The Crafting skills lines are getting left behind :(

agegarton

This is a bit of an amalgamation of the many individual posts Have read over the last couple of months, inspired by my own frustration. I have diligently maximised my crafting skill lines over the two+ years I have been playing (and paying). I have researched 9 traits in every possible item, collected almost all recipes in the game, unlocked every passive and achievement. I make it a point of helping guild mates with crafting needs (and no, I don't charge guild mates for services rendered), and I enjoy this side of the game more than grinding out daily dungeons for a new shoulder set! Sadly, the way things are going, all that effort seems to be wasted. Increasingly so.

- Crafted sets have fallen behind dropped sets. The best crafted sets (with the exception of Twice Born Star) need few traits researched, so anyone can do it. They drastically need buffing, and we need jewellery crafting too to keep a bit of balance in the game.
- Hirelings don't bring anything like enough of anything good to be worth the skill point(s). They don't bring gold or rare items, and raw mats deliveries are minuscule, even at the highest point of SP investment. A change is needed here to increase yield for the skill point spend, and to ensure that higher level crafters get the gear they deserve.
- Crafting Writs have become expensive to complete, which is crazy! There is no longer any return on the investment if you're already a master crafter, as you no longer need the Inspiration points. Survey drops have been nerfed to death, so the potential return from the collection of raw mats is also significantly reduced. This has to be fixed - surely?
- The (lack of) availability of lower level mats has caused uproar and rightly so. It'll rebalance the economy the wrong way - lower level builds will (for a very short time) have access to farm the most rare and expensive of materials. How is that right? I'm all for increased higher level yield, but not at the expense of ANY lower level nodes.
- The same is true no matter whether we're talking about arms and armour crafting, or enchanting, provisioning, or alchemy.

Please, Zenimax, if you're reading...... give us Crafters something to be happy about. Fix this stuff! If Undaunted Pledges gave so little back, there'd be outcry. If vMA stopped dropping weapons every time, there'd be riots. If Racial passives suddenly got nerfed to this extent, you'd be inundated with complaints. I appreciate we're a small group, but please make crafting a worthwhile discipline again!!

@ZOS_GinaBruno and @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

(I'm going to email this to Zenimax too).

BomblePants

Yes! Very well put!

STEVIL

Ok for the point by point


- Crafted sets have fallen behind dropped sets.
In general i tend to agree tho its debatable about which and how many are worth it for what purpose etc. basically as you develop a character thru levels, the drop sets are very efficient since you find a new higher level one as you go up. Beats re-crafting. All the drop-sets having jewels is killer.

Suggestion - allow jewel crafting and allow up-leveling of crafted gear at same quality using higher tier mats.

- Hirelings don't bring anything like enough of anything good to be worth the skill point(s).

Hire lings could be better but frankly they dont consume a lot of skills. No strong feelings here but i dont think hirelings is where the fixes will come.

- Crafting Writs have become expensive to complete, which is crazy!

Note that equipment surveys provide twice as much now and when a survey doesn't drop you get a 25pc of lower tier mats.
Still, i can see your point for equipment writs right now.

SUGGESTION: Have each writ ask for one item with one trait and one style but allow extra items if you dont do trait or style to be sufficient. This spreads the loss over the mats of differing types - style token - trait token.


- The (lack of) availability of lower level mats has caused uproar and rightly so. It'll rebalance the economy the wrong way - lower level builds will (for a very short time) have access to farm the most rare and expensive of materials. How is that right? I'm all for increased higher level yield, but not at the expense of ANY lower level nodes.

This is basically wrong. For a few folks - the master crafters, they will have to acquire lower end material;s a different way if those characters themselves want to do it. But this is offset by every other type of character getting more mats of types they can use in any harvesting activity AND in casual harvesting while questing AND in drop-scraps and in gear-drops-decon etc etc etc etc etc etc... the net will be a dramtically reduced need for master top-tier crafters running around looking for kresh... because the characters who can craft up to kresh or the characters who want to wear kresh are able to get it from anywhere and everywhere. The big difference to the economy wont be unavailable mats but drop in demand to buy mats. casuals wont be paying someone to make sets at develop[ing levels AS MUCH when they have current level gear dropping all the time and with weapons and jewels.

