My feedback from the view on the Glass Motif

SG_Celerrimus

So, here is what the patch notes says on getting the glass motif:
________________________________________________________________________________________________
Glass Style Motif
The secrets to crafting Glass arms and armor have begun to be revealed!

You can learn to craft in the Glass style by finding the Chapters or the Book for it. These Chapters have been torn into unreadable Fragments by the ravages of time and travel, but can occasionally be found slipped into the Writ rewards for Blacksmiths, Clothiers, and Woodworkers.

Once you’ve gathered ten Fragments, you can reconstitute them into a readable Chapter (or, if you’re exceptionally lucky, the whole Book) with some Merethic Restorative Resin.

This Resin is sold by Mystics around the world for a hefty price.

You must be Rank 10 in the Metalworking, Tailoring, or Woodworking passives to understand the style’s intricacies and learn it permanently.

You’ll also need some Malachite to actually craft an item in the Glass style.

Malachite Shards can be found in Treasure Chests around the world. Chests with more durable and difficult locks are more likely to contain them, but the chests that require a Treasure Map to find have the best chance by a wide margin.

Once you’ve collected ten Malachite Shards, you can refine them into a single chunk of Malachite at any equipment crafting bench, but know that this will bind the Malachite to your account, making it untradeable.

Once you know the style and have the materials, you can craft Glass gear at any equipment crafting bench.

Here is the tool tip you get on a Malachite Shard in-game: "Ten of these items can be refined into Malachite, which is used to make Glass equipment. Doing so permanently binds the malachite to your account.

________________________________________________________________________________________________
So here be my thoughts:

I feel like ZOS is playing this Glass Motif situation in the mindset of the cash shop, and here is why.

First off, it took me FOREVER to get the Malachite Shard, so right off the bat the required material is a challenge to get. Along with this, in order to learn the crafting recipe, you need to collect the fragments, which you only have a shot, not guaranteed retrieval, of getting each day, and you need 10 of these in order to get a chapter to learn how to craft one thing. And, to further this, you need to do it several times in order to learn it all, or you get REALLY lucky and get the book when you combine 10 fragments, but if its like the Dwarven motif there is a damn slim chance of that. Along with this, the Resin to restore the fragments costs 25k gold, so you need to pay that each time you get 10 fragments.

So where does this bring us, to summarize above, it is a difficult challenge to get the malachite to craft glass armor, but even more so of a burden in order to craft the whole motif itself, seemingly a task that will take days.

Now, I want to say I have no problem with things that you need to work towards earning, but I suspect a cash shop trick here, where ZOS will let you skip the grindy process of getting the glass motif racial if you buy it in the crown store, basically enticing people to buy it based on the challenge and the pure repetitiveness of the grind to earn it, as it seems like it will be even more challenging to get than the Dwarven motif, as like I said, you only get three shot a day at a fragment.

So, I personally think that they should avert from this course, if this is truly their plan, or as an alternative to go along with this, I have come up with a potential better solution:

So, the glass motif is supposed to be an ancient art form that was lost to time right? In that case, why not have there be a slim, slim, chance to learn or earn some fragments while exploring ancient ruins dotted around the landscape. I would imagine that if it is ancient knowledge, it might be able to be found in bookshelves, as bookshelves usually contain books, and the glass motif is all in all a book. So, again, I think it would be fair if, while exploring ancient ruins, there is a slim chance that players might be able to pick up a fragment of the Glass Motif while checking bookcases inside of say an Ayleid ruin. This would enable players a second winded chance to get fragments, if they don't get them in crafting writs, so it is not as much of a punishing grind. And like I said, this could be a slim chance, maybe even rare than getting Dwarven chapters from pots in Dwemer ruins, but at least it would give players another chance at working towards crafting the motif book, rather than just a slim chance three times per day or needing to outright buy it for real money, if ZOS really is playing the cash shop game.

Anyway, those are my thoughts.

