Official Discussion Thread for Misc. System Updates in One Tamriel

L0rd0fAngmar

STEVIL wrote: »

MornaBaine wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

MornaBaine wrote: »

So if resources all now scale how do my max level crafting characters acquire lower level resources???

Lucky crafting writs.

MornaBaine wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

MornaBaine wrote: »

So if resources all now scale how do my max level crafting characters acquire lower level resources???

Lucky crafting writs.

Edit: Ok, needs more. You will get random lower level materials when turning in crafting writs. Crafting is now more of a secondary activity in the game, centered around your personal needs.

SIGH. So this means I have to go back to doing the utterly useless crafting writs, where I'll get an incredibly tiny amount of mats. Great. Just great. This is entirely unacceptable. A lot of my crafting is done specifically to make my guildies things as they are leveling up. Now I won't be able to. Peachy. GG ZOS.

Well, they can do their own farming for materials, and craft their own things, so it all works out in the end. Right? That is the best thing about making crafting personal. No pesky depending on others, messing around selling stuff in the Guild Store or trading between players. Right? No matter where you go, every time you turn around, there is something you either need for your character or need for your crafting leveling.

Which totally screws over those who make their gold by crafting, not just those of us who like to be able to do it just to be nice. Not everyone enjoys crafting and it has always worked out well with the system in place of the mats you need for specific levels being in specific zones. This was really ill-considered.

Yes having most everyone else in the game getting mats they need in nodes and drops and getting sets they can use all scaled etc... that will make it so even casual play types will have much less need to pony up gold to get what they need.

Wiyjout mismatch zone locked rewards shafting others and creating exploitable shortages for the many, how will the few sellers survive?

The argument isn't that its hurting sellers, which it is, but rather its actually going to make low level mats rarer, and thus more expensive. currently if a low level player want to buy some low level mats, they can for a really cheap price. now those mats are going to be so rare that players arent going to want to sell them when they do get them, forcing players who don't enjoy farming to go partake in an activity that they do not enjoy, which ends up hurting the game as a whole.

STEVIL

L0rd0fAngmar wrote: »

STEVIL wrote: »

MornaBaine wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

MornaBaine wrote: »

So if resources all now scale how do my max level crafting characters acquire lower level resources???

Lucky crafting writs.

MornaBaine wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

MornaBaine wrote: »

So if resources all now scale how do my max level crafting characters acquire lower level resources???

Lucky crafting writs.

Edit: Ok, needs more. You will get random lower level materials when turning in crafting writs. Crafting is now more of a secondary activity in the game, centered around your personal needs.

SIGH. So this means I have to go back to doing the utterly useless crafting writs, where I'll get an incredibly tiny amount of mats. Great. Just great. This is entirely unacceptable. A lot of my crafting is done specifically to make my guildies things as they are leveling up. Now I won't be able to. Peachy. GG ZOS.

Well, they can do their own farming for materials, and craft their own things, so it all works out in the end. Right? That is the best thing about making crafting personal. No pesky depending on others, messing around selling stuff in the Guild Store or trading between players. Right? No matter where you go, every time you turn around, there is something you either need for your character or need for your crafting leveling.

Which totally screws over those who make their gold by crafting, not just those of us who like to be able to do it just to be nice. Not everyone enjoys crafting and it has always worked out well with the system in place of the mats you need for specific levels being in specific zones. This was really ill-considered.

Yes having most everyone else in the game getting mats they need in nodes and drops and getting sets they can use all scaled etc... that will make it so even casual play types will have much less need to pony up gold to get what they need.

Wiyjout mismatch zone locked rewards shafting others and creating exploitable shortages for the many, how will the few sellers survive?

The argument isn't that its hurting sellers, which it is, but rather its actually going to make low level mats rarer, and thus more expensive. currently if a low level player want to buy some low level mats, they can for a really cheap price. now those mats are going to be so rare that players arent going to want to sell them when they do get them, forcing players who don't enjoy farming to go partake in an activity that they do not enjoy, which ends up hurting the game as a whole.

Ok so...

Just a couple points of logic...

the demand is driven by the number of characters at a given level being played that dont harvest sufficient mats to provide for their needs - which pretty much means dont harvest at all or very irregularly in casual play.

So as for the demand...