SOLUTION-A (?): To make the master crafter's life a little easier, remove the lower end cap on crafting mats, so everywhere everynode can be tier-10 for those masters and they can also use those for any level gear.

SOLUTION-B(?): Ok so because some folks want to have 30 different inventory line items, allow master crafters to set the tier between 1-10 for what they will see in their nodes, drops, etc. that way instead of spending 20mins gathering X ruby ash (and craft to any level gear as in A), they can spend the same time gathering Oak if they want and use it only for oak tier crafting..


- The same is true no matter whether we're talking about arms and armour crafting, or enchanting, provisioning, or alchemy.

Sorry but no not really. Consumables are still, very very very much the "you will want to use the crafted stuff and not the drop-stuff at all" while the lines for equipment are very much less pronounced.

Equip crafting needs some love now that 1t has changed (for the better IMO) so much of the crafting/drop world.

i expect we will see some of it as updates come along.

Gargath

Maybe give 9 traits crafters the unique ability to transform any dropped set for other styles by simply using the style mats. Then 9 traits crafters are needed again.

agegarton

STEVIL wrote: »

Ok for the point by point


- Crafted sets have fallen behind dropped sets.
In general i tend to agree tho its debatable about which and how many are worth it for what purpose etc. basically as you develop a character thru levels, the drop sets are very efficient since you find a new higher level one as you go up. Beats re-crafting. All the drop-sets having jewels is killer.

Suggestion - allow jewel crafting and allow up-leveling of crafted gear at same quality using higher tier mats.

- Hirelings don't bring anything like enough of anything good to be worth the skill point(s).

Hire lings could be better but frankly they dont consume a lot of skills. No strong feelings here but i dont think hirelings is where the fixes will come.

- Crafting Writs have become expensive to complete, which is crazy!

Note that equipment surveys provide twice as much now and when a survey doesn't drop you get a 25pc of lower tier mats.
Still, i can see your point for equipment writs right now.

SUGGESTION: Have each writ ask for one item with one trait and one style but allow extra items if you dont do trait or style to be sufficient. This spreads the loss over the mats of differing types - style token - trait token.


- The (lack of) availability of lower level mats has caused uproar and rightly so. It'll rebalance the economy the wrong way - lower level builds will (for a very short time) have access to farm the most rare and expensive of materials. How is that right? I'm all for increased higher level yield, but not at the expense of ANY lower level nodes.

This is basically wrong. For a few folks - the master crafters, they will have to acquire lower end material;s a different way if those characters themselves want to do it. But this is offset by every other type of character getting more mats of types they can use in any harvesting activity AND in casual harvesting while questing AND in drop-scraps and in gear-drops-decon etc etc etc etc etc etc... the net will be a dramtically reduced need for master top-tier crafters running around looking for kresh... because the characters who can craft up to kresh or the characters who want to wear kresh are able to get it from anywhere and everywhere. The big difference to the economy wont be unavailable mats but drop in demand to buy mats. casuals wont be paying someone to make sets at develop[ing levels AS MUCH when they have current level gear dropping all the time and with weapons and jewels.

SOLUTION-A (?): To make the master crafter's life a little easier, remove the lower end cap on crafting mats, so everywhere everynode can be tier-10 for those masters and they can also use those for any level gear.

SOLUTION-B(?): Ok so because some folks want to have 30 different inventory line items, allow master crafters to set the tier between 1-10 for what they will see in their nodes, drops, etc. that way instead of spending 20mins gathering X ruby ash (and craft to any level gear as in A), they can spend the same time gathering Oak if they want and use it only for oak tier crafting..


- The same is true no matter whether we're talking about arms and armour crafting, or enchanting, provisioning, or alchemy.

Sorry but no not really. Consumables are still, very very very much the "you will want to use the crafted stuff and not the drop-stuff at all" while the lines for equipment are very much less pronounced.

Equip crafting needs some love now that 1t has changed (for the better IMO) so much of the crafting/drop world.

i expect we will see some of it as updates come along.

Appreciate your response - some good points here. I don't agree with your view on Hirelings (3 skill points per hireling, which is 3 per crafting discipline.....) not taking up many skills. Just for the 3 main arms and armour production lines, that's 9 skill points to max out the hireling. Another 9 if you want potions, food and enchanting too. 18 skill point not much....? I don't think so. That's more than an entire weapon line!