Dracane

Honey, it's GLASS ARMOR ! the most beautiful and the best armor/weapons on Tamriel.
It has to be rare, because it's something extremely special But once you have, the jealousy of the people around you will be guaranteed.

You know why ? Because this armor is high elvish flawless and pure perfection. And if you finally hold the first piece in your hands, you have arrived.

Personofsecrets

I also think they are trying to incentivize people to do things that aren't really worth doing.

Look at writs.
Look at fishing.
Checking containers.

It is just a time sink. Or money sink as you point out. Not really "work your way and prove yourself to the top" to win.

Erraln

Has anyone considered that this may be a veiled Loyalty Reward? If the motif is available in the shop, and a person hasn't been spending their subscription crowns, it becomes a useful unlock for those with built up points.

Recremen

Wait, 25k gold for the resin? Is the grind not limiting enough as-is? That's hundreds of thousands of gold for a single character to learn it, never mind if you have to do it multiple times across all your crafting alts. I hope they reconsider that portion of the process.

Forestd16b14_ESO

So not only is the new motifs ID and glass chapters AGAIN but glass is "X"parts of "X" chapters for the book...... ZoS really last time stop with the stupid f***ing chapter gimiks no one likes the idea.

olemanwinter

delete

olemanwinter

SG_Celerrimus wrote: »

This Resin is sold by Mystics around the world for a hefty price.

Understatement of the century.

Unless I'm mistaken it costs 500,000 GOLD in addition to the grind to get the full armor set unlocked.

Ya know, at 200 writ rewards, 500k gold to unlock the style and 10 malachite shards per piece of armor....Seeing someone in a full set of Glass Armor is going to be a great way to identify the people with no life outside of the game who are possibly detached from reality and really best to avoid.

Seeing someone in glass armor for me is going to be like seeing someone with 25 piercings on their face or 50 grand worth of bling in their teeth. I'll give them a "wide berth".

Aaaanyway, based on the materials cost of VR16 items, the grind involved in getting motif pages, and the gold cost of things....I wouldn't expect any more DLC for.....maybe another year.

SG_Celerrimus

olemanwinter wrote: »

SG_Celerrimus wrote: »

This Resin is sold by Mystics around the world for a hefty price.

Understatement of the century.

Unless I'm mistaken it costs 500,000 GOLD in addition to the grind to get the full armor set unlocked.

Ya know, at 200 writ rewards, 500k gold to unlock the style and 10 malachite shards per piece of armor....Seeing someone in a full set of Glass Armor is going to be a great way to identify the people with no life outside of the game who are possibly detached from reality and really best to avoid.

Seeing someone in glass armor for me is going to be like seeing someone with 25 piercings on their face or 50 grand worth of bling in their teeth. I'll give them a "wide berth".

Aaaanyway, based on the materials cost of VR16 items, the grind involved in getting motif pages, and the gold cost of things....I wouldn't expect any more DLC for.....maybe another year.

If I see someone with Glass armor I will just look at them like "Wow, you either bought that, or maybe Office Supply rich from the amount of keyboards you bought and broke trying to farm it O.O"

Waseem

everything can be solved with the world's and life's changing skill - the credit card skill
but really, this is implemented so people exchange their crafts knowledge. so whenever you need to make a 7 set piece, you gotta bug 5-9 players to craft each part of it for yourself
the developers spent alot of time making these motifs, so they expect you to have it by as much time-if you ever plan of crafting whole set by your own

Teridaxus

I opened 30 crafting writs and got 3 pieces.....7 left to even get a single chapter....

Lexynide

I assume next time we'll see something like this: do writs every day to get a rarely dropping golden ink. The chance is rare, about 1/1000, so you'd need to do many many writs every day. Once you collect 100 inks, you can restore 1 strip fragment of a page. Each page consists of 100 strips.
Once you obtain 100 strips (by the way, each strip is also coming from writs, because why on Nirn would we obtain it inside Ayleid ruins or something like this... It makes no sense, right?), you can glue them together. Usually, that consumes 1 golden glue, which you assemble from 10 purple mixtures of glue. Each time you glue part of the page with strip, it's creating a global cooldown on entire account before you can repeat this operation again - not much, just about 20 days.
Once you glue final part of strip to the page, you get page for a random armor/weapon part. By the way, this page is now bound to your account so you can't trade it!
If you get a page that you already know, you can always vendor it to nearest merchant NPC for 10 gold.