Sets will drop scaled all over the place at the character's level, regardless of where they are. So the supply of sets available will go up and more important always be the best the character can use.
Dropped hides will be split between the characters max he can currently wear and the max he can currently craft. So the dropped mats will fit his needs OR will be of lower level that he can craft. (source of lower level into the market is every single non-crafter-at-max.)
Nodes will harvest at half at max the character can wear currently and half at the level he can craft currently (again for all non-maxed this will typically be a source of lower level for every non-max crafter - flow into the market.)

So, lower level mats will not be "rare" relative to the number of characters playing that need that level of gear - the two are actually linked. Especially not the initial iron-jute-maple since every non-crafter will stub their toes on those all day long.

Add in that those characters will also be finding set pieces that scale to their level when found, making it rather simple to have set pieces cover you as you advance through the low levels... less demand... more surplus mats in many hands - more sold...

In the current system where many characters are running content in zomes where the mats and set drops and non-set drops for deconn are useless to them because the character level and content/node levels dont sync, shortages are to be expected.

in the new system, that will change and the demand will go down and the supply will be synced to the number of characters actually being played at any given level.

ONLY if you think the flow of mats into the game by high end craters harvesting lower tier mats is vastly higher than the amount of useful sets dropping at character applicable levels, plus the mats harvested at useful levels by everyone else and the non-sets drops deconned by everyone else at appropriate levels... only if that was all true would this upcoming change produce rarity between mats and demand.

Elsonso

STEVIL wrote: »

in the new system, that will change and the demand will go down and the supply will be synced to the number of characters actually being played at any given level.

This is why I feel that One Tamriel makes crafting more personal, and therefore secondary as a focus of the game, compared to where it is today.

By making it more personal, by making it easy for the player to get what they need, they reduce a social aspect of the game that has existed since launch, enhanced by guild stores, and further enhanced by guild traders. That is namely that people collect and sell, or trade, materials that they don't need in exchange for materials, or gold, that they do need. This is the essence of a multiplayer economy. Until One Tamriel, it has pretty much been on the incline, so it is disturbing to see it suddenly take a dip.

I know why they are doing this, and I don't agree. I really don't see the need to narrow the multiplayer scope of the game at this point in the game's development being greater than the need to build up single player crafting in order to boost adoption of crafting. This is something that is done in a single player game because there are no other players around.

I like the solo aspects of the game, but I play ESO because of the multiplayer aspects of the game. I think ZOS is spending too much time moving social stuff from Multiplayer to Solo.

Ironically, the way that Skyrim provides crafting materials to the player is more appropriate to a multiplayer game, while the way that ESO provides materials is more appropriate to a single player game. My thinking is that the development teams need to swap products.

I also want to point out that this is a creative direction change on the part of the studio. I'd like to know if this is @ZOS_RichLambert or whether there is something else going on. They are problem solving based on what they see in business analytics numbers, if I had to guess, and are willing to reduce the multiplayer social interactions in the game in order to facilitate better numbers. This was the reason behind the runestone changes a couple updates ago. Crafting resources is not the only place that they are doing this. They are also doing this with BoP sets, and adding in PVE (ie ZOS controlled) value to BoP sets just emphasizes the new drift away from a multiplayer economy.

To me, this stuff is 10x worse than Crafting Crates, as it directly impacts the multiplayer economy of the game. As much as I don't want Crafting Crates, they would never drive me from the game. My gut tells me that they are not done. The ZOS vision for the game is changing, across widely different aspects of the game.

STEVIL

@lordrichter

To me there is nothing social at all about buying mats from guild vendors.
The social aspect was finding a crafter.

Characters having the mats needed and having the skill to craft them is not being changed. The ones who want to do it will, the others wont.

It's not any more social to negotiate for crafting than it is to negotiate for crafting and mats.

Now depending on how it plays out the drop sets scaling may be a huge blow to crating overall. Why spend my own mats and quality stones on gear if it can't scale? In 5 levels the drops surpass it and start already at green or blue. Anything I craft starts at white.

It feels to me like I personally will see myself shifting from one crafted set and one drop set to 2 drop sets over time and especially during l1-50.

But again that is not social necessarily.

Elsonso

STEVIL wrote: »

@lordrichter

To me there is nothing social at all about buying mats from guild vendors.
The social aspect was finding a crafter.

Characters having the mats needed and having the skill to craft them is not being changed. The ones who want to do it will, the others wont.

It's not any more social to negotiate for crafting than it is to negotiate for crafting and mats.

Now depending on how it plays out the drop sets scaling may be a huge blow to crating overall. Why spend my own mats and quality stones on gear if it can't scale? In 5 levels the drops surpass it and start already at green or blue. Anything I craft starts at white.