Also, your point of survey drop rates and the consequences are already being proved wrong. The price of high level mats is falling like a stone in an empty well, whereas the price of the lower level stuff is gradually on the increase. The mid-level materials are rising fastest, but the others will catch up. I don't trade quite as much these days, but during 2015 I was turning over 6m-7m per week, mostly in crafting materials. I know the market economy of the game. I get that surveys each drop slightly more materials (not that much more - remember that node output was enhanced to balance the reduction in the number of nodes, now capped at 6 per survey), but the nerf on the rate that a player can get a survey more than balances that out. Most higher level crafters did the writs for the surveys - surveys lead to raw mats, which lead to the chance of gold tempers in the refinement process, which are the most tradeable commodity in the game by a huge margin. I do like your suggestions though - frankly anything to get a better return, especially at the level below the top tier, which is technically the lowest point of ROI.

It's a great, great game and I invest a lot of time in it - but I want crafting to get the same love as dungeons, pledges, and all that schizz

Zypheran

I really agree with the OP. All these new sets from 1T have made master crafting rather redundant.
Almost all other skills and abilities can be grinded and fast levelled in days. Even these new sets can be farmed in days. 9 traits across all items takes months and months. ZOS really need to review/tweek the set bonuses for crafted set stations to make them worth the time taken to learn all the traits. Or else give an extra value to master crafting such as style/trait changing in any item where you have 9 traits learned.

STEVIL

agegarton wrote: »

STEVIL wrote: »

Ok for the point by point


- Crafted sets have fallen behind dropped sets.
In general i tend to agree tho its debatable about which and how many are worth it for what purpose etc. basically as you develop a character thru levels, the drop sets are very efficient since you find a new higher level one as you go up. Beats re-crafting. All the drop-sets having jewels is killer.

Suggestion - allow jewel crafting and allow up-leveling of crafted gear at same quality using higher tier mats.

- Hirelings don't bring anything like enough of anything good to be worth the skill point(s).

Hire lings could be better but frankly they dont consume a lot of skills. No strong feelings here but i dont think hirelings is where the fixes will come.

- Crafting Writs have become expensive to complete, which is crazy!

Note that equipment surveys provide twice as much now and when a survey doesn't drop you get a 25pc of lower tier mats.
Still, i can see your point for equipment writs right now.

SUGGESTION: Have each writ ask for one item with one trait and one style but allow extra items if you dont do trait or style to be sufficient. This spreads the loss over the mats of differing types - style token - trait token.


- The (lack of) availability of lower level mats has caused uproar and rightly so. It'll rebalance the economy the wrong way - lower level builds will (for a very short time) have access to farm the most rare and expensive of materials. How is that right? I'm all for increased higher level yield, but not at the expense of ANY lower level nodes.

This is basically wrong. For a few folks - the master crafters, they will have to acquire lower end material;s a different way if those characters themselves want to do it. But this is offset by every other type of character getting more mats of types they can use in any harvesting activity AND in casual harvesting while questing AND in drop-scraps and in gear-drops-decon etc etc etc etc etc etc... the net will be a dramtically reduced need for master top-tier crafters running around looking for kresh... because the characters who can craft up to kresh or the characters who want to wear kresh are able to get it from anywhere and everywhere. The big difference to the economy wont be unavailable mats but drop in demand to buy mats. casuals wont be paying someone to make sets at develop[ing levels AS MUCH when they have current level gear dropping all the time and with weapons and jewels.

SOLUTION-A (?): To make the master crafter's life a little easier, remove the lower end cap on crafting mats, so everywhere everynode can be tier-10 for those masters and they can also use those for any level gear.

SOLUTION-B(?): Ok so because some folks want to have 30 different inventory line items, allow master crafters to set the tier between 1-10 for what they will see in their nodes, drops, etc. that way instead of spending 20mins gathering X ruby ash (and craft to any level gear as in A), they can spend the same time gathering Oak if they want and use it only for oak tier crafting..


- The same is true no matter whether we're talking about arms and armour crafting, or enchanting, provisioning, or alchemy.