Of course, you can always buy this motif in Crown store for 250 crowns, but we clearly NOT pushing Pay-To-Win model, no-no-no. You always have a choice.

Maulkin

Here's my personal opinion. I don't care how they make money out of the Crown Store so long as it doesn't impact on balance in PvE or PvP (in other words, become pay2win).

Motifs are a perfect example of making good use of the Crown Store. You will either grind for days to learn the style and get the motifs or you will pay ZOS some real money and skip the grindy part.

But very very importantly, obtaining glass armor is only a stylistic thing. It has no bearing whatsoever on your performance in PvE or PvP.

So I don't mind that they will try to make some money out of it.

MrBeatDown

Anybody have any pictures of a crafted glass item? I remember in oblivion I had some glass stuff and it was a neon green translucent sword that I had. Anyone made a piece yet on pts?

Yolokin_Swagonborn

olemanwinter wrote: »

SG_Celerrimus wrote: »

This Resin is sold by Mystics around the world for a hefty price.

Understatement of the century.

Unless I'm mistaken it costs 500,000 GOLD in addition to the grind to get the full armor set unlocked.

Ya know, at 200 writ rewards, 500k gold to unlock the style and 10 malachite shards per piece of armor....Seeing someone in a full set of Glass Armor is going to be a great way to identify the people with no life outside of the game who are possibly detached from reality and really best to avoid.

Seeing someone in glass armor for me is going to be like seeing someone with 25 piercings on their face or 50 grand worth of bling in their teeth. I'll give them a "wide berth".

Aaaanyway, based on the materials cost of VR16 items, the grind involved in getting motif pages, and the gold cost of things....I wouldn't expect any more DLC for.....maybe another year.

Key point is at the bottom. Pay to play model failed because they couldn't keep up with content. B2P is failing for the same reasons.

They keep trying to replace real content with busywork. If you accept busywork instead of real content - they win. If you hate the busywork so much that you pay to get around it, they win. P2W: You pay they win.

Septimus_Magna

All that trouble to get a motif while most people will only use a couple pieces crafted gear in their builds, especially when you need 100+ mats for v16 gear. I will still try to get all the chapters but I dont think I will use it besides maybe chest and staff. Hopefully there will be new crafted set locations added in the next update that are worth using for their 4 or 5 piece bonus.

WhiteCoatSyndrome

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

All that trouble to get a motif while most people will only use a couple pieces crafted gear in their builds, especially when you need 100+ mats for v16 gear. I will still try to get all the chapters but I dont think I will use it besides maybe chest and staff. Hopefully there will be new crafted set locations added in the next update that are worth using for their 4 or 5 piece bonus.

+1 this. All that trouble to get the motif and then there are (IIRC) only three new sets to make with it, or use the dropped sets/monster helms and don't use the motif you spent time and/or money to get.

Lexynide

mike.gaziotisb16_ESO wrote: »

Motifs are a perfect example of making good use of the Crown Store. You will either grind for days to learn the style and get the motifs or you will pay ZOS some real money and skip the grindy part.
But very very importantly, obtaining glass armor is only a stylistic thing. It has no bearing whatsoever on your performance in PvE or PvP.

There are two big problems with the way they're implementing these new styles.

First problem is that it's just cheap. They're trying to utilize systems that aren't interesting gameplay-wise by saying "hey, i know this legwork is boring, but there might be a chance of getting something nice of it!".
Glass motif is an elven style. Why can't we find those fragments inside Ayleid ruins? Why can't we find fragments of Psijic ambrosia inside Mages Guild bookshelves (which makes more sense since Psijics are an ancient mage order)?
The answer is simple: they have boring writs everyone was trying to avoid, and now they're throwing a golden bone in there to motivate players do them. They're not improving process, they're trying to find an excuse to do writs, and that's cheap.

