Stolen armor and weaponry nerf - criticism

GT_Schorsch

So, stolen armor and weaponry used to have a gold value of 70 before the latest patch (at least those Voidsteel Greatswords and Nightwood Bows), now they are worth 23. So exactly 1/3 of what they were worth. (The patch note is correct, though.)

BUT: Now there is no reason to steal anything, if your goal is to earn gold. Pickpocketing rewards you with an at least 30 gold item, so you will get more gold with that.

Is this really what you intended, ZOS? For what reason? Just another money sink? It is already complicated to earn money in the game, if you are not a crafter and in a traders guild. Shall this be the only way to get gold fast?

(I am still in the phase of earning gold to buy crafting materials for my equipment, so that a friend of mine can craft it for me. This will slow down the process till I can equip my gold VR14 gear a lot. )

Dekkameron

I agree, i dont think the nerf was justified especially considering you are limited to how much you can sell each day.

You mention pickpocketing, well the risk doing that is almost infinitely higher than stealing everything not nailed down in a weapons shop.

Ah i shall miss the good old days of thieving..

tsuchiya.anoncub18_ESO

Just tried my hand at thieving for the first time today. I'm only level 21, so the weapons and armor I find are generally worth ~7 gold each. Because the junk I find is worth ~30-70 gold, I generally just destroy the weapons and armor or pass them up in favor of the junk. This is my experience with thieving at lower levels; the nerf seems to hit much harder. =/

Ser Lobo

Traditionally in Elder Scrolls games, stolen items were only worth a portion fo the actual value of the item.

And as with any mechanic, it's not the casual user who breaks it. It's the users who macro'd stealing off one or two racks with ease over a half dozen free-to-play accounts to generate gold and sink an otherwise limited economy even further.

We don't often lock our doors because we've personally been robbed. We do it because someone we know was.

golfer.dub17_ESO

Wish they would stop nerfing things that don't need to be nerfed.

Well ZoS, you kind of shot yourself in the foot. You removed one of the legit ways to make gold, now people are just going to log farm castles over and over.

(I am still in the phase of earning gold to buy crafting materials for my equipment, so that a friend of mine can craft it for me. This will slow down the process till I can equip my gold VR14 gear a lot. )

Er, on that note, stolen weapons and armor give the same amount of materials as mob-dropped weapons and armor when deconstructed.

Aballister

The weapons and armour also have a level based on the player that's steeling them, so at lvl 21 you you not be pitching the same lvl weapon as a VR14.

On the bright side it will mean that that ~7 gold will slowly reach ~23 as you lvl. Don't spend it all at once

eventide03b14a_ESO

Making money in this game is really not that difficult in actuality.

MCMancub

It needed a nerf, but it might have been nerfed too harshly. I could see 1/2 and not 1/3 the original value.

RazzPitazz

Are there not items designed solely for making gold through stealing? You can pilfer items to sell for hundreds of gold that literally have no other purpose.

idk

*scratching head while pondering how some people earned gold before 1.6*

Essentially they made the easy stuff to steal worth less. If you want to make gold by stealing one has to work for it now. Heck, much of the items that can be stolen (other than the easy weapon tables) is worth 100 gold and up. Go for the gusto. Think big.

It didn't take a rocket scientist to realize they would nerf the value of weapons.

Naivefanboi

Just ignore the sysyem, stop using it, or just get the passives/ahcieves an bail. That way they can either change it or it can sit and rot till they add "pvp side " to it, then it can just be empty lol

fishmakerb16_ESO

They didn't need to Nerf it I dont think. But why not add more patrolling NPCS if it was too easy? Risk VS reward! Don't nerf it! Make it harder! It was far too easy in my opinion.

eNumbra

If the problem was easy stealing, they could have nerfed the unguarded back alleys where 15-20 two handlers spawn simultaneously

GT_Schorsch

Dekkameron wrote: »

... You mention pickpocketing, well the risk doing that is almost infinitely higher than stealing everything not nailed down in a weapons shop. ...

For me, pickpocketing is not hard and not associated with a higher risk. All you have to do is find a place where the patrolloing NPCs do not come often to disturb you. However, pickpocketing needs much more time than stealing prior to the latest patch, if you want to have a good gold value for your 140 items you can sell to a fence. Prior to the patch you could easily steal many 70 gold value weaponry, destroy all stolen items below 70 gold and keep those rare 100 and 250 gold value stolen items that can be only sold to a fence. At least this is how I did it. I want a way to have a good gold output in a short period of time, that is why I did not pickpocket and just stole. I do not not like it to spend so many game hours just to farm gold. I want to play the game actually, which means PvPing in Cyrodiil for me and sometimes going in a group dungeon.

golfer.dub17_ESO wrote: »

... Er, on that note, stolen weapons and armor give the same amount of materials as mob-dropped weapons and armor when deconstructed. ...

