about appearances I believe, and don't foresee this feature being added to the game as much as I'd love for it to be.

matcumb · June 2020

@Feric51 Makes sense, although this still makes the crafting stations, transmutation station, etc kind of useless, no? I mean, since you have to pick up the writs in the city and return the items there too, it's kind of redundant to go to your home to build the items.

Furthermore, I don't think the majority of people who do writs would actually go as far as to pay enough writ vouchers to get these items as well as all crafting stations for their homes.

redgreensunset · June 2020

matcumb wrote: »

@Feric51 Makes sense, although this still makes the crafting stations, transmutation station, etc kind of useless, no? I mean, since you have to pick up the writs in the city and return the items there too, it's kind of redundant to go to your home to build the items.

Furthermore, I don't think the majority of people who do writs would actually go as far as to pay enough writ vouchers to get these items as well as all crafting stations for their homes.

Well it means you have the option of not having to deal with Bear Butt and Flappy Bird when trying to craft.

tmbrinks · June 2020

matcumb wrote: »

@Feric51 Makes sense, although this still makes the crafting stations, transmutation station, etc kind of useless, no? I mean, since you have to pick up the writs in the city and return the items there too, it's kind of redundant to go to your home to build the items.

Furthermore, I don't think the majority of people who do writs would actually go as far as to pay enough writ vouchers to get these items as well as all crafting stations for their homes.

I do writs on 36 characters most days. I don't go to my house to do daily writs.

Now, I do go to my house to do master writs, as those are much easier to do in your home than running to the overland stations that have them.

Also, with regards to the banker and merchant we have in our homes. They don't have the full functionality either, we can't access guild bank/guild store from them

While I'd love this functionality in them as well, I think it won't happen for the same logic Feric used. People would just stay sequestered in their homes and the towns would look dead (and that wouldn't be good for the game's "image"

Nestor · June 2020

Making it easier to Mass Produce in the game does not make for a better game.

Beside making for a more lively world, if Crafting Writs turned into a Clickety Click Click activity, the lowered friction would result in a flood of Mats in the economy, breaking one of the few reliable ways left to make Gold in the game.

matcumb · June 2020

tmbrinks wrote: »

I do writs on 36 characters most days. I don't go to my house to do daily writs.

Wow!!

Jthomas56 · June 2020

I agree with the original post on this basis. I play on Xbox and do my writs on all 9 of my alts in Summerset. I pre-craft for 6 days at a time. Anything I can do to make my daily writ routine faster I will do it. This typically takes around 30-45 minutes each day.

Then when I finally get to play on my main I craft those daily because I can’t afford the inventory space to pre-craft and still play the game. My opinion of the daily writs are that they are chores. Once I’m done with that I can actually enjoy the game, so the thought that they want us to do these in public centers is both productive and counterproductive to the appearance of a lively player base. On the one hand there are mindless drones running from writ board to hand-in boxes and logging out (looks like a large player base). On the other nobody is really interacting during this time period and playing the group content with one-another, so the appearance of a large lively player base is not really there.

matcumb · June 2020

Jthomas56 wrote: »

I agree with the original post on this basis. I play on Xbox and do my writs on all 9 of my alts in Summerset. I pre-craft for 6 days at a time. Anything I can do to make my daily writ routine faster I will do it. This typically takes around 30-45 minutes each day.

Then when I finally get to play on my main I craft those daily because I can’t afford the inventory space to pre-craft and still play the game. My opinion of the daily writs are that they are chores. Once I’m done with that I can actually enjoy the game, so the thought that they want us to do these in public centers is both productive and counterproductive to the appearance of a lively player base. On the one hand there are mindless drones running from writ board to hand-in boxes and logging out (looks like a large player base). On the other nobody is really interacting during this time period and playing the group content with one-another, so the appearance of a large lively player base is not really there.

Agreed 100%. Personally, I don't feel like part of anything while completing the writs. Shadowfen is practically a race track at this point. People sprint from the wayshrine to the equipment board, to woodworking, to consumable board, to inn for provisioning, to jewellery, enchanting, blacksmithing, tailoring, alchemy and back to the quartermaster next to the wayshrine.

Nobody interacts, and it still does not feel like a populated city.