Second problem is that "grindiness" is already reaching a ridiculous amounts. This game is not even 2 years old, and they're making so much legwork to obtain those motifs already. What kind of legwork we'll have to go through 5 years later? Farming for years? Throwing so much grind over first new content makes me think they're already exhausted so bad they need players to slowdown players as much as possible... or to buy all of it in Crown store.

If they want players to get themselves busy with something, they shouldn't do that by endless grinding sequences. Make events, REAL PvP arenas and other kinds of entertainment. Add more interactive events. Ripoff garrisons from WoW at least (not the brightest idea, but better than grind).

Septimus_Magna

WhiteCoatSyndrome wrote: »

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

All that trouble to get a motif while most people will only use a couple pieces crafted gear in their builds, especially when you need 100+ mats for v16 gear. I will still try to get all the chapters but I dont think I will use it besides maybe chest and staff. Hopefully there will be new crafted set locations added in the next update that are worth using for their 4 or 5 piece bonus.

+1 this. All that trouble to get the motif and then there are (IIRC) only three new sets to make with it, or use the dropped sets/monster helms and don't use the motif you spent time and/or money to get.

It would be nice if you could craft your own costumes that can be dyed, that would give crafter more incentive to get the rare motifs and sell unique looking costumes. It would be cool to have multiple costumes so you dont always look the same.

Rune_Relic

..and ZOS wonders why people use bots ?

TBois

So will you need 1000 mats to craft V18 gear after the Orsinium patch?

Maulkin

Lexynide wrote: »

mike.gaziotisb16_ESO wrote: »

Motifs are a perfect example of making good use of the Crown Store. You will either grind for days to learn the style and get the motifs or you will pay ZOS some real money and skip the grindy part.
But very very importantly, obtaining glass armor is only a stylistic thing. It has no bearing whatsoever on your performance in PvE or PvP.

There are two big problems with the way they're implementing these new styles.

First problem is that it's just cheap. They're trying to utilize systems that aren't interesting gameplay-wise by saying "hey, i know this legwork is boring, but there might be a chance of getting something nice of it!".
Glass motif is an elven style. Why can't we find those fragments inside Ayleid ruins? Why can't we find fragments of Psijic ambrosia inside Mages Guild bookshelves (which makes more sense since Psijics are an ancient mage order)?
The answer is simple: they have boring writs everyone was trying to avoid, and now they're throwing a golden bone in there to motivate players do them. They're not improving process, they're trying to find an excuse to do writs, and that's cheap.

Second problem is that "grindiness" is already reaching a ridiculous amounts. This game is not even 2 years old, and they're making so much legwork to obtain those motifs already. What kind of legwork we'll have to go through 5 years later? Farming for years? Throwing so much grind over first new content makes me think they're already exhausted so bad they need players to slowdown players as much as possible... or to buy all of it in Crown store.

If they want players to get themselves busy with something, they shouldn't do that by endless grinding sequences. Make events, REAL PvP arenas and other kinds of entertainment. Add more interactive events. Ripoff garrisons from WoW at least (not the brightest idea, but better than grind).

You don't seem to get the point. If the ways to get those motifs were really fun, you would just wait to get them by playing the game and doing the fun content. The whole point is to make certain parts a very boring grind so that you really want to skip it and pay them money.

ZOS doesn't care if you would play 10 hours a day to get it. Quite the opposite, the more you play without paying them nothing you become a cost not a profit.

Ishammael

mike.gaziotisb16_ESO wrote: »

Here's my personal opinion. I don't care how they make money out of the Crown Store so long as it doesn't impact on balance in PvE or PvP (in other words, become pay2win).

