ESO Looting System: A HUMONGOUS WASTE OF TIME AND EFFORTS thanks to RNG god, but is still savable.

Pr0Skygon

Let's cut to the chase: grinding for a Sharpened Maelstrom Battle Axe isn't fun. It might be fun if you get it in your first 30-ish runs, but when you have passed that point, you'll know how depressing that feeling is - the feeling of time dripping away meaninglessly.

Sadly, that feeling has struck me for countless times. I'm grinding the hell out of Darkshade Cavern for a Divine Netch Touch chest, grinding the heck out of Fungal Grotto for a Greatsword of Viper (please don't judge me). And after hundreds of grinding trips (yes I said it, hundreds), I've just realized: Why am I even doing this. Am I enjoying this? No. Do I feel like this is a waste of time? Yes. Why? Because with those time, I can do so many things in and out of ESO. I can spend more time on my job, my college, my family, my friends, my guildmates on ESO. Heck, I can even have tons of fun playing Overwatch with my brother.

I know what you're thinking: If you hate grinding so much, why don't you just stop, or even better, why don't you just go back and play Overwatch. My answer to that is easy: I love ESO. I really do. ESO is like a 2nd life I'd never have in real life. I thank you ZOS for bringing me this game. And because of my passion for the game, I'm still playing the game, despite knowing many flaws in the system. But even that can't stop me from looking away from a major disappointment: The loot system is so time consuming and unfriendly.

Here's the question: Why do we grind in ESO, or in any other MMO? Simple, because we want more, we want to become better, stronger, cooler, more useful to our friends on ESO and feels good about ourselves. I can obviously use Julianos for my MagSorc, but by that, my dps can't go any further than 30K. I want more, and so Netch Touch is my answer. Sadly as I said earlier, it seems to be impossible for me to get it anytime soon.

So instead of giving up and surrendering to the RNG god, I decided to come here and make a thread (cause why not). With this thread, I would love to give some ideas of mine of how to improve the loot system, making it more tolerable and friendly for every players.

It's quite simple actually, I'll add a new perk in Blacksmithing, Clothing and Woodworking, and the most important: a special guildhall for the Undaunted guild in every major cities (Elden Root, Wayrest and Mournhold). In that guildhall, there'll be 3 special crafting station (Blacksmithing, Clothing, Woodworking) and a unique deconstruct station. Here's how things work:
- The new skill perk for Blacksmithing, Clothing and Woodworking can be obtain at level 50 of each perspective crafting division. This new skill perk will allow players to use the unique deconstruct station in The Undaunted's guildhall.
- The unique deconstruct station: This station will only work if you put in 5 piece of armor and/or weapon with the same set of item (for exp: 4 armor pieces and a 1H sword of Spriggan). Once you put these 5 ingredients in, they'll be deconstructed into a shard of it own set (for exp: a Spriggan shard, a Twice Fang Serpent shard). These shards are bound on pick up.
- The special crafting stations: These station will allow you to make a specific item with the piece, style, trait and set of your choice, depends on the shard that you put in (for exp: with this system, I can make a Divine Dro m'athra Netch Touch robe with 150 ancestor silk, 1 sapphire, 1 Defiled Whiskers and 1 Netch Touch shard comes from the unique deconstruct station).

I seriously surprise of ZOS for not thinking of a similar system yet (maybe they have, idk). With this system, players can avoid the crushing experience from RNG god, without sacrificing the fact that players will still need complete the required content of the game to obtain certain sets of items. Also, this system'll show how important it is to leveling up your crafting division, give player the freedom in creating their own weapons and armor, without sacrificing the balance price of guildstores (it will changes, but minor).

Of course, this is not the only way to improve the grinding experiences (yes, you'll still have to grind even if a similar system like this exist), since the chance of ZOS actually reading or even considering about this is even smaller than your local restaurant special order, but hey, if there's even a chance like 0.0000001%, I'll still take it, because I'm sick of grinding in ESO (joke aside, I'll probably go back to grinding tomorrow anyway).

"But that's the point of grinding, the feeling of achieving something from RNG god is the reason why people plays MMORPG". If you say this in 2005 when WOW is the hottest thing online, I might agree to that. But this is 2017, where tons of MMORPG, and also the whole gaming industry has evolved. At the time right now, FUN, EASY TO PICK UP, HARD TO MASTER IN A FAIR AND BALANCE ENVIRONMENT is what driving the industry forward. Is ESO fun? Hell yeah. Is it balance? Not really. Is it hard to master? Sure is. But is it easy to pick up? NO!

And as I said before, there're many flaws in ESO (no jewelry crafting, the combat animation sucks compares to newer MMORPG, most skill looks bland as hell, the meta is often crap, most traits are useless, balancing in PvP, where the hell is our spell crafting?....), but I'll talk about those topic another day, because this problem, the soul crushing time wasting grinding experience is just unhealthy for both the game and players themselves. This system has been driven many end game players away from ESO, most recently is Deltia (the Youtuber). I might disagree with him about his build videos, but I'll always agree with him on 1 thing: grinding sets just to make a god damn video isn't fun at all. So, any suggestion or ideas from you guys from the forum?

And my message to ZOS: What now?

Lexifer452

I like the idea you have about dropped set shards and being able to craft your own dropped set weapons and armor. I doubt we'll ever see anything like it but its certainly a good idea that wouldn't make it too easy, you know?

O doubt we'll ever see a vet maelstrom token system either but I'm still holding out hope on that one. Mainly because its mentioned so often on these forums and elsewhere and the devs have had to at least see that idea by now. Here's hoping they are considering it.

Jingleclaw

this is actually a good idea, this way crafter might have something to do

WacArnold

Would be nice for something like that. I have been looking for months for a sharp rattle destro staff, and its a horrible experience. I often wonder how many sets do not get used in this game because of the weapons needed. Gear is not so bad, but weapons are terrible to get I would gladly trade in a full set of crap trait armor and weapons to make a sharp staff.

Drummerx04

It's an interesting idea, but as you've presented it, it would pretty much remove the grind entirely (how long does it take to get 5 trash drops from a specific set?)... which I guess isn't really a bad thing beyond then relying on the actual CONTENT to keep our attention which honestly isn't that extensive.

AlchemistRa1n

I read the first two paragraphs, and it really sounds like you would enjoy FFXIV. You grind tokens and then just get the gear you want with them. I don't mind the RNG ESO though, because gear is changed out so fast in this game that I usually don't wear the same pieces more than a few hours to a day.

ZOS_Ragnar

We have closed this thread as it is a duplicate post, if you would like to continue the discussion you can do so on this thread