Scribing Grimoire reset with no Luminous Ink refund?

Erickson9610 · September 25

I apologize if I missed the refund somewhere, but when I logged into a character which had the Elemental Explosion Grimoire scribed, I received a notification that that particular Grimoire had been reset:

...but I did not see any Luminous Ink refunded to my character. Checking the Destruction Staff skill line verifies that this skill is completely gone from my skills menu.

Should players receive a refund in Luminous Ink for a Scribed Skill being taken away from them due to balance changes? Usually when this sort of thing happens with regular skills, we get a refund in Skill Points that we can use to purchase back the updated skill in question, but in this case, we have to spend 3 more Luminous Ink to reacquire the updated skill.

Necrotech_Master · September 25

yeah they had better refund it, cause for some of us ink is still an extremely precious rare resource lol

i have at least 2-3 characters with that skill scribed which could be as much as 9 ink i would have to use up, which for me thats like 3 weeks worth of ink drops

NoSoup · September 25

why was it reset in the first place?

sarahthes · September 25

Ink is now dirt cheap.

Erickson9610 · September 25

NoSoup wrote: »

why was it reset in the first place?

Presumably there must be some combination which is no longer possible in Update 44. Or, perhaps ZOS wanted to test this functionality on the PTS for when they do plan to remove combinations.

However, I didn't find any reference to anything being removed from Elemental Explosion in the patch notes. In fact, the particular combination I had on Live (which was reset on the PTS) is still possible. Maybe this reset functionality affects everyone's Elemental Explosion Grimoire, rather than just the combinations being adjusted.

Erickson9610 · September 25

sarahthes wrote: »

Ink is now dirt cheap.

So are Skyshards, yet I'd rather not have to go find three or six more of those in order to reacquire a regular skill that was reset for a similar reason.

valenwood_vegan · September 25

I mean ink is relatively cheap and plentiful now, but I would definitely hope they'd refund the ink if they force-reset a scribed skill like this. One could be using a scribed skill on multiple characters, and who knows... multiple skills could be reset... driving up the cost pretty quickly.

Or maybe it's best to wait a few years till scribing gets out of beta? Sigh.

Necrotech_Master · September 25

sarahthes wrote: »

Ink is now dirt cheap.

to be honest, shouldnt really have to buy ink to use an entire system in the first place

Erickson9610 · September 25

In retrospect, I'm not sure how this system would refund non-ESO Plus players if their inventory was full on affected characters. Maybe it could send the Luminous Ink in the mail?

Pevey · September 26

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

Ink is now dirt cheap.

to be honest, shouldn't really have to buy ink to use an entire system in the first place

I agree, it was completely unnecessary from a gameplay perspective. You pick up ink, it goes in your craft bag, you spend it when you change skills. There is no gameplay.

However... from a monetization standpoint, there is value to ZOS, because it slightly enlarges the pain point of way too many crafting materials that the craft bag pain pill is made to solve. This is a widely-used if somewhat distasteful monetization strategy. But it's one that certainly increases player churn. The pleasure from playing naturally fades over time, but the same level of pain is still there. The easiest way to make it go away is not to buy the painkiller (craft bag), but just to stop playing.

I think this was a bad decision, and instead they should devote some effort to cleaning up the clutter in the crafting system.

code65536 · September 26

sarahthes wrote: »

Ink is now dirt cheap.

Irrelevant.

Necrotech_Master · September 26

Pevey wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

Ink is now dirt cheap.

to be honest, shouldn't really have to buy ink to use an entire system in the first place

I agree, it was completely unnecessary from a gameplay perspective. You pick up ink, it goes in your craft bag, you spend it when you change skills. There is no gameplay.

However... from a monetization standpoint, there is value to ZOS, because it slightly enlarges the pain point of way too many crafting materials that the craft bag pain pill is made to solve. This is a widely-used if somewhat distasteful monetization strategy. But it's one that certainly increases player churn. The pleasure from playing naturally fades over time, but the same level of pain is still there. The easiest way to make it go away is not to buy the painkiller (craft bag), but just to stop playing.

I think this was a bad decision, and instead they should devote some effort to cleaning up the clutter in the crafting system.

my problem with the ink is the horrendous drop rate

aside from that i think the only reason they made it a material was because it was easier to trade than making it a currency (since most currency is not tradeable, outside of gold)

code65536 · September 26

Erickson9610 wrote: »

In retrospect, I'm not sure how this system would refund non-ESO Plus players if their inventory was full on affected characters. Maybe it could send the Luminous Ink in the mail?