Sorry but no not really. Consumables are still, very very very much the "you will want to use the crafted stuff and not the drop-stuff at all" while the lines for equipment are very much less pronounced.

Equip crafting needs some love now that 1t has changed (for the better IMO) so much of the crafting/drop world.

i expect we will see some of it as updates come along.

Appreciate your response - some good points here. I don't agree with your view on Hirelings (3 skill points per hireling, which is 3 per crafting discipline.....) not taking up many skills. Just for the 3 main arms and armour production lines, that's 9 skill points to max out the hireling. Another 9 if you want potions, food and enchanting too. 18 skill point not much....? I don't think so. That's more than an entire weapon line!

Also, your point of survey drop rates and the consequences are already being proved wrong. The price of high level mats is falling like a stone in an empty well, whereas the price of the lower level stuff is gradually on the increase. The mid-level materials are rising fastest, but the others will catch up. I don't trade quite as much these days, but during 2015 I was turning over 6m-7m per week, mostly in crafting materials. I know the market economy of the game. I get that surveys each drop slightly more materials (not that much more - remember that node output was enhanced to balance the reduction in the number of nodes, now capped at 6 per survey), but the nerf on the rate that a player can get a survey more than balances that out. Most higher level crafters did the writs for the surveys - surveys lead to raw mats, which lead to the chance of gold tempers in the refinement process, which are the most tradeable commodity in the game by a huge margin. I do like your suggestions though - frankly anything to get a better return, especially at the level below the top tier, which is technically the lowest point of ROI.

It's a great, great game and I invest a lot of time in it - but I want crafting to get the same love as dungeons, pledges, and all that schizz

Well, in my experience, the equipment writs were mostly for access to the gold tokens, They have never been a major factor in my characters supply of mats at current/needed levels. For a while now they have even been a drain.

The current price impacts in the market are driven by initial perception, not so much results of ongoing casual play and acquisition. One platform has had the changes in place for less than 2 weeks and in those 2 weeks the surge in player activity has been focused more on the current festival event and the set-harvest drive. I have spent some time in these last 11 days on doing some questing as well as some general play thru repeatables and running the festival stuff and right noq questing is down a lot from what i see but thats expected. thats expected with the major new changes and event but nothing about overall impacts on economy are being "proven" right or wrong this early after a big change.

Top-tier dropping in prices - sure - like i said the net impact of the new set scaling, more drop-sets, node scaling will be a vastly reduced demand for purchased mats across the board. That is likely to drop, fluctuate then stay at a lower rate than it was when access to top-tier was limited except thru the stores and before inventories filled with top-tier drops/decon and sets.

For the others, mostly thinking tiers up thru level 49 (market for former known as vet-1 thru vet-8 were already low) it will take time to see the differences make their way thru the market system in a stable way. Right now like any market,, its just reacting to change and uncertainty not to overall effect.

But also just consider - "prices" are not sales. "Average price per sale" is not a measure of "amount sold".

Consider this - lower level builds will (for a very short time) have access to farm the most rare and expensive of materials

I think this is referring to how developing characters as they advance thru 16-49 have access to mats in harvest/drops that will not be available later (as the scaling adjusts the nodes/drops beyond these tiers.)

Absolutely... but the demand-side issue is there too. As the characters advance their need for these mats also goes away.

My level 49 character recently gone to 50 has no demand whatsoever for level 30 mats, level 46 mats or for that matter never ever needed cp-10 thru cp-140.

My level 19 almost 20 has no need for, no demand for, any more jute/maple/iron either.

RoyalPink06

Agree with OP, but just want to point out that hirelings can bring rare items. I've gotten many a kuta, along with few and far between dreugh waxes and tempering alloys It's rare, but it does happen.

agegarton

RoyalPink06 wrote: »

Agree with OP, but just want to point out that hirelings can bring rare items. I've gotten many a kuta, along with few and far between dreugh waxes and tempering alloys It's rare, but it does happen.

That's actually quite interesting - I didn't know they COULD drop gold items. In over two years, I've never had a single one!

Kelces

Zypheran wrote: »

I really agree with the OP. All these new sets from 1T have made master crafting rather redundant.
Almost all other skills and abilities can be grinded and fast levelled in days. Even these new sets can be farmed in days. 9 traits across all items takes months and months. ZOS really need to review/tweek the set bonuses for crafted set stations to make them worth the time taken to learn all the traits. Or else give an extra value to master crafting such as style/trait changing in any item where you have 9 traits learned.