Temeraire507 · July 2020

I would love this feature, but I do not see it happen for two reasons, the first being the image of a more populated world, as was already mentioned by previous posts, the second one being them keeping experienced players in the games main hubs, which helps the zone chat, especially since they are doing a boring activity without too much input. I find myself casually peeking into the chat quite often while doing writs. While I rarely write anything there it does happen if someone asks a question, asks for help or sells something I'm interested in for a good price. Considering there are a lot of players doing writs the chances of one of them reacting to something happening aren't that bad. I have also often seen people involved in discussions or offering advise in chat standing around somewhere in the crafting spots, trading spots and at the main wayshrine leading to them, usually the main cities' wayshrine. Moving the dailies to houses would largely reduce the population in one and probably also mildly in the other two of those locations.

matcumb · July 2020

Temeraire507 wrote: »

I would love this feature, but I do not see it happen for two reasons, the first being the image of a more populated world, as was already mentioned by previous posts, the second one being them keeping experienced players in the games main hubs, which helps the zone chat, especially since they are doing a boring activity without too much input. I find myself casually peeking into the chat quite often while doing writs. While I rarely write anything there it does happen if someone asks a question, asks for help or sells something I'm interested in for a good price. Considering there are a lot of players doing writs the chances of one of them reacting to something happening aren't that bad. I have also often seen people involved in discussions or offering advise in chat standing around somewhere in the crafting spots, trading spots and at the main wayshrine leading to them, usually the main cities' wayshrine. Moving the dailies to houses would largely reduce the population in one and probably also mildly in the other two of those locations.

I think this point of zone chats is the only one I find reasonable so far. I guess that would be a bit negative. The rest is kind of fluff imo, because they are more focused on the game's perceived image rather than players' experience.

Taleof2Cities · July 2020

matcumb wrote: »

Temeraire507 wrote: »

I would love this feature, but I do not see it happen for two reasons, the first being the image of a more populated world, as was already mentioned by previous posts, the second one being them keeping experienced players in the games main hubs, which helps the zone chat, especially since they are doing a boring activity without too much input. I find myself casually peeking into the chat quite often while doing writs. While I rarely write anything there it does happen if someone asks a question, asks for help or sells something I'm interested in for a good price. Considering there are a lot of players doing writs the chances of one of them reacting to something happening aren't that bad. I have also often seen people involved in discussions or offering advise in chat standing around somewhere in the crafting spots, trading spots and at the main wayshrine leading to them, usually the main cities' wayshrine. Moving the dailies to houses would largely reduce the population in one and probably also mildly in the other two of those locations.

I think this point of zone chats is the only one I find reasonable so far. I guess that would be a bit negative. The rest is kind of fluff imo, because they are more focused on the game's perceived image rather than players' experience.

*shrugs*

If you were a game developer would you prefer to see more players in the main hubs ... or an emptier landscape where players are in their homes doing writ dailies 24/7??

M_Volsung · July 2020

I grab my writs in Riften, port to my primary house, Mistveil, to craft them, then back into Riften to drop them off...

I prefer this to every other way people have suggested since I started playing.

VaranisArano · July 2020

I'd be a lot more likely to do writs at home with the whole set: boards, bank, and turn-in. It would save me time running around and storing items in my storage chests. And I'd never have to worry about stealing items from near the turn-in boxes again!

Or more likely, I'd cheap out and continue to run writs in town for free. But the option would be nice!

redspecter23 · July 2020

As for the argument that adding this functionality to homes would make the world seem dead, isn't that already the case? Other than Alinor and Vivec, what cities would be impacted to such a degree that anyone would notice? If ZOS was honestly interested in creating lively hubs, then why go out of their way to make Solitude unfriendly for writ runners? I understand the logic in theory, but I think the actual effect would just be to reduce the population in 2 cities that are over 2 years old. I'm not sure that's a huge deal.

idk · July 2020

Nestor wrote: »

Making it easier to Mass Produce in the game does not make for a better game.

Beside making for a more lively world, if Crafting Writs turned into a Clickety Click Click activity, the lowered friction would result in a flood of Mats in the economy, breaking one of the few reliable ways left to make Gold in the game.

And we should still have reasons to go into the major cities. Zos recently made a similar statement on why they are hesitant to add certain functionality to housing.

Feric51 · July 2020

VaranisArano wrote: »

I'd be a lot more likely to do writs at home with the whole set: boards, bank, and turn-in. It would save me time running around and storing items in my storage chests. And I'd never have to worry about stealing items from near the turn-in boxes again!

Or more likely, I'd cheap out and continue to run writs in town for free. But the option would be nice!

