your horrible rewards are ruining the game

Daenerys

I can't even. Why ZOS? Why are your 'rewards' so terrible? I just completed a max lvl woodworking crafting writ - SIX nightwood bows and two nightwood shields -to be rewarded with one stinking ruby and one nightwood shield. I don't understand who makes these decisions about loot. I about had it way back when after countless hours and completing every quest in the game to be rewarded with vendor trash from Cadwell. I love the Elder Scrolls, but I just don't understand why your rewards- from quests to crafting writs, and everything in between, are so terrible. Will this ever be addressed?

Kronosphere

yeah its horrible eh. i think they ran out of things to give and just thought, ah we will just give random vendor trash, but we will name it. they wont notice trololol.

if it aint part of a set it shouldnt be called ANYTHING other than "steel sword of insert enchantment"

Yinmaigao

Daenerys wrote: »

I can't even. Why ZOS? Why are your 'rewards' so terrible? I just completed a max lvl woodworking crafting writ - SIX nightwood bows and two nightwood shields -to be rewarded with one stinking ruby and one nightwood shield. I don't understand who makes these decisions about loot. I about had it way back when after countless hours and completing every quest in the game to be rewarded with vendor trash from Cadwell. I love the Elder Scrolls, but I just don't understand why your rewards- from quests to crafting writs, and everything in between, are so terrible. Will this ever be addressed?

Did better than I have on a lot of occasions... wait until ALL you get is ONE trait gem, THEN you know how much it is really worth ;P

On the other hand, you do get over 600g for it, so it is not a total loss.

C0pp3rhead

On the other hand, you do get over 600g for it, so it is not a total loss.

I spend over 1k every day to feed mounts for alts & mules. 600g means nothing. OP's point still stands.

Yinmaigao

C0pp3rhead wrote: »

On the other hand, you do get over 600g for it, so it is not a total loss.

I spend over 1k every day to feed mounts for alts & mules. 600g means nothing. OP's point still stands.

If you read my post, you would see that I agree.

It is extremely frustrating and I submitted a ticket to see if it was a bug to only get 1 trait gem out of the "sack" with a response of "Lawlz, RNG".

Valymer

C0pp3rhead wrote: »

On the other hand, you do get over 600g for it, so it is not a total loss.

I spend over 1k every day to feed mounts for alts & mules. 600g means nothing. OP's point still stands.

IMO there is still a point.

You can get a stack of nightwood (usually) for 1k or less from guild traders. So even if it takes you roughly an entire stack to do the writ, you almost break even.

Plus, it seems that you have a higher chance to get an item with the Ornate trait from writs, which is another 75-200 gold. Of course if you get just a trait stone you do get screwed for that day, but...

What you are really doing them for is the chance to get a legendary mat (Rosin in the case of woodworking). So yes, you can get unlucky with the RNG but assuming that you can find what you need on the guild trader you are spending at MOST a couple hundred gold for a pretty decent chance at a Rosin, not to mention the chance of getting a Survey Writ.

You also get around 500 exp per writ, but that is pretty miniscule. But it's still something.

Teiji

• Make writs give 40,000 experience points to veteran characters
  
• Add items, weapons or armor with zero damage, zero armor specifically for researching traits you don't have to the loot pool
  
• Slightly increase the gold reward so it makes more sense for you doing contracted work to support your Alliance through doing writs
  
• Remove weapons, armor from loot pool that you're only going to vendor anyway
  
• As stated previously; slightly increase gold reward due to not being rewarded with vendor trash
  
• Increase amount of useful crafting related rewards; guaranteed multiple Honing Stone, Pitch, Hemming 3 - 6
  
• Chance to acquire multiple gold tempers to a maximum of two
  
• Guarantee at least one blue temper item, up to a maximum of four
  

Do one hundred writs, get ten champion points.

Epona222

Do writs on several characters. The rank 1 writs you do on high level characters will make enough profit to pay for the mats for the high level writs you do on your crafters, which give higher chance for gold upgrade mats or a survey that may provide some Nirncrux.

If you only do writs on your crafter, you are doing it wrong.

I make a load of cash by doing writs on vet rank characters with no skillpoints spent in crafting - so I'm using 27-30 sanded maple for a woodworking writ, and getting at the very least, 600+ g reward. That profit then pays for my woodworker to buy and use nightwood to complete a writ (for which they also get paid 600+ gold reward)- and I come out on top. I may also get nirncrux or gold upgrade mats.