Maybe this is true, but only because people insist on having those new sets like it was some new smartphone. I would definitely welcome some improvement on the crafted sets though.

DPG76

I agree on the part that crafted sets are falling behind , i really hope they introduce a few new sets to craft .
Hirelings are a complete waste of sp , if you have chars just sitting that you don't use anyway then ok but the amount and quality isn't worth 2 or 3 sp

i still do the writs also the clothing one (the one i use most resources from) cause 45 ingots at top level isn't that much after all when i get nearly each day a dreugh wax and usually a glass fragmentation or survey

InvitationNotFound

well, there might be changes to crafting as soon as ZO$ realizes that they won't sell anything in the crown store related to crafting (e.g. motifs, stones...) as these items simply aren't needed (respectively wanted) anymore...

1) Most of the time, you won't want to run around with crafted sets, at least when it's related to end game gear. The sets that might be useful mostly aren't 9 trait items.

For leveling purposes crafted armor should be fine and it was what i was using on 7 or 8 chars so far. but then again, you must likely won't be using 9 trait items and you don't really care about the style (wearing armor only for a short period or you're using some sort of costume (e.g. current event)).

The result is:
a) less crafters are needed and having researched 9 traits is less useful than it was before
b) wasting time / gold / crowns for styles will make less sense. you very likely won't get your investments back

2) Hirelings are a pain. Sometimes they have a gold material, which is nice. But the current concept sucks. The materials you get are a joke if you compare to the amount of mats a cp160 item needs (they've increased the mats required for high end gear but didn't adjust the hireling returns)

The next issue with hirelings are the mails. I don't know how everyone else is handling their mails, but my inbox is almost all the time at it's max capacity. I have 6 crafters (max. clothing, blacksmithy and woodworking) and I don't skill the hirelings as the amount of mails would p*ss me off. This is especially pain full if you don't have a crafting bag (paying customer).

Furthermore, maybe a bit too specific to my current situation, the skill points matter. Collection them on all chars is a pain and not enjoyable at all (btw. working on 3 more crafters, so i guess you get the point).

3) the surveys in their current state are a joke as I've mentioned already in other threads.
After 40-50 writs I've stopped doing them as they resulted in ~1 survey. It doesn't matter if they yield two times more than before. Multiply 0 with 2 is still 0 (yes, sorry for the exaggeration).

4) Lower level mats:
Well, to be honest, I didn't really check all the changes and how they work. It is actually only of interest for new players or if you create a new char.

As I had to craft items for two new chars, which I'm leveling (one at 50 now, the other on 44) during the 100% exp boost (current event), I had to deal with low level mats lately.
For me, it isn't an issue at all, as I have plenty of mats from earlier deconstruction. And to be honest, a new player will do fine with the things he loots / buys.

Some mats now feel a bit useless, as they mostly aren't needed anymore (cp1-cp140 mats) as all of my new chars won't need that equipment.

Anyway, this whole concept how it currently is, feels wrong.



The points 2) and 3) could be easily fixed while 1) is very difficult and 4) might be in a bad shape as well.
1) Is difficult because it means that crafted equipment would have to become better. They would have to introduce better equipment or they would have to nerf the currently available equipment.

The current state is pretty much like "the elder procs online" (a huge pvp f*ck up), so introducing "better" equipment could mess up the state even more.
Nerfing existing equipment will lead to an uproar of players who believe "hey, my armor just killed you!!!" is skill.

Letting people craft jewelry won't fix the issue mentioned above. So I don't think this would be a solution to the current issues crafting is facing (yet, of course I would like seeing crafted jewelry).

Introducing style changes or level upgrades would be nice, but wouldn't solve anything either. Or depends on what you want to achieve with your crafter. Making some profit? You'll likely to have to craft some gear and charge some sort of fee. Or how long to you think it would take to get your investment back on researching 9 traits and all styles (including your own farming time) by simply changing someone's item style?

dodgehopper_ESO

Zypheran wrote: »

I really agree with the OP. All these new sets from 1T have made master crafting rather redundant.
Almost all other skills and abilities can be grinded and fast levelled in days. Even these new sets can be farmed in days. 9 traits across all items takes months and months. ZOS really need to review/tweek the set bonuses for crafted set stations to make them worth the time taken to learn all the traits. Or else give an extra value to master crafting such as style/trait changing in any item where you have 9 traits learned.

