Give Surveys to Hirelings

StarOfElyon · July 2020

Doing surveys is really time-consuming. Please give us the ability to turn in a survey to our hirelings once a day and have them deliver the materials in about 24 hours.

FlopsyPrince · July 2020

The travel to the spawn point is annoying, but what is worse is that you must leave the area and reenter to get the next one.

I would love to have someone get them for me, possibly with a delay and gold cost, but even fixing it so I could make it respawn (click on the survey in my inventory?) right away would definitely help minimize a great deal of the current pain.

redlink1979 · July 2020

@StarOfElyon Not sure if hirelings picking up surveys will ever happen. ZOS likes to have us running around...

@FlopsyPrince Not all spawn points are far from shrines, there's some really close to shrines like the clothing survey from Stonefalls or the enchantment one from Eastmarch. And to respawn the site you just have to travel a bit, until the survey's site is out of sight.

What I think that really is time consuming is the loading times each time we use a shrine...

PS - Treasure maps locations are usually worse than the survey reports locations.

FlopsyPrince · July 2020

redlink1979 wrote: »

@StarOfElyon Not sure if hirelings picking up surveys will ever happen. ZOS likes to have us running around...

@FlopsyPrince Not all spawn points are far from shrines, there's some really close to shrines like the clothing survey from Stonefalls or the enchantment one from Eastmarch. And to respawn the site you just have to travel a bit, until the survey's site is out of sight.

What I think that really is time consuming is the loading times each time we use a shrine...

PS - Treasure maps locations are usually worse than the survey reports locations.

That "small bit of travel is annoying and sometimes makes me forget where the site is when I am not really familiar with the area.

You cannot travel from one spawn spot in Wrothgar without a major trip around to get back to it, since it is on a ledge I could only drop down into. Lots of logging out and back in. Not a great experience and it puts more load on the server for no useful reason.

Being able to force a location to respawn would be relatively simple and help avoid a lot of the extra hassle around this. Though letting me collect all of them at once would be better.

Treasure maps are worse, but that doesn't mean both shouldn't be improved. Start by adding a marker on the map when it is in your inventory!

Feric51 · July 2020

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

You cannot travel from one spawn spot in Wrothgar without a major trip around to get back to it, since it is on a ledge I could only drop down into. Lots of logging out and back in. Not a great experience and it puts more load on the server for no useful reason.

Rather than completely logging out and back in, pull up a zone with a house you haven’t purchased and travel to it. Then leave the house and it will place you back on the survey node exactly where you were. This works faster with the smaller homes/inn rooms since there’s less to load, but even the big notable homes will be faster than logout/login.

karthrag_inak · July 2020

What they should do is make them clickable - spawn when they are cliciked, if they aren't spawned already.

etchedpixels · July 2020

Would be nice if when you've got several of the same they turn into one bigger find instead. Easier to play, a lot more sane from a story/sanity perspective

Bignupie1911 · July 2020

They could give us an assistant for purchase that completes them.

volkeswagon · July 2020

I like doing surveys

Taleof2Cities · July 2020

volkeswagon wrote: »

I like doing surveys

Same here, @volkeswagon.

For niche playstyles that do 18 or 36 writ dailies, having surveys pile up is an inevitable consequence of the niche playstyle itself.

Players in that category should not be asking ZOS for a handout because they "don't have time" ... when they spend an disproportionate amount of time on the writ dailies already.

It's super easy to just add survey hunting on the back end of every day's writ dailies. Not difficult. With a bonus of being able to use inventory space (that surveys would normally occupy) for something else.

Feric51 · July 2020

I stockpile my surveys on my main character until I finally run out of viable inventory space then do a mass gathering typically starting with each of the base alliance zones then working through Vvardenfell, Craglorn and Wrothgar. I honestly haven't made it to N. Elsweyr and W. Skyrim yet and have 10+ of some of those zones' surveys.

I miss the days of tiered surveys with regards to zone level and not necessarily material level. IE When all max-tier writs dropped in Craglorn or Wrothgar (can't remember which). That dramatically reduced the inventory space because there was a limited number of survey possibilities. As it is now, there are 198 unique possibilities (according to my quick math) which could theoretically fill up a character's full inventory with surveys alone.

Since surveys are a crafting supply that are account bound, it would be really nice if they fell into the craft bag as well and could be accessed regardless of which character you're playing. This would also alleviate the inventory management nightmare they create if you don't do them daily.

tmbrinks · July 2020

Feric51 wrote: »

I stockpile my surveys on my main character until I finally run out of viable inventory space then do a mass gathering typically starting with each of the base alliance zones then working through Vvardenfell, Craglorn and Wrothgar. I honestly haven't made it to N. Elsweyr and W. Skyrim yet and have 10+ of some of those zones' surveys.

