Mercenary Motif and Laurels

AlnilamE

I may have missed this in the patch notes, but are the motif pages bound as well? Or can they be sold/traded?

Ruben

AlnilamE wrote: »

I may have missed this in the patch notes, but are the motif pages bound as well? Or can they be sold/traded?

They are not bound.

Casdha

Questions:

1. Can Mercenary equipment be sold (BoE) or is it bound once it has been crafted?
2. Can you receive Laurels when deconstructing player crafted Mercenary equipment?

The reason I ask is that this could be a work around for the economic side of things, much like Nirn items being crafted for research. A person could craft low level Mercenary items to transfer Laurels from one person to another.

AlnilamE

I'm sure they'll be BoE, like all other crafted gear. Deconstructing would be a bit of a gamble, though.

It would probably be easier to just compensate the crafter for the style stones instead.

Ruben wrote: »

AlnilamE wrote: »

I may have missed this in the patch notes, but are the motif pages bound as well? Or can they be sold/traded?

They are not bound.

Sweet!

Now to earn enough AP for the Akaviri motif...

Lithium Flower

Thanks for explaining the drop rate but it doesn't address the core concerns being raised. This system is creating scarcity through waste and inconvenience.

If you're a crafter the current practice is that you learn the minimum number of motifs necessary for your crafting needs. If you find duplicates or aren't a crafter, you sell them to make some gold or give them away to friends and guild mates. This is a good system. It rewards efficiency, agency, economy and social behaviour. There are plenty of item farmers who like to spend their game time looking for valuable drops they can sell to fuel other activity. More and varied items on guild stores means gold liquidity in the economy. Money moving hands stimulates trade guilds which benefit lots of new and casual players who make up the a large percentage of membership.

The proposed system hobbles current practices and degrades working systems.

A player being *required* to learn multiple pages of a motif is absurd way to create scarcity. I get that new motifs should be rare and uncommon to remain highly desirable. Adjusting the drop rate makes more sense than using this mechanic to hike up how many copies of the motif are needed by each player. These extra copies are a waste on noncrafting characters. It's removing an important means of income for many players.

In the same way, laurels being BoP are wasted beyond ones you actually need. Loot drops should reward players. Yes, it's fantastic when a much desired BoP finally drops for you but it's also great when a high value BoE drops that you can sell for sending gold. Players being able to buy and sell items they need to each other is healthy.

It was great for ZoS to explain the deposit rates but how about explaining the reasoning behind this absurd decision as well?

Before someone chimes in with: 'so laurels can be sold for crowns', why not make a unique 'crown laurel' item instead?

I think a better way going forward is to make laurels BoE or available as an uncommon drop from a vet dungeon boss. Adjust the drop rate of pages and laurel so they are rare and remain valuable but important to the player economy.

By all means release both the motif and the style material on the crownstore day one of release to capitalise on those with more money than gold.

notimetocare

13 vet runs, 2 laurels while having 9 chapters. I hate you and your stupid system...

Palidon

ZOS the way you have set this up is bull. The Laurels should be readily available from merchants like the Orc, Altmer, Imperial etc. All that should be needed to use the laurels is the knowledge of the style and any character should be able to acquire them whether they know the style or not. I have one character who is my master crafter. He does nothing else. I wish I would of read this prior to giving him all the Mercenary crafting motifs I earned running the undaunted pledges over and over again with my other v16 characters. They are useless since my master crafter sole function is crafting. He does not compete in any of the delves which would be required to get the laurels. In the post above a player who knows 9 chapters has made 13 vet runs and gotten 2 laurels. With the introduction of Craglorn you have went 100 degrees in a different direction when it comes to acquiring crafting materials and their respective motifs and laurels which in my opinion and many others is totally way out of line. All you want folks to do is repeat the same content over and over again in hopes of finding what they need and the chances are slim to none. Why introduce new armor and weapons motifs then make it almost impossible to acquire everything you need. Wake up and smell the roses you are destroying your game with the ridiculous way you are having players acquire the materials and you are not making your game fun to play.

So the end result here is I have one character who knows all the Mercenary Armor pieces so he is the only one who can get laurels by doing the undaunted pledges over and over again. Using my other characters to find the laurels is a waste of time. The ZOS brain child that dreamed this one up needs his or her head examined.

Have a nice day

poodlemasterb16_ESO

MSchroeder wrote: »

There’s been a lot of discussion about the Mercenary motif since it appeared on the PTS yesterday, and we’d like to clear up some misconceptions and answer some questions.

First, we’ve seen your concerns about the time and effort it’s going to take to obtain all the chapters of the motif. We’re aware that some of you feel that the other recently-released motifs are too grueling to get, so we wanted Mercenary to be more easily obtained. Bronze chests will drop a chapter 40% of the time; Silver chests, 50% of the time; Gold chests, 60% of the time.