I just need those golden upgrading materials which you get rarely. Me and my friend find it faster to get those by buying them in guild shops than waiting to see if we are lucky.

Aballister wrote: »

The weapons and armour also have a level based on the player that's steeling them, so at lvl 21 you you not be pitching the same lvl weapon as a VR14.

On the bright side it will mean that that ~7 gold will slowly reach ~23 as you lvl. Don't spend it all at once

I am at VR13 and the items already had a gold value of 70 and now of 23. So I think either the gold values are not increased with every level or they are capped prior VR14, but thank you for letting me know that I will not get more at VR14 (really thank you, but it is just ).

eventide03b14a_ESO wrote: »

Making money in this game is really not that difficult in actuality.

I do not know what you are considering as "not difficult". Comparing it with SW:TOR (the only other MMO I played) it is difficult. In that MMO you were able to achieve a lot of ingame currency just through PvPing on battlegrounds, so just by playing the game. You did not need to do another task just to earn it. I enjoyed that part of the game, while it has some other major issues.
Please give me some advice to earn gold in a "not that difficult" way. I would highly appreciate it. Thank you.

rajaniemiorama_ESO wrote: »

Are there not items designed solely for making gold through stealing? You can pilfer items to sell for hundreds of gold that literally have no other purpose.

It takes ages if you go that route. This is because the green 100 gold value item and the blue 250 gold item do not drop often, at least for me.

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

*scratching head while pondering how some people earned gold before 1.6*

Essentially they made the easy stuff to steal worth less. If you want to make gold by stealing one has to work for it now. Heck, much of the items that can be stolen (other than the easy weapon tables) is worth 100 gold and up. Go for the gusto. Think big.

It didn't take a rocket scientist to realize they would nerf the value of weapons.

I just did the daily Cyro quests for gold. I would like to read how you are getting your gold if it is not crafting which is not an option for me.

As I said it takes too much time (in my opinion) to steal just the 100 gold and 250 gold stolen items.

Naivefanboi wrote: »

Just ignore the sysyem, stop using it, or just get the passives/ahcieves an bail. That way they can either change it or it can sit and rot till they add "pvp side " to it, then it can just be empty lol

I thought about it. I already have rank 20.

fishmakerb16_ESO wrote: »

They didn't need to Nerf it I dont think. But why not add more patrolling NPCS if it was too easy? Risk VS reward! Don't nerf it! Make it harder! It was far too easy in my opinion.

Interesting opinion. Well, why not, but it does not need to be hard, for me at least.

Thank you for your answers so far and I would like to read yours again!

Lirkin

I think that a lot of these changes are to slow things down so that people play longer because it is harder to get cash to by things like bag space and bank space.

I agree that this change is unneeded and that there are to many worthless things dropped and found in containers in the game. I still get to many 0 valued things dropping. Nothing should be worth 0.

driosketch

golfer.dub17_ESO wrote: »

Well ZoS, you kind of shot yourself in the foot. You removed one of the legit ways to make gold, now people are just going to log farm castles over and over.

I find the use of the term legit here amusing as we are talking about money made by stealing.

While this nerf might hurt vet characters who were farming poorly guarded weapon/armor racks, lower level/new characters who rely on the 30g white items are largely unaffected.

Assuming you don't switch to container hunting, and there are places with a lot of them and no NPCs, 2/3 reduced or not, that's still basically free gold. Unless you have no need for gold ever again, there is no reason anyone stealing to make money would stop now.

UrQuan

Dekkameron wrote: »

You mention pickpocketing, well the risk doing that is almost infinitely higher than stealing everything not nailed down in a weapons shop.

That's exactly why it was changed. At high levels it was a low-risk method to make a ton of gold quickly with no effort. That's why it needed to change. Now if you want to maximize your gold and minimize your risk through stealing, the best way is to loot containers in buildings, which takes significantly more time and effort than just going and grabbing everything off the racks. And that's a good thing.

idk

fishmakerb16_ESO wrote: »

They didn't need to Nerf it I dont think. But why not add more patrolling NPCS if it was too easy? Risk VS reward! Don't nerf it! Make it harder! It was far too easy in my opinion.

They did alter the risk v reward but with the intention of trying to encourage other actions such as picking pockets or looting furniture. Adding pathing guards to the area doesn't increase risk, just requires some waiting time.

reften

My take is...I don't think it was meant to be a money maker, but a way to reduce the cost of sneak and for achievement hunters, with money gained a little bonus.