Darkonflare15

Daenerys wrote: »

I can't even. Why ZOS? Why are your 'rewards' so terrible? I just completed a max lvl woodworking crafting writ - SIX nightwood bows and two nightwood shields -to be rewarded with one stinking ruby and one nightwood shield. I don't understand who makes these decisions about loot. I about had it way back when after countless hours and completing every quest in the game to be rewarded with vendor trash from Cadwell. I love the Elder Scrolls, but I just don't understand why your rewards- from quests to crafting writs, and everything in between, are so terrible. Will this ever be addressed?

Yeah the rewards are terrible but you have to think about Elder Scrolls Games in general. Most crap you get from most quests is trash. Most stuff drop off enemies can be good or bad. There are few good items that drop from enemies in all the games. This is in all the Elder scrolls games from Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, and this game. If you never craft loot at all in this game than most of the rewards are gradually good just like in Morrowind and Oblivion but if you craft than these are usually trash. Crafting items weapons in Skyrim and this game was better than most of the loot. Some of the unique weapons like most of daedric weapons are good but some of them were crap. So yeah most rewards when it comes loot in Elder Scrolls Games are basically not that good especially at end game.

traigusb14_ESO2

C0pp3rhead wrote: »

On the other hand, you do get over 600g for it, so it is not a total loss.

I spend over 1k every day to feed mounts for alts & mules. 600g means nothing. OP's point still stands.

You expect to pay the upkeep for multiple characters with 1 crafting writ a day?

Daemons_Bane

traigusb14_ESO2 wrote: »

C0pp3rhead wrote: »

On the other hand, you do get over 600g for it, so it is not a total loss.

I spend over 1k every day to feed mounts for alts & mules. 600g means nothing. OP's point still stands.

You expect to pay the upkeep for multiple characters with 1 crafting writ a day?

This is pretty much what I thought 1 writ aint gonna do anything, but 10+ is awesome

SeñorCinco

Epona222 wrote: »

If you only do writs on your crafter, you are doing it wrong.

I make a load of cash by doing writs on vet rank characters with no skillpoints spent in crafting - so I'm using 27-30 sanded maple for a woodworking writ, and getting at the very least, 600+ g reward.

I wouldn't say the way they are doing it is wrong. It may be right for the given mechanics. However, I see the mechanics themselves as being wrong.

The fact that one has more to gain by not advancing the skill, demands development attention.

.

Iluvrien

Let's first skip over the point that this thread was created in General not, for example, in the Crafting forum...

SeñorCinco wrote: »

I wouldn't say the way they are doing it is wrong. It may be right for the given mechanics. However, I see the mechanics themselves as being wrong.

The fact that one has more to gain by not advancing the skill, demands development attention.

...This is actually a fair point. A high level character ,who can afford stacks of low level mats comparatively easily, can do multiple writs across multiple characters in one day. For about the same amount of material the situation seems to be multiple low level writs give better monetary rewards than the higher level writs. However these low level writs seem to also have less chance of giving high-level materials (Enchanting for example).

The trade-off currently seems to be to make more money through low level writs, or get a chance at better materials with high level ones. It is a good idea, but I am fairly sure that they still haven't gotten the high-level rewards right yet.

Faulgor

Reward and loot structure is one of the most important aspects of any game, and ESO fails at it almost 100%. I really don't have the faintest idea why, but whoever is responsible for it should look at games that are doing it well and rethink what they are trying to do with ESO from the ground up. Because new content won't matter if there's no point doing it - just look at Craglorn. That whole zone was almost dead on arrival because of the terrible rewards - both exp (aside from exploits) and loot - and it has only gotten worse since its release.

Heck, they don't even have to introduce new stuff like the Undaunted sets. Just aim to make every gear useful and rearrange the loot tables, don't be afraid to *** people off by making things rarer or previously rare things more common.

Raash

The more I think about it I start to wonder why people have not been going out on the streets protesting against these boring quest rewards?
I mean, its literally destroying peoples ability to have fun in games when the rewards are not good enough.
There should always be an epic item as a reward. Or rare mounts, or at least huge amounts of gold and xp.
Why even bother doing quests if you get nothing from it'?