Plot twist: ZOS grants a "Writ turn in station" furnishing that's packaged as a single furnishing (to keep counts low). You pick the arrangement of boxes/crates to match your preferred zone's layout**, but all 'owned' items are still present and incur a bounty when looted.

**Sorry, Coldharbour turn-in is not offered at this time.

matcumb · July 2020

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

matcumb wrote: »

Temeraire507 wrote: »

I would love this feature, but I do not see it happen for two reasons, the first being the image of a more populated world, as was already mentioned by previous posts, the second one being them keeping experienced players in the games main hubs, which helps the zone chat, especially since they are doing a boring activity without too much input. I find myself casually peeking into the chat quite often while doing writs. While I rarely write anything there it does happen if someone asks a question, asks for help or sells something I'm interested in for a good price. Considering there are a lot of players doing writs the chances of one of them reacting to something happening aren't that bad. I have also often seen people involved in discussions or offering advise in chat standing around somewhere in the crafting spots, trading spots and at the main wayshrine leading to them, usually the main cities' wayshrine. Moving the dailies to houses would largely reduce the population in one and probably also mildly in the other two of those locations.

I think this point of zone chats is the only one I find reasonable so far. I guess that would be a bit negative. The rest is kind of fluff imo, because they are more focused on the game's perceived image rather than players' experience.

*shrugs*

If you were a game developer would you prefer to see more players in the main hubs ... or an emptier landscape where players are in their homes doing writ dailies 24/7??

I worked on games myself, sure not an MMO, but still. Personally, I would prefer seeing people having fun in their own way than make them waste time just for my pride of seeing a lot of players in the same area.

Taleof2Cities · July 2020

matcumb wrote: »

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

matcumb wrote: »

Temeraire507 wrote: »

I would love this feature, but I do not see it happen for two reasons, the first being the image of a more populated world, as was already mentioned by previous posts, the second one being them keeping experienced players in the games main hubs, which helps the zone chat, especially since they are doing a boring activity without too much input. I find myself casually peeking into the chat quite often while doing writs. While I rarely write anything there it does happen if someone asks a question, asks for help or sells something I'm interested in for a good price. Considering there are a lot of players doing writs the chances of one of them reacting to something happening aren't that bad. I have also often seen people involved in discussions or offering advise in chat standing around somewhere in the crafting spots, trading spots and at the main wayshrine leading to them, usually the main cities' wayshrine. Moving the dailies to houses would largely reduce the population in one and probably also mildly in the other two of those locations.

I think this point of zone chats is the only one I find reasonable so far. I guess that would be a bit negative. The rest is kind of fluff imo, because they are more focused on the game's perceived image rather than players' experience.

*shrugs*

If you were a game developer would you prefer to see more players in the main hubs ... or an emptier landscape where players are in their homes doing writ dailies 24/7??

I worked on games myself, sure not an MMO, but still. Personally, I would prefer seeing people having fun in their own way than make them waste time just for my pride of seeing a lot of players in the same area.

That's a noble statement ... but I don't think every game developer shares that view.

deleted221106-002999 · July 2020

Maybe solve all these problems with two things:

master crafter has a psijiic projection which he/she can park in any town craft hub. the projection can converse, zone chat etc is piped to player in home. maybe unlock the capability to use with some crafty achievements but I figure the master crafter should be good enough.
crown store npc 'servant' who collects the daily writs (handy if he/she does other non-craft ones, too), delivers them to players home(s). once player has completed the daily writ chore, the 'servant' delivers the items to turn in point, collects gold etc and returns them to player either inside a cool furnishing or via mail.

This way players who choose to can do their thing at home without flappy pets and town hubs still look busy with a bunch of ghosty psijic projections hanging around. Maybe not ideal but still allows player 'presence' in town, however insubstantial.

zos gets a way to make more cash and we get to use our game houses for something more than laggy wayshrines. Also, having a 'servant' for doing menial tasks like picking up dailies, delivering results and picking up rewards is just what a prestigious character who has 'slain xyz' and 'defeated abc' should have.

Maybe throw in a 'pompous git' emote for good measure to go with that 'servant'. And a 'red carpet' emote, too. Yeah.

volkeswagon · July 2020

then we wouldn't get to applaud the many diverse characters that surround at a crafting station as they all appear to just be standing there staring and crafting telepathically.

FlopsyPrince · July 2020

They could make more if the turn in never said "none of us is getting any older"!!!!!