We’ve also seen some confusion when we say that the Laurels (the style item required to craft a piece of gear in the Mercenary style) are Bind on Pickup. To be clear, when we say ‘Bind on Pickup’, we mean it binds to your account, not your character. This means that any of your characters can earn a Laurel, bank it, and let any of your other characters use it.

Finally, we’ve seen lots of talk about how the Laurels will only drop for characters who know at least one chapter of the style. One thing we didn’t mention in the patch notes, however, is that this is not a simple 0%-100% scale – while knowing zero chapters of the style does mean you won’t ever see a Laurel, having just one chapter means that final bosses from Veteran Dungeon will have a 50% chance to drop a Laurel for you. From there, it scales up linearly to 100% (approx. +4% per chapter). Note that the drop rate of Laurels from final bosses in Normal Dungeons Laurel is always 1/4th of their Veteran counterparts.

If you’re concerned that you now have to get your crafting character suited up and ready for dungeons, consider this: With just one chapter under your belt – likely obtained after only a day’s worth of Pledges – your most Undaunted character will be getting a Laurel about every other run through a Veteran Dungeon.

What a terrible idea. My Blacksmith has to be leveled 20 levels and become an Undaunted. Why would you do this to the crafters? You have oodles of silly crap people chase already.

I was moving my crafting to VR, but right now I feel like quitting the game. I did once before over the moderation here, and you made it free to play. So I came back, and you took more money off me. You actually promised us this would not happen. Well the guys who used to run things anyway.

Play it your way. Sure!

Scyantific

All of the epic level motif style materials are not vendor available, why in the hell should Laurels be?

Don't use Imperial as an argument either because they're only vendor available because of the Imperial playable race.

L2P

Shoulda banked your keys when you knew Orsinium was coming.

poodlemasterb16_ESO

Scyantific wrote: »

All of the epic level motif style materials are not vendor available, why in the hell should Laurels be?

Don't use Imperial as an argument either because they're only vendor available because of the Imperial playable race.

L2P

Shoulda banked your keys when you knew Orsinium was coming.

I have bits of them. I broke a couple of Malicites out of bought stuff last night. I don't need a VR level dungeon running crafter to make that stuff.

poodlemasterb16_ESO

In a very real sense crafters are the opposite of looters. You want to force us to become our opposite to fulfill some obscure idea of forcing grouping.

Kinda poor really.

newtinmpls

Well they already push for PvE to PvP and vise versa.

Rad skills of irritating long time players.

newtinmpls

Personofsecrets wrote: »

These drop rates seem very generous.

Not playing out that way.

poodlemasterb16_ESO

newtinmpls wrote: »

Well they already push for PvE to PvP and vise versa.

Rad skills of irritating long time players.

I've been here nearly 2 years with the beta. My fighters dominate the game.

My crafters were never built to do that and having to rearrange them, after we were told we did not have to seriously fight them, is irritating. I built my 8 char army this way on purpose, to create a resource, and learn to fight all types.

They are built to run, and seldom get caught. RP, you know, well maybe this game does not care, but I do.

KundaliniHero

thank you for the insight Zenimax, does this mean I can go outside now?

Casdha

Well, since this has been out a while I thought I'd report. I've had all of the chapters since the first week or so, prices for the pages dropped like a rock. I have the full motif learned on my crafter (just so i can say I know it) , cost me under 100k for the whole thing.

Laurels, I have yet to get the first one. Why? Because I don't do group dungeons.

Do I miss not being able to craft the items? No.

Is ZOS happy with whether or not they achieved their goal of trying to force me into doing something I don't like? Who knows, I don't care.

I just don't know if the price drop of the motif pages is due to folks getting so many because they love farming for laurels and are making the crap out of the Merc style or if they are just junk that folks get a decent penny for while doing what they would normally do.

Marukeru

To clarify:

I have obtained the 7 Armor Motifs, the Shield Motif and the Sword Motif.
My crafting character has learned them all, thus, he has an 86% chance to get a Laurel form a Vet Dungeon Boss, and roughly a 21.5% chance form Normal Dungeon Bosses. Yes?

Though a character on my account has the Motifs learned, this does not translate to my primary character whom is higher level and mostly geared up for Dungeons, correct?

Meaning, My main, V1, cannot attain the Laurels through dungeons at all unless he knows a Motif, while my Crafter, lv37, can?

::EDIT::
Can Laurels be attained by Deconstructing a Mercenary Item?

olsborg

I find it stupid that laurels are BoP.

newtinmpls

olsborg wrote: »

I find it stupid that laurels are BoP.

Could not agree more. Well I could , but the language I would use would certainly violate the TOS

Casdha

Marukeru wrote: »

::EDIT::
Can Laurels be attained by Deconstructing a Mercenary Item?

Someone in another thread said that they could but I have not done it myself yet.

NBrookus wrote: »

Pay someone to craft you white/low end items in the mercenary style, then decon them. You'll get some Laurels out when you decon. The rate seems to be 60-80% based on my small sample set.