Haqikah

Darkonflare15 wrote: »

Yeah the rewards are terrible but you have to think about Elder Scrolls Games in general. Most crap you get from most quests is trash. Most stuff drop off enemies can be good or bad. There are few good items that drop from enemies in all the games. This is in all the Elder scrolls games from Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, and this game. If you never craft loot at all in this game than most of the rewards are gradually good just like in Morrowind and Oblivion but if you craft than these are usually trash. Crafting items weapons in Skyrim and this game was better than most of the loot. Some of the unique weapons like most of daedric weapons are good but some of them were crap. So yeah most rewards when it comes loot in Elder Scrolls Games are basically not that good especially at end game.

I agree with @Darkonflare15 's answer. The pedigree of TESOTU are the ES games, which have a very bad RNG based droprate.

The pedigree shows in other ways in the game as well. Such as: Elder Scrolls games rarely really reward you for finishing a quest. ZoS has taken these mechanics as the foundation of TESOTU and is the last year slowly learning that MMO players expect something else.

Heromofo

+1 reward should always = time+materials+gold x 2 or more

Turelus

A better fix would be to just make trait gems worth something. Imagine if they could be used in say stacks of ten to change the trait on an armour. The prices of the good ones would shoot up.

I do agree that there should be a base set of items for each writ box though.

1x upgrade item of random colour.
1x trait gem of random type.
1x style gem of random type.
1x random item with trait.
1x soul gem.
1x repair kit.

Elsonso

Sheesh.

Loot in this game is in line with the Elder Scrolls games. I vendored most stuff in the TES games because it was junk.

Faulgor

Haqikah wrote: »

Darkonflare15 wrote: »

Yeah the rewards are terrible but you have to think about Elder Scrolls Games in general. Most crap you get from most quests is trash. Most stuff drop off enemies can be good or bad. There are few good items that drop from enemies in all the games. This is in all the Elder scrolls games from Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, and this game. If you never craft loot at all in this game than most of the rewards are gradually good just like in Morrowind and Oblivion but if you craft than these are usually trash. Crafting items weapons in Skyrim and this game was better than most of the loot. Some of the unique weapons like most of daedric weapons are good but some of them were crap. So yeah most rewards when it comes loot in Elder Scrolls Games are basically not that good especially at end game.

I agree with @Darkonflare15 's answer. The pedigree of TESOTU are the ES games, which have a very bad RNG based droprate.

The pedigree shows in other ways in the game as well. Such as: Elder Scrolls games rarely really reward you for finishing a quest. ZoS has taken these mechanics as the foundation of TESOTU and is the last year slowly learning that MMO players expect something else.

TES is not just RNG though - well, at least it wasn't always. In Morrowind, great fixed loot rewards were scattered all over the world in less or more hard to reach places, such as the Savior's Hide in Divayth Fyr's chest. In fact rewards were so predictable and not random that I started every playthrough usually clearing the Redoran vault in Vivec ... and if you wanted a full set of Glass armor or whatever you always knew where to find an NPC that wore it.

Due to scaling, RNG increased in Oblivion and Skyrim and often outright replaced hand-placed rewards - but Oblivion was messed up anyway and in Skyrim crafted gear is superior to anything you could find. I find these systems difficult to compare to each other, let alone an MMO.

Point it, if they should take anything from TES rewards, it's hand-placed immersive rewards, not bad scaled RNG.

Haqikah

Faulgor wrote: »

TES is not just RNG though - well, at least it wasn't always. In Morrowind, great fixed loot rewards were scattered all over the world in less or more hard to reach places, such as the Savior's Hide in Divayth Fyr's chest. In fact rewards were so predictable and not random that I started every playthrough usually clearing the Redoran vault in Vivec ... and if you wanted a full set of Glass armor or whatever you always knew where to find an NPC that wore it.

Due to scaling, RNG increased in Oblivion and Skyrim and often outright replaced hand-placed rewards - but Oblivion was messed up anyway and in Skyrim crafted gear is superior to anything you could find. I find these systems difficult to compare to each other, let alone an MMO.

Point it, if they should take anything from TES rewards, it's hand-placed immersive rewards, not bad scaled RNG.

Ah, I must confess I never played Morrowind, as I started with the Elder Scrolls franchise with Oblivion. Besides the daedric artefacts the drops were - if my memory serves me right - quite random, although they did level with your characters level. I agree the systems are hard the compare. I just wanted to note that these systems are - I believe - the inspiration for TESO and as such might explain what we currently have.