Motifs are a perfect example of making good use of the Crown Store. You will either grind for days to learn the style and get the motifs or you will pay ZOS some real money and skip the grindy part.

But very very importantly, obtaining glass armor is only a stylistic thing. It has no bearing whatsoever on your performance in PvE or PvP.

So I don't mind that they will try to make some money out of it.

agree here.

nimander99

I still haven't earned a single exp recipe fragment so my hopes are zero for glass motif. I'm not concerned or irritated with ZoS' implementation of new recipes... I F&%*$#% HATE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am SICK of these recipes giving only once chance a day at .0000000000000000000000000000000000001% chance of earning a F%^&*$^ single fragment, let alone TEN!

STOP DOING THIS ZOS, STOP IT, STOP IT IMMEDIATELY, IT IS NOT APPRECIATED!!!

Implement like Dwemer motifs were implemented, give us an area or a type of dungeon or mob or container that we have an all day chance of looting a piece of the fragment... or just put the whole thing in the Crown Store right away...

nimander99

MrBeatDown wrote: »

Anybody have any pictures of a crafted glass item? I remember in oblivion I had some glass stuff and it was a neon green translucent sword that I had. Anyone made a piece yet on pts?

There isn't enough time on PTS for anyone to collect a single motif... let alone an entire set. The only people who will get full sets are people that have maxed 8 chars and run writs every day on all 8 chars.

ThatNeonZebraAgain

SG_Celerrimus wrote: »

So, here is what the patch notes says on getting the glass motif:
So here be my thoughts:

I feel like ZOS is playing this Glass Motif situation in the mindset of the cash shop, and here is why.

First off, it took me FOREVER to get the Malachite Shard, so right off the bat the required material is a challenge to get. Along with this, in order to learn the crafting recipe, you need to collect the fragments, which you only have a shot, not guaranteed retrieval, of getting each day, and you need 10 of these in order to get a chapter to learn how to craft one thing. And, to further this, you need to do it several times in order to learn it all, or you get REALLY lucky and get the book when you combine 10 fragments, but if its like the Dwarven motif there is a damn slim chance of that. Along with this, the Resin to restore the fragments costs 25k gold, so you need to pay that each time you get 10 fragments.

So where does this bring us, to summarize above, it is a difficult challenge to get the malachite to craft glass armor, but even more so of a burden in order to craft the whole motif itself, seemingly a task that will take days.

Now, I want to say I have no problem with things that you need to work towards earning, but I suspect a cash shop trick here, where ZOS will let you skip the grindy process of getting the glass motif racial if you buy it in the crown store, basically enticing people to buy it based on the challenge and the pure repetitiveness of the grind to earn it, as it seems like it will be even more challenging to get than the Dwarven motif, as like I said, you only get three shot a day at a fragment.

So, I personally think that they should avert from this course, if this is truly their plan, or as an alternative to go along with this, I have come up with a potential better solution:

So, the glass motif is supposed to be an ancient art form that was lost to time right? In that case, why not have there be a slim, slim, chance to learn or earn some fragments while exploring ancient ruins dotted around the landscape. I would imagine that if it is ancient knowledge, it might be able to be found in bookshelves, as bookshelves usually contain books, and the glass motif is all in all a book. So, again, I think it would be fair if, while exploring ancient ruins, there is a slim chance that players might be able to pick up a fragment of the Glass Motif while checking bookcases inside of say an Ayleid ruin. This would enable players a second winded chance to get fragments, if they don't get them in crafting writs, so it is not as much of a punishing grind. And like I said, this could be a slim chance, maybe even rare than getting Dwarven chapters from pots in Dwemer ruins, but at least it would give players another chance at working towards crafting the motif book, rather than just a slim chance three times per day or needing to outright buy it for real money, if ZOS really is playing the cash shop game.

