The Stupendous Grind(s) of Housing

Panda_iMunch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZBZDa24t7M

Summary

When it comes to the Homestead update, ZoS did a lot of things right and the generally listened to the community very well. However, the way that housing and its various items were placed or implemented into the game are either terrible or just plain pointless.

When broken down into its simplest, this update introduced 3 (up to 4) grinds for the player to slug through to get their houses all jazzed up with the finer things in life.
These grinds are as follow:

• The blueprint grind
• The resource grind
• The master writ grind
• The possible alt. character grind

Blueprint Grind

This can be treated as a motif grind or a recipe grind. You run around a town on various characters searching through boxes and nightstands for ages. What makes this an especially heinous grind is that fact there is no discrimination in the loot table. I can go to a Nord town in Eastmarch and find Brenton, Redguard, or other races other than Nords.

This leads me to believe that the blueprint loot table contains every single race. This is somewhat good for easy to getting stuff you want in other areas, but for most who will need to grind out the blueprints to actually get anything they want, this is a hell of a grind. Instead of making blueprint region based, we get just a giant loot table where the roll of the dice determines whether or not you make progress every drop.

You want a Nord themed house with Brenton decorations? Better hope you don't get a million Bosmer vases instead.

Resource Grind

Why?

And why is the drop rate so freaking low? Not only do I have to compete with the people around me to I can pick enough flower for my candles, but there is a huge chance I will get nothing after many harvests. After chopping about 100 wood, I would at least like to have enough "special wood" to make a bench to sit on, but that is very unlikely to happen.

This low drop rate would have not been as bad as it is if there was multiple sources of this needless new resource. Only nodes drop this new mat and I have no idea why. Maybe it was to prevent people from getting all the good early, maybe ZoS wanted to keep progression low, maybe the loot tables were not properly adjusted. Either way ZoS can spin this, the outcome is that the player now has to trudge around the world again for special drops while there bag are bursting at the seems with surveys and stockpiles of unrefined wood, cloth, leather, and metal they have no use for.

It's like ZoS gave the community a pool to fill (after you grind all the blueprints, which good f**king luck with that) and only an eye dropper to fill it with.

Master Writ Grind & Alts

After getting your glass pages and ambrosia recipes, players are now greeted to surveys once again. Now with RNG(tm) and a ceiling 10 stories high.

While I don't mind doing surveys here and there, it now has an element of RNG that is heavily dictated by crafting knowledge. Well that can be fine as long as drop rates are fairly good, but this is ZoS and we all know the drop rates are never good.

In essence, this is a sandwiching of two separate issues into master writs. You now have to battle the roll of the dice once a day on your main crafter as well as gut your alts of skills so that you can make them crafters capable of actually participating in this grind. And this is also compounded by the issue of whether or not the writs or Legendary or Epic, which is a difference in reward up to 10x.

So now the player has to grind up skill points on various other characters as well as get them a crap ton of traits, motifs, recipes, etc. on top of just trying to even get the quests in the first place. Not to mention that these quests are the most expensive quests to finish in the game.

This is just a brief summary, so watch the whole video if you want my entire opinion on the matter. Thanks for reading and/or watching!

Recremen

Incidentally, anecdotal reporting indicates that you don't even need to bother with traits/motifs because it doesn't make a significant enough difference. You can just do the top-end crafting writs on mostly-untrained alts and have a better chance overall than on your master crafter, for whom the writs are allegedly made.

Panda_iMunch

Recremen wrote: »

Incidentally, anecdotal reporting indicates that you don't even need to bother with traits/motifs because it doesn't make a significant enough difference. You can just do the top-end crafting writs on mostly-untrained alts and have a better chance overall than on your master crafter, for whom the writs are allegedly made.

Seems to be that way. Either way, after 3 days of and 9 characters, I only got 3 writs. At this rate, my home will be a extension of my garden as plants are the only thing I can buy lol

S1ipperyJim

Recremen wrote: »

Incidentally, anecdotal reporting indicates that you don't even need to bother with traits/motifs because it doesn't make a significant enough difference. You can just do the top-end crafting writs on mostly-untrained alts and have a better chance overall than on your master crafter, for whom the writs are allegedly made.