I miss the days of tiered surveys with regards to zone level and not necessarily material level. IE When all max-tier writs dropped in Craglorn or Wrothgar (can't remember which). That dramatically reduced the inventory space because there was a limited number of survey possibilities. As it is now, there are 198 unique possibilities (according to my quick math) which could theoretically fill up a character's full inventory with surveys alone.

Since surveys are a crafting supply that are account bound, it would be really nice if they fell into the craft bag as well and could be accessed regardless of which character you're playing. This would also alleviate the inventory management nightmare they create if you don't do them daily.

I think it's only 156.

Base Game Zone = 6 x 15 = 90 (6 each)
Craglorn, Wrothgar = 18 x 2 = 36 (18 each)
Coldharbour = 12 (12 each)
Vvardenfell, Elsweyr, W. Skyrim = 6 x 3 = 18

Feric51 · July 2020

tmbrinks wrote: »

Feric51 wrote: »

I stockpile my surveys on my main character until I finally run out of viable inventory space then do a mass gathering typically starting with each of the base alliance zones then working through Vvardenfell, Craglorn and Wrothgar. I honestly haven't made it to N. Elsweyr and W. Skyrim yet and have 10+ of some of those zones' surveys.

I miss the days of tiered surveys with regards to zone level and not necessarily material level. IE When all max-tier writs dropped in Craglorn or Wrothgar (can't remember which). That dramatically reduced the inventory space because there was a limited number of survey possibilities. As it is now, there are 198 unique possibilities (according to my quick math) which could theoretically fill up a character's full inventory with surveys alone.

Since surveys are a crafting supply that are account bound, it would be really nice if they fell into the craft bag as well and could be accessed regardless of which character you're playing. This would also alleviate the inventory management nightmare they create if you don't do them daily.

I think it's only 156.

Base Game Zone = 6 x 15 = 90 (6 each)
Craglorn, Wrothgar = 18 x 2 = 36 (18 each)
Coldharbour = 12 (12 each)
Vvardenfell, Elsweyr, W. Skyrim = 6 x 3 = 18

You're right.

I was doing pencil+paper math and Coldharbour was the first zone I did beyond the base zones. Somehow I inserted the 12 surveys from Coldharbour into Vvardenfell, Elsweyr and W. Skyrim, then multiplied Wrothgar and Craglorn's (I, II, & III) nodes by 12 instead of 6, which resulted in the +36 figure.

Either way, 156 unique surveys is a little over the top in my opinion. I would compromise and say limit it to only the base alliance of the character being awarded the survey and the Expansion / general zones. This would theoretically remove 60 possibilities under the assumption all your characters are of the same alliance.

tmbrinks · July 2020

Feric51 wrote: »

tmbrinks wrote: »

Feric51 wrote: »

I stockpile my surveys on my main character until I finally run out of viable inventory space then do a mass gathering typically starting with each of the base alliance zones then working through Vvardenfell, Craglorn and Wrothgar. I honestly haven't made it to N. Elsweyr and W. Skyrim yet and have 10+ of some of those zones' surveys.

I miss the days of tiered surveys with regards to zone level and not necessarily material level. IE When all max-tier writs dropped in Craglorn or Wrothgar (can't remember which). That dramatically reduced the inventory space because there was a limited number of survey possibilities. As it is now, there are 198 unique possibilities (according to my quick math) which could theoretically fill up a character's full inventory with surveys alone.

Since surveys are a crafting supply that are account bound, it would be really nice if they fell into the craft bag as well and could be accessed regardless of which character you're playing. This would also alleviate the inventory management nightmare they create if you don't do them daily.

I think it's only 156.

Base Game Zone = 6 x 15 = 90 (6 each)
Craglorn, Wrothgar = 18 x 2 = 36 (18 each)
Coldharbour = 12 (12 each)
Vvardenfell, Elsweyr, W. Skyrim = 6 x 3 = 18

You're right.

I was doing pencil+paper math and Coldharbour was the first zone I did beyond the base zones. Somehow I inserted the 12 surveys from Coldharbour into Vvardenfell, Elsweyr and W. Skyrim, then multiplied Wrothgar and Craglorn's (I, II, & III) nodes by 12 instead of 6, which resulted in the +36 figure.

