Motif drop rate

timb16_ESO85

Anyone else feeling like the motif drop rates are extremely low. Take clockwork city, I have completed 16 daily quests (a mix of apostle and ebonshadow boxes) and only obtained a single motif (6.25% drop rate, but much too small sample to be certain).

To show this is really low, take the following example drop rates and days required to collect the full motif:
100% drop rate: min 7 days, 50% of people after at most 21 days, 90% of people after 34 days
50% drop rate: min 7 days, 50% of people after at most 38 days, 90% of people after 68 days
25% drop rate: min 7 days, 50% of people after at most 107 days, 90% of people after 122 days
10% drop rate: min 7 days, 50% of people after at most 229 days, 90% of people after 308 days
5% drop rate: min 7 days, 50% of people after at most 356 days, 90% of people after 714 days
(obtained by simulating 1000000 people doing both daily quests)

This means that with a 10% drop rate, it will take, on average, more than half a year of doing both daily quests to obtain the 14 motif pages required on your own (time can be shorter when using multiple alts, by trading double motifs with others and can be a single day by just throwing gold at other people).

With this I don't mean that the drop rate should be close to 100%, this would definitely oversaturate the guild traders (like the mercenary motif). However, the current drop rate is beyond low for a reward that has a chance to drop only twice a day, and is only cosmetic. (not even beginning about the bouyant armiger motif, which after about half a year still sells for 100k+ per chapter)

In short, ZOS please increase the insanely low drop rates for cosmetic stuff (motifs and furniture blueprints)

CaffeinatedMayhem

Well, increasing the drop rate means ZOS can't "force" us to pay them more money. Because subbing isn't enough anymore.

davey1107

One theory my friends and I have, having played and farmed motifs and rare items since release, is that the system not only has an RNG for a specific item, but also a “gatekeeping” algorithm that prevents the items from flooding the market.

What this would mean is that say 100 people in a day are farming those motifs. Maybe the computer has an rng that offers motifs 5% of the time, so that day 5 are rewarded. But say the game gets busy and now 1000 people run those quests...the ga,e doesn’t want to flood the market with motifs, so it drops the rate to 2%. That day 20 motifs are given out, so more overall, but a far less chance of any one player getting one.

This is hard to prove, but seems consistent with how items drop. In general, when they’re brand new and everyone is scrambling for them the drop rates are awful.

redspecter23

I've found the drop rate in CWC to be about 50% with around 30 dailies done so far. Still a small sample size though. I think that you're forgetting that none of these motifs are bound. You can farm a few if you want and simply buy the remainder or trade duplicates with friends or guildies. If you feel like you need to farm the whole set yourself, that's up to you, but you're making it harder that way.

I will agree that Buoyant Armiger is on the extreme end of the rarity spectrum and could probably drop a bit more than it does currently. I do not believe that the CWC motifs are in the same category as they have already dropped to 15k or less each within the first week.

Feric51

davey1107 wrote: »

One theory my friends and I have, having played and farmed motifs and rare items since release, is that the system not only has an RNG for a specific item, but also a “gatekeeping” algorithm that prevents the items from flooding the market.

What this would mean is that say 100 people in a day are farming those motifs. Maybe the computer has an rng that offers motifs 5% of the time, so that day 5 are rewarded. But say the game gets busy and now 1000 people run those quests...the ga,e doesn’t want to flood the market with motifs, so it drops the rate to 2%. That day 20 motifs are given out, so more overall, but a far less chance of any one player getting one.

This is hard to prove, but seems consistent with how items drop. In general, when they’re brand new and everyone is scrambling for them the drop rates are awful.

I would tend to agree with this theory, or something very similar.

I was considering something along the lines of the dwarven motif cooldown that is character based, but spread on a game-wide scale. For example: According to all reports I've read on these forums, if you find a dwarven motif chapter in a dwarven delve container, you have a 45-60 minute cooldown before you can possibly find one again regardless of how many containers you open.