You are indeed correct in your suspicion. While "only cosmetic," the Glass motif system cannot be separated from the many other similar mechanics being introduced with IC/Update 2.1 (TV Stones, Trophy Vaults, V16 crafting mats, and more recently Exp potions/Perfect Roe). They all share the same strategy of layers of RNG, grinding for the sake of grinding, and time gates. While all of these are time-tested parts of pretty much all MMOs, the way they are being implemented comes off as a superficial form of increasing game difficulty at best and a thinly veiled attempt to engineer inconvenience in order to encourage more players into the Crown Store at worst (not to mention the latter is something ZOS said they weren't going to do back when they announced the B2P switch). It's part and parcel of the B2P model, so none of this should be surprising.

Long-term objectives are good and they are definitely needed for this game, but the systems they're implementing are not really interesting, exciting (beyond their newness), or meaningful to the gameworld. Nor are they even truly aimed at keeping players engaged for a real long-term -- as part of the B2P model, these kinds of systems are specifically designed to encourage cash shop sales by creating time-consuming grinds based around layers of RNG. This kind of system and accompanying "content" is not engaging or actually challenging to a player's skill, and as such does not really help cultivate a strong desire to keep playing for many years. It promotes repetitive and unimaginative game design because you can invest in less development time while better maximizing income from the cash shop, something we were all hoping ZOS would avoid in the B2P switch.

I personally tend to play the same MMO for many years so I'm well accustomed to slowly building up characters, trades, and whatever else. Leveling, crafting, and acquiring gold are all a breeze in ESO compared to older MMOs, so the game could definitely use some more challenge and highly sought after items to stimulate high-value trading. But the thing is, you could still "work your ass off" and never get the entire motif (assuming you didn't buy Fragments from players) because this system has nothing to do with work and everything to do with luck from RNG Writ rewards. Compare this to the current trait research system where you become limited by time the more you research, and thus have to make meaningful choices about what traits you'll want to use first, and what pieces of gear/sets you might want to be able to craft first as well (and you still have some control over it versus the pure luck of RNG). What I'm saying is there are better ways to create long-term goals for players and high-value items for the game economy than this, but the current income model for the game doesn't encourage them.

Gilvoth

Dracane wrote: »

Honey, it's GLASS ARMOR ! the most beautiful and the best armor/weapons on Tamriel.
It has to be rare, because it's something extremely special But once you have, the jealousy of the people around you will be guaranteed.

You know why ? Because this armor is high elvish flawless and pure perfection. And if you finally hold the first piece in your hands, you have arrived.

can we get a pic please?

Gilvoth

im being serious, wheres some pics please so we may inspect

Morimizo

I always prefer a skill-based system over these luck-based RNG timesink-get-yo-creditcard-to-the-cash-shop-to-avoid-the-frustration systems.

It shows a blatant disregard, not a just a lack of, creativity. And also showcases an obvious disrespect for their players; "Those idiots will search in vain for five years to find one of these armor piece fragments, while we collect all kinds of dosh in the meantime."

My advice for everyone is just to be patient; this armor style will be much more affordable, maybe even common, in 6 months.

Gilvoth

heres the link to the pictures of the glass armor and weapons
http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/2195589/#Comment_2195589

Tyr

nimander99 wrote: »

MrBeatDown wrote: »

Anybody have any pictures of a crafted glass item? I remember in oblivion I had some glass stuff and it was a neon green translucent sword that I had. Anyone made a piece yet on pts?

There isn't enough time on PTS for anyone to collect a single motif... let alone an entire set. The only people who will get full sets are people that have maxed 8 chars and run writs every day on all 8 chars.

Nonsense. The drop rate is about the same as psijic ambrosia, so about 10%. If you do all 3 crafting writs each day, you'll be able to get 27 fragments in 3 months on average. Also, there's already confirmation through data-mining that there will be 3 more Motif styles(Akaviri, Yokudan, Mercenary) added as part of writ rewards in the future, so eventually you'll be getting a fragment for some motif daily on average and you'll be able to trade to assemble the set you want.

The system only seems grindy now because they haven't finished adding the writ rewards into the game yet.