Treasure chests should be more rare, more challenging, and more exciting to find.

ZOS_MandiParker

Treasure Chests as a system are designed to be a nice diversion that tempts you to go off the beaten path, but doesn’t make you feel punished for missing out on them. Since they are shared and competitive, we didn’t want them to hold extremely valuable items as that can often cause strife between players who are trying to loot the same chest.

Having said that, we definitely plan to revisit the contents of these chests in future updates so they include more diverse and interesting items, and also less predictable rewards. As far as lockpicking difficulty – we may look at increasing the difficulty of locks for these chests, but we also have plans to increase the challenge of these chests in other ways.

derpsticks

Awesome.

Edit: Any chance of seeing more appropriately themed/different looking chests? I'm getting tired of seeing the same old chests personally. Why not make every kind of container lockable like dressers, drawers, nightstands, etc? Also, my thoughts on lockpicking are simple, give us less lockpicks and make different quality lockpicks (white, green, blue, purple, gold). Gold lockpick is of course unbreakable and is the final reward from the thieves guild.

MissBizz

I find there is a LOT more chests than their used to be.. but this could be due to many things..

I'm no longer in starting areas - less crowded, less people to get there before I do
I'm getting better at spotting them
Maybe they really did add more at some point?

I do agree. I used to get a real sense of excitement finding a chest.. they were actually rare and hard to find. If they did actually make them rarer.. I think it would be great to improve the contents a bit.

Gidorick

Awesome @ZOS_MandiParker! I love seeing posts from mods that are more than the standard "play nice, children" mod involvement.

AlnilamE

Dahveed wrote: »

To me it seems like the people who are saying they are fine now have a very different attitude than I do towards loot in general in a game like this.

It seems that for you, finding something like a treasure chest would be just part of a normal "game mechanic" that the player is entitled to find, in order to level up your ledgermain skill, grind gold and deconstruct items to grind your professions.

I suppose it's just a fundamental difference about what the game should be about and how this element of the game should work. I see these chests as a missed opportunity for exploration, adventure, and fun. You guys see it as a successful mechanic which you are entitled to in order to progress your toon.

Fair enough, but you know what? They are BORING. That is what inevitably happens with MMOs, the way I see them. It's what happened with WoW. When they changed everything (especially with Cataclysm) they just nerfed everything and made it all "efficient", so that there was no sense of challenge or adventure anywhere in the world.

THAT is the biggest difference. I want finding a chest to be FUN and interesting, not FAIR and balanced. Okay, so the few rare chests that will exist in the world will be farmed by bots. So what? That just means I will find them less often. I'll explore for a couple hours in my play session, NOT find a treasure chest... and my heart will still keep beating. Other fun things exist in the world to keep me playing.

But if I DO find a chest? Well things just got 100 times more exciting and interesting, didn't they? I found something different, something rare, something worth getting excited about. Not just another "*** hum" treasure chest with green crap in it.

Finally, a note on difficulty. This may sound harsh... but cry me a river. If people find these locks too difficult, then I'm sorry, video games just aren't for you. Go play cribbage with your grandmother instead. This is perhaps the easiest mini-game I have ever seen in my life. And I SUCK at video games, here at age 38.

It seems that everyone expects MMOs to nerf themselves to the absolute lowest common denominator nowadays. If a small percentage of the player base can't achieve something, just lower the bar? Come on. That is a HORRIBLE mentality that just ruins games. Players should rise to the challenge; they shouldn't expect games to lower to their level.

Actually, that's not how I (and many of my friends) see chests at all. Yes, I have the "open 1000 chests" achievement on my main and I'm working towards it on my alts, but we all get excited when we find chests, no matter what's actually in them. When we go out for guild outings, we keep an eye out for chests and take turns based on group roster so everyone gets a turn.

We don't think they are boring, We think they are a nice little plus and you come across when you are running around doing other stuff .

Of course, some of us may have memorized the possible spawn locations of chests in several zones...

UrQuan

AlnilamE wrote: »

Of course, some of us may have memorized the possible spawn locations of chests in several zones...

I know the chests in Khenarthi's Roost like I know the back of my hand...

farrier_ESO

Chests are a great lootable, somewhat more powerful than the heavy sacks, in return for a little bit more hassle opening them.

As an exploration reward, they feel balanced about perfectly, and I say that as someone who plays primarily as an explorer.

More variety would be welcome,and I'm glad it's on the cards.

Dahveed

ZOS_MandiParker wrote: »

Treasure Chests as a system are designed to be a nice diversion that tempts you to go off the beaten path, but doesn’t make you feel punished for missing out on them. Since they are shared and competitive, we didn’t want them to hold extremely valuable items as that can often cause strife between players who are trying to loot the same chest.

Having said that, we definitely plan to revisit the contents of these chests in future updates so they include more diverse and interesting items, and also less predictable rewards. As far as lockpicking difficulty – we may look at increasing the difficulty of locks for these chests, but we also have plans to increase the challenge of these chests in other ways.

Ah, very glad to hear this. Thanks for the response.

What you are saying doesn't sound nearly as drastic as what I would find ideal were it up to me, but I'm glad to know that they are being looked at.

Because, well, yeah. 22g and a "steel girdle of the soldier" that I vendor for 27g is just utterly boring. I really see treasure chests as a great way for rogues/thieves with high ledgermain skills to take advantage of their class mechanics and roleplaying styles. My character is a big, dumb nordic barbarian, and frankly has no business picking locks this easily with his fat clumsy fingers.

kewl

They reward really good xp for time and effort. Nefring chests would amount to yet another xp nerf.

Dahveed

AlnilamE wrote: »

Actually, that's not how I (and many of my friends) see chests at all. Yes, I have the "open 1000 chests" achievement on my main and I'm working towards it on my alts, but we all get excited when we find chests, no matter what's actually in them. When we go out for guild outings, we keep an eye out for chests and take turns based on group roster so everyone gets a turn.

We don't think they are boring, We think they are a nice little plus and you come across when you are running around doing other stuff .

Of course, some of us may have memorized the possible spawn locations of chests in several zones...

Well, I guess we can just agree to disagree then.

Personally I find it strange, however, that someone like yourself who role-plays as an explorer finds it normal that you found ONE FREAKING THOUSAND treasure chests just lying around beside tree trunks? How is this in any way immersive or realistic? I could run around the whole of medieval Europe for 25 years, and perhaps if I'm lucky, find five "treasure chests" just randomly lying around beside trees and rivers.

Yes yes, it's fantasy, dragons demons magic etc. But I like to have at least a bit of realism in role playing games.

I think Skyrim did a MUCH better job than ESO does with chests. In Skyrim they were relatively rare, and often had specific in-game instructions leading to them (maps, notes, etc). I know that isn't possible in ESO, but to me it just seems completely ludicrous and unrealistic that all of Tamriel is just littered with as many random treasure chests as it is with trees.

Wow that got ranty pretty quick, sorry lol. I respect your opinion but strongly disagree; just different play styles and expectations I suppose.

demonaffinity

I would love to see them improve the open world chests like this. Very nice idea

Septimus_Magna

Even master locks are easy to open, I found one yesterday and opened it in the first try. A system where the pins reset if you mess up one pin would be nice, just like Oblivion. I would also like to see the all chest loot to be identical to the players level, just like the undaunted chests.