Good point. The commonplace nature of sets being dropped as well as jewelry really push out the crafting system. There are a lot of things they could do to make crafting more interesting, including but not limiting things like style changing stones (my idea), ways to socket effects on an armor, jewelry crafting, better sets, etc. There are many ways this has been done in other games, and I'm in agreement that the crafting skills are made less and less interesting. Luckily for me I've always been more into alchemy/provisioning in this game. Motifs are utterly frustrating and If one wishes to craft on multiple characters, extremely expensive.

gard

I'd like to see alchemy get some love.

- ALchemy has no hireling
- I'm new to alchemy writs, but I don't believe I've ever seen an alchemy survey. Mats are devilishly time consuming to attain.

Pretty much in agreement with the op.

STEVIL

gard wrote: »

I'd like to see alchemy get some love.

- ALchemy has no hireling
- I'm new to alchemy writs, but I don't believe I've ever seen an alchemy survey. Mats are devilishly time consuming to attain.

Pretty much in agreement with the op.

i just harvested 13 glenumbra and 8 auridon alchemy surveys.

they exist.

Ashtaris

OP, as others have mentioned, you can get Gold level mats (Tempering Alloys, Dreugh Wax, Kutas) from Hirelings, it just doesn't happen that often, and is a pleasant surprise when it does At one point, Hirelings were the only way to get the gold level mats and they dropped way more often than they do now. But then ZOS decided we needed a Time & Mats sink and created the writ system, nerfing the hirelings considerably. But that's the ony change they made to crafting since the game came out, and that was about a year and a half ago if I remember correctly.

They have mentioned we are going to have furniture crafting once Housing is released, and hopefully that will be a big boon for us crafters. What I would like to see is only those who have earned a certain amount of IP (Inspiration Points) would be allowed to do furniture crafting. So if you have been diligent about becoming a Master Crafter and spent time doing the writs, then you would be allowed furniture crafting. Just like anything else in life, if you want it bad enough, you have to earn it

Jayne_Doe

As far as gear crafting goes, ZOS seems content with just putting out new motifs for us to chase after, and making the styles that were previously only available via dropped sets craftable (so that we can make the few craftable pieces of a build in the same style).

There seems little reward or perk to being a master gear crafter, other than being able to craft a piece in any style (purely cosmetic), trait, set (so few are really good), level. It takes so long to research all 9 traits for everything, and at the end, there are only about 2 or 3 crafted sets that even require 9 traits. There needs to be more reward for the time and effort involved.

I understand that dropped gear sets have to be the best in order to incentivize players to continue to do certain content. But, when dropped gear outclasses anything you can craft, there seems to be little point in having spent all that time and effort. And, forget about actually making decent coin as a master crafter. People seem to frown upon anyone charging for their services, at least if they're making gear for guildmates, and many master crafters seem to pride themselves on not charging people for services rendered. Which really leaves us with selling mats as the only way to make decent money.

And, let's not get started with how many skill points it takes to be a master crafter (including consumable crafting). So much time spent on researching and leveling the crafts to 50, plus all the skillpoints you have to sink into each line just to be able to continue crafting gear at your character's level.

Plus, there's the materials bloat - far too many mats for these crafts (including consumables). Just really a glut of mats that take up too much space. Unless you are an ESO+ member, being a master crafter costs valuable storage space, too.

I've enjoyed getting to the point where I can craft anything, but when I stop and take a look at what I've gotten out of all that time spent, it just doesn't balance out.

The crafted sets need some improvement, and more crafted sets need to be introduced. Materials need to be streamlined. Allow us to change the style of crafted/dropped gear.

disintegr8

I agree with OP in every way, some changes that might reward crafters or make the completing the trait research beneficial would be appreciated. As hirelings can consume 3 skill points per craft I do not agree with STEVIL and think that better return on those skill points can be justified.