That does not mean I agree with what we have; however as I am only a casual non-competitive player equipment stats have only modest impact for me. It is easy to see that for the more competitive crowd equipment stats are far more important, as they are an additional way of character progress. In this area TESO seems to fall short.

Gandrhulf_Harbard

RNG is, IMO, the cheap and lazy option for distributing loot.

I'm not a big fan of WoW anymore, but one area they did get right was in trying to make quest rewards relevant to the player. LotRO has tried the same but, again IMO, to lesser effect.

No one on the DEV team would go to work each week for a "random paypacket" 90% of which were unusable by the recipient.

If DEVs want to incentivise us to play their game content, and to play it with enough enthusiasm to come back for more, they need to make the rewards for doing so both relevant and worthwhile.

I've just hit VR1 and I would hazard that so far less than 5% of quest rewards were even remotely relevant, and only about 15% were worthwhile.

Now, I understand that in a system that allows (what a traditional MMORPG would call) a Mage to wear plate armour and carry a shield and that allows (what a traditional MMORPG would call) a Fighter to wear cloth and wield a staff that "reward relevance" is much, much harder to achieve. In that case making rewards worthwhile must become more of a priority than it has so far seemed to be.

All The Best

Raash

Raash wrote: »

The more I think about it I start to wonder why people have not been going out on the streets protesting against these boring quest rewards?
I mean, its literally destroying peoples ability to have fun in games when the rewards are not good enough.
There should always be an epic item as a reward. Or rare mounts, or at least huge amounts of gold and xp.
Why even bother doing quests if you get nothing from it'?

I quote myself since I hope people that pressed agree understand I was ironical.

I can understand somewhat the issues with bad quest rewards, but to me its just a way of knowing that a quest line have ended and I couldnt care less what the actual reward was since i crafted my own gear pretty much from start to stop.

And RNG.... TBH I cant understand how people can complain about RNG when it comes to loot. There is nothing more dull then a token system where you count each and every one you get towards a new set piece and thats all there is.
Ok if you get tokens for the basic tiers of sets etc but there should also be some superduper rare stuff to get (like unique looking awesomestuff) that should be luck based if you ever get one or not. There should be stuff to hunt for to make people going back to the content.
Otherwise you just get the regular "Ah finally all set pieces - what now? Oh, just wait for next content update in 6 months... Bye bye see you then."

SgtSilock

Well at least we aren't paying monthly for it

Gandrhulf_Harbard

Raash wrote: »

TBH I cant understand how people can complain about RNG when it comes to loot. There is nothing more dull then a token system where you count each and every one you get towards a new set piece and thats all there is.

Would you go to work for a random pay-packet that 90% of the time you couldn't use?

That is essentially what RNG loot is.

I prefer a dual-token system.

So that for every run through I get X tokens towards a basic set of gear.
And have an RNG chance at a "Super Token" so that instead of cashing in Y Tokens for a Green/Blue quality bit of gear I could cash in Y Token + Super Token for a Purple/Gold quality bit of gear.

That way every one gets some reward from each run towards a usable set of gear, but the RNG factor kicks in to keep people coming back for the "Bonus".

All The Best

Earelith

Gandrhulf_Harbard wrote: »

Raash wrote: »

TBH I cant understand how people can complain about RNG when it comes to loot. There is nothing more dull then a token system where you count each and every one you get towards a new set piece and thats all there is.

Would you go to work for a random pay-packet that 90% of the time you couldn't use?

That is essentially what RNG loot is.

I prefer a dual-token system.

So that for every run through I get X tokens towards a basic set of gear.
And have an RNG chance at a "Super Token" so that instead of cashing in Y Tokens for a Green/Blue quality bit of gear I could cash in Y Token + Super Token for a Purple/Gold quality bit of gear.

That way every one gets some reward from each run towards a usable set of gear, but the RNG factor kicks in to keep people coming back for the "Bonus".

All The Best

But is not a work..is a game..a hobby, an adventure.. I can go for hunting or fishing in real life without knowing the outcome(and I do)..sometimes I will return with a lot of fish and sometimes with bare hands..