It's unfortunately pointless to do now once it's maxed. Shame.

All they need to do is make yellow items from ultra rare, and ultra hard to steal from NPCs, worth a decent amount of gold. (1000?)

AaronMB

This was lame. Considering Legerdemain was so easy to max, stealing was kind of fun with the payoff. Whatever ZO$...sigh.

You all realize, of course, that rather than 'fix' this, ZO$ will just nerf the value of the dropped loot.

Folkb

How much were people making? Per 140 items?

Kurimugann

I just have to mention how funny it is to read things such as "Stealing is a legit way to make money" Without the context it would be so wrong. Still I need to work on leveling this up at least for the sneaking passive.

GT_Schorsch

Folkb wrote: »

How much were people making? Per 140 items?

It depended on how lucky you were to get the stolen 100 and 250 gold value items which are dropping lesser than the 30 gold ones. Or how much time you spent it on.

140 * 70 gold = At least 9800 gold
Assuming that you can get ten 100 gold items and one 250 gold one in that time, rest 70 gold weaponry and armor = 10280 gold

Higher than that you needed to spend more time on it, to get more of those 100 and 250 gold ones.

ShadowMage

Did the Launder cost go down with it? Or just the value if sold to the fence? If laundering is cheaper too that works out better for me. I always laundered the weapons and armor (to level Legerdemain) and then deconned it for the mats, tempers, and crafting experience.

GT_Schorsch

The launder cost was always the same as the item value, so I doubt that changed, but I did not check, yet. I will do this soon and edit this entry.

Athas24

It sounds like they'll be fewer people thieving once the pvp portion hits unless there is significant value in the risk associated with it. I think the nerf hits way too hard at low levels and pretty hard at the vet levels personally. 70 to 45 or so would have been better or just a flat rate for all stolen goods from racks etc at 30 or something. I know for lowbie thieves I have it was not very lucrative but for the vet toons I had I was making a solid profit before with little risk. Of course, I'd still open up all the chests in town because its fun.

Theosis

rajaniemiorama_ESO wrote: »

Are there not items designed solely for making gold through stealing? You can pilfer items to sell for hundreds of gold that literally have no other purpose.

The drop rate of the items worth selling are illogically low in finding by comparison.

Either that or RNG has hated me since day 1. not unlikely but still not very common either way.

This nerf was a seriously an over reaction and was made in error.

nastuug

GT_Schorsch wrote: »

Folkb wrote: »

How much were people making? Per 140 items?

It depended on how lucky you were to get the stolen 100 and 250 gold value items which are dropping lesser than the 30 gold ones. Or how much time you spent it on.

140 * 70 gold = At least 9800 gold
Assuming that you can get ten 100 gold items and one 250 gold one in that time, rest 70 gold weaponry and armor = 10280 gold

Higher than that you needed to spend more time on it, to get more of those 100 and 250 gold ones.

So people are still complaining about losing the easy 10k in 1hr per day. Spend a little more time to fill your bags with 100 - 250 value items and make more. What's the problem here?

Yolokin_Swagonborn

What they really need to do is reduce the cost of respecs. At endgame, a full respec costs about 10-15K for skill points and yet another 3k for crapion points.

They never tell you the downsides when they add new "exciting" features!!

• What they say: "We are adding the champion system with new perks and abilites!"
• What they really mean: "We are nerfing your existing stats and attributes and locking them behind a new system you will have to grind to get them back. Also we are adding on 3k to the cost of respec."

golfer.dub17_ESO

Yolokin_Swagonborn wrote: »

What they really need to do is reduce the cost of respecs. At endgame, a full respec costs about 10-15K for skill points and yet another 3k for crapion points.

They never tell you the downsides when they add new "exciting" features!!

• What they say: "We are adding the champion system with new perks and abilites!"
• What they really mean: "We are nerfing your existing stats and attributes and locking them behind a new system you will have to grind to get them back. Also we are adding on 3k to the cost of respec."

That's pretty off topic, but I agree anyways.

In a game that is advertised to be "play as you want" changing up your character should be affordable and easy.

Nebthet78

With this nerf, there is no reason for high level players to really steal much of anything at all. The reward given for the risk is too low. I am not going to spend my time trying to steal something only worth 30g when I am using a V14 character.

Now if you make a new character, stealing the white items makes sense because they cost more than the weapons and armor you would get until you level up more and then it will reach a point where stealing the white items will be useless as well.

They just shot themselves in the foot with this decision. Just steal crap items now to level up to get your sneaking back to what it used to be before the system was put in, and then forget about the whole justice system, it isn't worth it.