They already have the tech to let you scribe an ability for free. Remember the ability that you scribe for the first time at the end of the tutorial always costs 0 ink.

They don't have to refund anything if they just set a flag on the reset grimoire that the next time you scribe it, it's free. (No, they don't currently do this on the PTS).

That's it. A simple, elegant solution with existing tech. @ZOS_Kevin

sarahthes · September 26

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Pevey wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

Ink is now dirt cheap.

to be honest, shouldn't really have to buy ink to use an entire system in the first place

I agree, it was completely unnecessary from a gameplay perspective. You pick up ink, it goes in your craft bag, you spend it when you change skills. There is no gameplay.

However... from a monetization standpoint, there is value to ZOS, because it slightly enlarges the pain point of way too many crafting materials that the craft bag pain pill is made to solve. This is a widely-used if somewhat distasteful monetization strategy. But it's one that certainly increases player churn. The pleasure from playing naturally fades over time, but the same level of pain is still there. The easiest way to make it go away is not to buy the painkiller (craft bag), but just to stop playing.

I think this was a bad decision, and instead they should devote some effort to cleaning up the clutter in the crafting system.

my problem with the ink is the horrendous drop rate

aside from that i think the only reason they made it a material was because it was easier to trade than making it a currency (since most currency is not tradeable, outside of gold)

The drop rate is not horrendous any longer. I seem to get it from every other survey these days.

Necrotech_Master · September 26

sarahthes wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Pevey wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

Ink is now dirt cheap.

to be honest, shouldn't really have to buy ink to use an entire system in the first place

I agree, it was completely unnecessary from a gameplay perspective. You pick up ink, it goes in your craft bag, you spend it when you change skills. There is no gameplay.

However... from a monetization standpoint, there is value to ZOS, because it slightly enlarges the pain point of way too many crafting materials that the craft bag pain pill is made to solve. This is a widely-used if somewhat distasteful monetization strategy. But it's one that certainly increases player churn. The pleasure from playing naturally fades over time, but the same level of pain is still there. The easiest way to make it go away is not to buy the painkiller (craft bag), but just to stop playing.

I think this was a bad decision, and instead they should devote some effort to cleaning up the clutter in the crafting system.

my problem with the ink is the horrendous drop rate

aside from that i think the only reason they made it a material was because it was easier to trade than making it a currency (since most currency is not tradeable, outside of gold)

The drop rate is not horrendous any longer. I seem to get it from every other survey these days.

im still sitting on maybe 1 drop a day at best, did a run in archive to arc 8 the other day, got 1 ink the entire run

since gold road release (coming up 4 months now), im maybe at around maybe 75 ink drops

so yes the ink drop rate is still horrendous, if im at 75 drops in 120 days

my avg ink drop rate has been hovering right around 0.5 ink per day

this is even with doing about 20 surveys since U43 release (i started doing daily writs on my main again to get surveys to work on the new achievements for doing surveys, have gotten 0 ink from any of the surveys)

code65536 · September 26

sarahthes wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Pevey wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

Ink is now dirt cheap.

to be honest, shouldn't really have to buy ink to use an entire system in the first place

I agree, it was completely unnecessary from a gameplay perspective. You pick up ink, it goes in your craft bag, you spend it when you change skills. There is no gameplay.

However... from a monetization standpoint, there is value to ZOS, because it slightly enlarges the pain point of way too many crafting materials that the craft bag pain pill is made to solve. This is a widely-used if somewhat distasteful monetization strategy. But it's one that certainly increases player churn. The pleasure from playing naturally fades over time, but the same level of pain is still there. The easiest way to make it go away is not to buy the painkiller (craft bag), but just to stop playing.

I think this was a bad decision, and instead they should devote some effort to cleaning up the clutter in the crafting system.

my problem with the ink is the horrendous drop rate

aside from that i think the only reason they made it a material was because it was easier to trade than making it a currency (since most currency is not tradeable, outside of gold)

The drop rate is not horrendous any longer. I seem to get it from every other survey these days.

First, I don't get them "every other survey". Congrats on your luck.

But second, the ease of acquisition is not particularly relevant. You can say, "gold is easy to come by, just do a set of writs", but they still made provisions for free CP and skill respecs back when they made changes that necessitated them. Because that's the respectful and considerate thing to do.