I am about 3 days away from starting my last handful of research items to give me all 9 traits in everything. I have known for a while that it is not really that beneficial for me to complete it but I can be stubborn and want to get it done.

There are too many new sets being released at the moment, most of which I think are rubbish. Some, when mixed and matched correctly, will far exceed the benefits of anything I can make or improve.

BruceLeeroy91

While I do agree with the post that crafting sets are falling behind, they are by no means useless. As someone who cares very much about my characters styles all gear must match, that being said I have had no problem running any content including vSO, vDSA, vHRC, and vAA and any dungeon in crafted gear.

Currently I wear three piece agility, five piece hunding (dw bar) five piece clever (bow bar). Unbuffed at 3650 weapon damage, 29k max Stam, 1k stam rec, 62% crit. Buffed (15 sec) 5400 weapon damage, same max, 1.2k rec, and 74% crit, rest of buff (30 seconds) weapon damage drops back to 4300, everything else stays.

This build also relies heavily on end game crafted potions as well, but as I said it has served me well without many problems (I am on console) and I am excited to continue to use my gear in 1T hopefully in Yokudan style!

Vangy

I sympathise with the fact that some of motifs being only crown store exclusive, yes, and that these styles requires mimic stones, yes, hirelings are still mediocre, hey whats new........ but whats the big hoo-ha about crafted items failing?

Tava's still being used by meta tanks. TBS is still awesome. NMG still required by trial groups. Seducer, hundings, kags etc are all useful and still popular. Yeah 80% of crafted sets are useless. Here's a wake up call.... 80% of dropped overland sets are also useless. Just the same as crafted sets. ESO has 80% trash sets (crafted and dropped) that no one in their right minds would go near with even a 100000 km pole. Nothing new here. Nothing being taken away from crafters. People just have more options now. That isnt the same as taking away crafted sets or making them useless. For example, now as a magicka DPS you can go 5 pc TBS (still awesome) or 5 pc julianos (also awesome) or 5 pc Scathing mage (also awesome).

Stopnaggin

All the hoopla is about all the proc sets that are popular now. Yes I can get by with my tbs and nm, but I can't craft anything close to say VO or IA.

PS4_ZeColmeia

Honestly I think its as simple as this:

Jewelry crafting (we agree)

Give 9 Trait crafters the ability to add an additional 5pc bonus to the crafted set or to allow 9 trait crafters to extend the crafted set up to 7pc bonuses (which would then have to make the 6 and 7 pc as good or better than monster helms)

Reorganize the set trait requirements to make 1-5 traits great for leveling, 6-7 traits are niche builds, 8-9 traits are equivalent to the BiS Dungeon gear (I can agree to Trials and Arenas having uniquely powerful gear)

Under crafted sets are redone to remove the redundancies between crafted sets, and to make them worthwhile (best example is Oblivion's foe, really it only affects 1 spell? ::gasp::)

STEVIL

PS4_ZeColmeia wrote: »

Honestly I think its as simple as this:

Jewelry crafting (we agree)

Give 9 Trait crafters the ability to add an additional 5pc bonus to the crafted set or to allow 9 trait crafters to extend the crafted set up to 7pc bonuses (which would then have to make the 6 and 7 pc as good or better than monster helms)

Reorganize the set trait requirements to make 1-5 traits great for leveling, 6-7 traits are niche builds, 8-9 traits are equivalent to the BiS Dungeon gear (I can agree to Trials and Arenas having uniquely powerful gear)

Under crafted sets are redone to remove the redundancies between crafted sets, and to make them worthwhile (best example is Oblivion's foe, really it only affects 1 spell? ::gasp::)

Well vamp lord affects two?

But just to be clear with what you describe... what definition os "simple" are you using?

Hawco10

Simple economics. Yesterday I done my first equipment writ post one tamriel (console) I invested my time, my rubedite, my silk into the writ. I got iron hide and void stone ignots in return. That doesn't make any sense to me. That is a poor return on investment at the least. Therefore, there is zero point in me wasting anymore of my time or materials, until such time as there is a proper return. I hope zos takes note, one doesn't have to be Einstien to realize that the writs in their present form are clearly not working for the player base as a whole.