I'm sure ZOS didn't want all those precious new player casuals from missing out on the master writs if they were restricted to all those players who literally spent (in my case) 3 years maxing out all traits and buying and farming rare motifs

VerboseQuips

Recremen wrote: »

Incidentally, anecdotal reporting indicates that you don't even need to bother with traits/motifs because it doesn't make a significant enough difference. You can just do the top-end crafting writs on mostly-untrained alts and have a better chance overall than on your master crafter, for whom the writs are allegedly made.

Exactly this!

Since the announcement, I spent an enormous ammount of time, effort and gold getting all the crafting achievements, all the traits, all the motifs, and trying to get all the recipes (I am still missing two purple ones, and of course, the Mythic Aetherial Ambrosia) only to discover that it doesn't make any significative difference in terms of drop rate. All this effort to discover that I probably have a slower master writ progression than someone who'd just have power-leveled his tradeskills to 50 on some alts during an xp-boost event, without investing so much on motif learning.

If I hadn't spent so much on motifs and recipes, I'd have a large house already. Now I still can't buy a good house, and I feel my effort was wasted. I feel punished. The Master writs are a real, deep disappointment to me.

Artemiisia

think I already learned over 30+ on my main, so im totally happy about the "grind", I dont really think of it like that.

I love stealing, and doing it on two chars, thats 260 items to steal every day, with lots of opportunities to get stuff for your house, while leveling legerman, getting achievements, having fun.

Once one of the chars is fully maxed, I just pick another char to steal with maybe

the writs take like less then 10 mins to do, at least if you are +eso member, with crafting bag

akl77

Yea, the good items drop rates sets at 1%, honestly I'd rather spent the time discovering other amazing games and levelling their characters then letting ZOS bait me to spent the time for vapour.

Malamar1229

is there a first time home buyer incentive?

Recremen

S1ipperyJim wrote: »

Recremen wrote: »

Incidentally, anecdotal reporting indicates that you don't even need to bother with traits/motifs because it doesn't make a significant enough difference. You can just do the top-end crafting writs on mostly-untrained alts and have a better chance overall than on your master crafter, for whom the writs are allegedly made.

I'm sure ZOS didn't want all those precious new player casuals from missing out on the master writs if they were restricted to all those players who literally spent (in my case) 3 years maxing out all traits and buying and farming rare motifs

The thing is they can be included and still favor people who actually took the time to become master crafters by just increasing the chances per trait researched and motif known to a larger degree. It's only been 3 days so we'll see how it evens out, but it seems everyone has the same terrible chance to get one +/- 1%.

zaria

Artemiisia wrote: »

think I already learned over 30+ on my main, so im totally happy about the "grind", I dont really think of it like that.

I love stealing, and doing it on two chars, thats 260 items to steal every day, with lots of opportunities to get stuff for your house, while leveling legerman, getting achievements, having fun.

Once one of the chars is fully maxed, I just pick another char to steal with maybe

the writs take like less then 10 mins to do, at least if you are +eso member, with crafting bag

This I do other quests, yes I harvest more nodes now, I will also deconstruct green gear again rater than selling to merchant as all designs uses lots of tempers.
Has not looked at the crafting writs yet . My main plan is to add outside furniture and decorations.

chaserstorm16909

You are right about the point of the grind. It is to make the crown store more appealing. That's why they won't reduce the grind any time soon.

Panda_iMunch

Recremen wrote: »

S1ipperyJim wrote: »

Recremen wrote: »

Incidentally, anecdotal reporting indicates that you don't even need to bother with traits/motifs because it doesn't make a significant enough difference. You can just do the top-end crafting writs on mostly-untrained alts and have a better chance overall than on your master crafter, for whom the writs are allegedly made.

I'm sure ZOS didn't want all those precious new player casuals from missing out on the master writs if they were restricted to all those players who literally spent (in my case) 3 years maxing out all traits and buying and farming rare motifs

The thing is they can be included and still favor people who actually took the time to become master crafters by just increasing the chances per trait researched and motif known to a larger degree. It's only been 3 days so we'll see how it evens out, but it seems everyone has the same terrible chance to get one +/- 1%.

To be fair, it doesn't even seem as if the master writ favor anyone. Sure my main crafter has had all the writs, but even in the three days homestead has been out, he has had dry days. Considering how low the drops are, it could easily be just a flip of the coin.