Either way, 156 unique surveys is a little over the top in my opinion. I would compromise and say limit it to only the base alliance of the character being awarded the survey and the Expansion / general zones. This would theoretically remove 60 possibilities under the assumption all your characters are of the same alliance.

Yeah, it is a lot...

I throw them all in the bank, and then pull them out on a dedicated survey collecting character (has wild hunt ring, VO, fiord's gear, so can run fast

). It's feasible, but that character can't do much other than hold those surveys now.

Even just reducing Craglorn, Wrothgar, and Coldharbour to only one of each type would take out 30 of them, which would be a start. Since the 3x of each in Craglorn and Wrothgar are remnants of when those were the only zones that dropped surveys for max level crafters.

That said... I completely agree with your original statement.

I CHOOSE to do writs on 36 characters a day.

I CHOOSE to get all those surveys

I CHOOSE to still do them because the combination of writs + survey gathering is still one of the (if not THE) most efficient time:gold ratios in the entire game.

I have a hard time advocating for changes to a system that is already that efficient, to make it even more so.

MrGhosty · July 2020

I can't speak to the folks just coming up, but I had a ton of mats on hand long before writs were a thing so I don't need to regularly run surveys.

The way that I found to simplify matters is to place down a trunk in my house (60 slot) and fill it up with an even spread of writs for all the disciplines. As I get them on all my toons, I cycle each one through the house and stack up the surveys. Whenever I get low on supplies, I will pick up one or two surveys of each type with the highest stack count and just spend an hour or so completing those rather than trying to do multiple survey locations in multiple zones. Having to leave the area is annoying and I wish they could figure out a solution to fix that, but most locations don't require you to run terribly far away before it will respawn. When in the case of particularly troublesome surveys (like the ledge in wrothgar) I just don't complete those surveys.

I don't have an issue though if people want to not complete the surveys themselves yet reap the rewards, no skin off my back either way. Equally I don't think it is much of an issue, it just requires the understanding that after a certain point you don't need to keep every survey you receive.

Nestor · July 2020

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

Removing the friction could even have a disastrous effect on the economy as prices would drop to the point that no one farm. And, remove the efficiency of gold returned for time spent on activity.

FlopsyPrince · July 2020

Feric51 wrote: »

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

You cannot travel from one spawn spot in Wrothgar without a major trip around to get back to it, since it is on a ledge I could only drop down into. Lots of logging out and back in. Not a great experience and it puts more load on the server for no useful reason.

Rather than completely logging out and back in, pull up a zone with a house you haven’t purchased and travel to it. Then leave the house and it will place you back on the survey node exactly where you were. This works faster with the smaller homes/inn rooms since there’s less to load, but even the big notable homes will be faster than logout/login.

Good idea. I will try to remember that next time. I hate the delays!

[qq]Since surveys are a crafting supply that are account bound, it would be really nice if they fell into the craft bag as well and could be accessed regardless of which character you're playing. This would also alleviate the inventory management nightmare they create if you don't do them daily.[/quote]

That would be really nice as well.

====

Why not have the nodes produce x times the number of surveys in your inventory? Keep them in your banker if you only want to pick some up.

The only place this might be bad would be for Alchemy, but I would live with that to make everything else simpler!

Daiyanae · July 2020

<<<156 unique surveys>>>

I'm a collector, thanks for this number. I have my storage coffers set up and labeled. And after doing my dailies on all characters, I put my surveys into the coffers alphabetically. (A, B, C E J and W) I was wondering that the total was. So 2 60's, and 2 30's should cover it. Then I just use whichever one I need, that has the highest number of surveys.

Daiyanae

goldenarcher1 · August 2020

I have a large pile of Western Skyrim surveys to complete when i can be bothered to update the lost treasure addon.

TheImperfect · August 2020

I love the idea of a hireling doing it, it does overlap in idea with the crafting mail supplies we already get but it would make life a lot easier and less time consuming. It could be optional for those who don't like the idea and enjoy doing it.

Another idea is to stack them in the bank for a while and take them in your inventory when required to the nodes you harvest which could be set to stack matching the amount you have taken in your inventory.

FlopsyPrince · August 2020

mrsrobot wrote: »

I love the idea of a hireling doing it, it does overlap in idea with the crafting mail supplies we already get but it would make life a lot easier and less time consuming. It could be optional for those who don't like the idea and enjoy doing it.

Another idea is to stack them in the bank for a while and take them in your inventory when required to the nodes you harvest which could be set to stack matching the amount you have taken in your inventory.

Definitely! Let me gather it all at once, rather than having to run out of the area and back in the right number of times.

Sure I can do that (in most cases) but what gameplay benefit is that accomplishing?