ESO and MMOs are games..Hobbys, not work

Gandrhulf_Harbard

Earelith wrote: »

But is not a work..is a game..a hobby, an adventure.. I can go for hunting or fishing in real life without knowing the outcome(and I do)..sometimes I will return with a lot of fish and sometimes with bare hands..

ESO and MMOs are games..Hobbys, not work

I'd agree with you if there were not so many pointless, deliberate grinds involved in MMOs.

1,000,000 XP per Vet Level ISN'T a Hobby - its a deliberately designed time-sink for no reward of worth.

It matters not whether what you are doing is a hobby or work; if the Effort / Reward equation sucks, then it sucks.

Most quest reward loot in ESO sucks.

All The Best

sylviermoone

I think that saying the crappy rewards ruin the game is perhaps a little overly dramatic, but I definitely agree that the reward system is lacking and could use some MAJOR improvement.

Vahrokh

Earelith wrote: »

Gandrhulf_Harbard wrote: »

Raash wrote: »

TBH I cant understand how people can complain about RNG when it comes to loot. There is nothing more dull then a token system where you count each and every one you get towards a new set piece and thats all there is.

Would you go to work for a random pay-packet that 90% of the time you couldn't use?

That is essentially what RNG loot is.

I prefer a dual-token system.

So that for every run through I get X tokens towards a basic set of gear.
And have an RNG chance at a "Super Token" so that instead of cashing in Y Tokens for a Green/Blue quality bit of gear I could cash in Y Token + Super Token for a Purple/Gold quality bit of gear.

That way every one gets some reward from each run towards a usable set of gear, but the RNG factor kicks in to keep people coming back for the "Bonus".

All The Best

But is not a work..is a game..a hobby, an adventure.. I can go for hunting or fishing in real life without knowing the outcome(and I do)..sometimes I will return with a lot of fish and sometimes with bare hands..

ESO and MMOs are games..Hobbys, not work

... and don't you play a game to relax outside of real life's (RL) up and downs (RNG) and to have a sort of "ideal" environment?

I mean, things should go better in a game than in RL, not be as dull and crappy. Loot is one of those things that should go better in a game than RL.

When I do a "crafting writ" in RL (a job), I get a worthwhile reward else I switch job.
People in ESO got enough not worthwhile rewards (in the broadest sense) that they switched game. This does not bode well for ESO.

Faulgor

Vahrokh wrote: »

Earelith wrote: »

Gandrhulf_Harbard wrote: »

Raash wrote: »

TBH I cant understand how people can complain about RNG when it comes to loot. There is nothing more dull then a token system where you count each and every one you get towards a new set piece and thats all there is.

Would you go to work for a random pay-packet that 90% of the time you couldn't use?

That is essentially what RNG loot is.

I prefer a dual-token system.

So that for every run through I get X tokens towards a basic set of gear.
And have an RNG chance at a "Super Token" so that instead of cashing in Y Tokens for a Green/Blue quality bit of gear I could cash in Y Token + Super Token for a Purple/Gold quality bit of gear.

That way every one gets some reward from each run towards a usable set of gear, but the RNG factor kicks in to keep people coming back for the "Bonus".

All The Best

But is not a work..is a game..a hobby, an adventure.. I can go for hunting or fishing in real life without knowing the outcome(and I do)..sometimes I will return with a lot of fish and sometimes with bare hands..

ESO and MMOs are games..Hobbys, not work

... and don't you play a game to relax outside of real life's (RL) up and downs (RNG) and to have a sort of "ideal" environment?

I mean, things should go better in a game than in RL, not be as dull and crappy. Loot is one of those things that should go better in a game than RL.

When I do a "crafting writ" in RL (a job), I get a worthwhile reward else I switch job.
People in ESO got enough not worthwhile rewards (in the broadest sense) that they switched game. This does not bode well for ESO.

The possiblity of a reward actually results in higher dopamine levels in the brain (and thus greater anticipation) than the certainty of it. I don't feel like searching for the relevant papers right now, but there is scientific evidence that "RNG" is more exciting than a token-based or similar system.
Of course if the reward is too rare, the effects will be different.

Furian

I have to agree.... i would rather see them take the rewards (such as the main story line rewards) and give us something useful, like a stack of armor repair kits. The useless rewards are great for deconstructing, and are nice for new players who don't have a guild, or a way to get crafted, but that's about it.

Or... take a questing zone, and have each quest hub reward give you part of a set.