It feels to me like I personally will see myself shifting from one crafted set and one drop set to 2 drop sets over time and especially during l1-50.

But again that is not social necessarily.

We have to respectfully disagree.

The players are what make ESO feel alive. The ESO economy is social because players know that there is another player behind those items. Single player RPG game economies do not feel alive because the NPC shopkeepers are not. Anyone can just buy and sell from a robot NPC with a pre-programmed stock where the gold simply vanishes after the transaction. Only a multiplayer game can exchange goods and services between players and have value pass between players, and that is part of a social interaction.

Skyrim becomes a boring and lonely game when played out of the box. Oblivion is the same. I know. I have hundreds of hours in both. There is a reason why people go to great lengths to create life-like companions for these games. Of all of the Elder Scrolls games, only ESO has the means to break out of that and be something that none of the other Elder Scrolls games can be. ESO is a socially interesting game played with multiple players. It scales from single player all the way up to massive groups, and at all times we are participating in a game world that is alive with other players. This, more than Elder Scrolls, is why I am here. It was why I jumped from another MMO to this one back in 2014.

But, I am getting off topic. By scaling resource nodes to the player, by making certain sets BoP and then offering large NPC rewards for selling them, by having NPCs get further into the economy, ZOS is taking away from the game. They remove things of value that exist in the game prior to the updates.

I don't agree with the direction ZOS is going, but ZOS thinks this is more valuable, so you can rest easy knowing that your perspective is well represented by the creative minds behind ESO.

STEVIL

@lordrichter
Re this
The players are what make ESO feel alive. The ESO economy is social because players know that there is another player behind those items. Single player RPG game economies do not feel alive because the NPC shopkeepers are not.

We will indeed have to respectfully disagree on this.

I can absolutely say that i have never once had the thought "w that there is another player behind those items" occur to me in eso or any other game while vending. I can also say nobody i game with has ever shared this viewpoint with me in our various discussions about eso, social gaming, economy etc..

It DOES come into play when i am crafting for folks. I and others have discussed how new friends have come out of that snd that the ESO crafting works to make that happen.

I believe the trend away wont come from mats or nodes but that dropped sets will become the go to gear, esp when levelling.

But there are lots of ways they can address that as we go forward.

Elsonso

STEVIL wrote: »

dropped sets will become the go to gear, esp when levelling.

Agree with this statement as a projected direction that the game is going. This would definitely fit into the mindset that I see with the studio. This reflects more of a single-player PVE focus, rather than a multi-player focus, even if the player has to do it as part of a group. The grouping is just a side effect of the single player needing to get the desired personal gear that they can get from no other source.

STEVIL wrote: »

I can absolutely say that i have never once had the thought "w that there is another player behind those items" occur to me in eso or any other game while vending. I can also say nobody i game with has ever shared this viewpoint with me in our various discussions about eso, social gaming, economy etc..

The thing about social interactions is that they happen whether intended, or unintended, deliberate or incidental. You do not have to think about the ESO economy being a social activity, but it is one.

Xvorg

STEVIL

lordrichter wrote: »

STEVIL wrote: »

dropped sets will become the go to gear, esp when levelling.

Agree with this statement as a projected direction that the game is going. This would definitely fit into the mindset that I see with the studio. This reflects more of a single-player PVE focus, rather than a multi-player focus, even if the player has to do it as part of a group. The grouping is just a side effect of the single player needing to get the desired personal gear that they can get from no other source.

STEVIL wrote: »

I can absolutely say that i have never once had the thought "w that there is another player behind those items" occur to me in eso or any other game while vending. I can also say nobody i game with has ever shared this viewpoint with me in our various discussions about eso, social gaming, economy etc..

The thing about social interactions is that they happen whether intended, or unintended, deliberate or incidental. You do not have to think about the ESO economy being a social activity, but it is one.

About the bold but really for me - in order for something to be considered a social activity - i have to actually interact with someone - either online or in person.

When i order a product from amazon and it shows up on my doorstep 2 days later, its not a social activity, even though someone delivered it to my door that i never saw, even though someone prepared that package to ship.

When i order and stream Money monster from Google play and watch it, i don't feel i have had social interaction with Julia Roberts... even though... well never mind that... you get the point.

But again, we have to disagree on this aspect even where we agree on the other.

my intention is to push for more equipment crafting options as we go forward to help keep crafting an integral part of play for more than just the consumables.