MakoFore

it d be nice if it got some love the way dungeons and other components have. for example an opportunity to craft or make a weapon or armour set that is unique to writ doers. i know of a few people that do nothing but writs and questing- and theyre gameplay experience is being left behind. it seems if it dosent do dps- developers dont care- but its those components that i think bring the gameplay to life and seperate this game from the pack. i enjoy doing them as well as all the other stuff- but yeah they need some tlc.

for my part- in the past week- I've done enchanter, blacksmith, clothing and wood writs on 2 characters- and though the material return is always crappy- i have received 6 gold (kuta/rosin/etc) items out of 5 days/ 40 writs. its probably my luck for now- at that rate - its worthwhile. but any less and i d have to agree that it would not be worth the investment.

agegarton

Just FYI, I sent the original post to Zenimax support. I didn't get a response - I guess I wasn't really expecting one, but I'll keep pushing this as it's a big part of the game for me.

Ommamar

I agree that crafting needs some love. As to the low level crafting material that is easy to get around you can either start a new build or respec one of your none crafting builds then do the low level writs. The general return is a trait piece, an item usually to sell but sometimes a good decon piece, and a crate of whatever material the writ is that gives you 25 of the material.

Now to changes I would like to see to make a master crafter more relevant: I like the idea of someone who has researched the 9 traits to be able to change the trait of dropped items. With all the complaints I hear in guild and zone about the RNG giving "worthless" traits to a desired items I think this would be a high demand change.

The second Idea would probably never happen due to the set trend that has occurred. But I think it would be so cool if as a master crafter you could select the 2,3,4, and 5 piece effects from the current pool of available effects. I realize it would nullify the whole set deal ZOS has going but would add so much to the theory craft of the game and make a master crafter really meaningful to have achieved.

I agree that hirelings can be disappointing in what they provide they are passive however in addition to whatever else you harvest. The one change I would like is more control so you could indicate to them what you want them to focus on.

jeremiah911

There are a lot of good suggestions in this thread. I do writs on 10 toons everyday and craft my own gear for all my characters so crafting is a large part of the game to me. Overall, I think a few added changes could make crafting really fun.

- Jewelry crafting (with the itemization changes in 1T, crafting has really lost out on flexibility since almost all sets come in weapons and jewelry. This cannot be overlooked because you cant combine two 5 set bonus sets with crafted gear).

- A master crafter should be able to add an additional 5th set bonus for all crafted gear and weapons.

- A master crafter should be able to change the trait of a piece of gear or weapon. After changing the trait, the item becomes BoP.

- Writs should be allowed to be completed using green, blue, or purple improvement items. The higher of the improvement item used, the higher chance at receiving surveys & gold improvement items.

PS4_ZeColmeia

STEVIL wrote: »

PS4_ZeColmeia wrote: »

Honestly I think its as simple as this:

Jewelry crafting (we agree)

Give 9 Trait crafters the ability to add an additional 5pc bonus to the crafted set or to allow 9 trait crafters to extend the crafted set up to 7pc bonuses (which would then have to make the 6 and 7 pc as good or better than monster helms)

Reorganize the set trait requirements to make 1-5 traits great for leveling, 6-7 traits are niche builds, 8-9 traits are equivalent to the BiS Dungeon gear (I can agree to Trials and Arenas having uniquely powerful gear)

Under crafted sets are redone to remove the redundancies between crafted sets, and to make them worthwhile (best example is Oblivion's foe, really it only affects 1 spell? ::gasp::)

Well vamp lord affects two?

But just to be clear with what you describe... what definition os "simple" are you using?

Vamp lord affects all 3 active skills for vampire, but Vampire is a strong skill line (esp bats), soul magic skills are weak as hell. Double a low DPS skill doesn't make it great.

Simple for me is that I think it wouldn't take a great adjustment in core game mechanics.

BrianDavion

one thing they could do to add more craftable sets is reduce doubling, right now there are 3 crafting stations for each craftable set, a relic of pre-1 tam. a relic that could easily be addressed

Mike0987

I dont know... people still seem to buy my crafted gear off the guild traders. Just have to price it were it will sell; I see several other people selling it(or not) for almost twice the price I do and I still make a bit of profit from it. Although it would certainly be nice to have jewelery and a coffer to sell a full set in instead of selling one piece at a time. It takes up 100 of my 150 avaliable items for sale when it could take up 20.