I often wonder if something similar to that is going on across the landscape, with a server-based cooldown for the really rare motifs like buoyant armiger. Player 'X' finds a BA motif chapter in a Vvardenfell master chest. Now there is a 45 minute cooldown until the next motif chapter will populate anywhere on the entire server. Sounds kinda extreme, but based on the lack of anyone finding many of the super-rare motifs, recipes, patterns, etc. Suddenly something like this sounds a bit more plausible.

Wreuntzylla

davey1107 wrote: »

One theory my friends and I have, having played and farmed motifs and rare items since release, is that the system not only has an RNG for a specific item, but also a “gatekeeping” algorithm that prevents the items from flooding the market.

What this would mean is that say 100 people in a day are farming those motifs. Maybe the computer has an rng that offers motifs 5% of the time, so that day 5 are rewarded. But say the game gets busy and now 1000 people run those quests...the ga,e doesn’t want to flood the market with motifs, so it drops the rate to 2%. That day 20 motifs are given out, so more overall, but a far less chance of any one player getting one.

This is hard to prove, but seems consistent with how items drop. In general, when they’re brand new and everyone is scrambling for them the drop rates are awful.

I started to suspect the same for nirncrux in Craglorn and started collecting data. I don't have access to the data right now, but the result was an account based limit. On average, 2-3 nirncrux can be collected in the first hour or so, and then nothing for several hours.

Interestingly, I have started to collect data on master writs with high voucher values. I have multiple accounts with 6+ 9/9 crafters and anecdotally, after certain patches, 4-5 master writs will drop per account, usually on the same day as the patch, and then literally nothing until the next one.

It seems like a penalty for participating in the system at more than a casual level.

Edit: 4-5 high voucher value master writs, defined as more than 7 vouchers (usually something between 18 and 100 vouchers). I haven't seen a single master writ worth more than roughly a hundred since they changed the system to increase the number of low voucher master writs. Also anecdotal, but I typically save my master writs until I have 50-100.

Tai-Chi

I have been doing the 4 Daily Quests in CwC for 4 days - only on one Char.

So far I have received:-

4 Apostle motifs, one is a duplicate.
1 Ebonshadow motif.

So long as the same drop-rate continues, I do not think that is too bad for rare motifs.

I have found at least one purple (possibly two) furnishing patterns, a couple of blue ones and a few green. I gave up on tracking furnishing patterns a long time ago!

I have not done any of the Group Dungeons yet or Trials.

vovus69

CWC is ok. Prices are already going down a lot. You can buy any motif (but probably chest and weapons) at 30k or less if you will shop around. Wait for a month and they will be like celestial or Ra Gada.

-vovus

timb16_ESO85

davey1107 wrote: »

One theory my friends and I have, having played and farmed motifs and rare items since release, is that the system not only has an RNG for a specific item, but also a “gatekeeping” algorithm that prevents the items from flooding the market.

What this would mean is that say 100 people in a day are farming those motifs. Maybe the computer has an rng that offers motifs 5% of the time, so that day 5 are rewarded. But say the game gets busy and now 1000 people run those quests...the ga,e doesn’t want to flood the market with motifs, so it drops the rate to 2%. That day 20 motifs are given out, so more overall, but a far less chance of any one player getting one.

This is hard to prove, but seems consistent with how items drop. In general, when they’re brand new and everyone is scrambling for them the drop rates are awful.

I only play during evenings/weekends, and after having completed 40+ daily clockwork quests, and only obtaining 3 motifs (3x apostle, no ebonshadow) this seems to become more likely. Considering this is <10%, and others here have reported as high drop rates as 50%, the chances of this being pure bad luck are quite small (also noticed extremely low drop rates for other daily quests). Either this, or something like what happened in guild wars many years ago, where some accounts were just created unlucky (due to them being assign a rng seed on creation) and others lucky and created huge differences in drop rate

Cpt_Teemo

Try farming BA and get back

PhxOldGamer68

I didn't know it was possible, but I found the Imperial exotic motif while playing on PS4 EU on a level 28 toon. I have 8 toons on PS4 NA at level 50 CP660+ and have not found Imperial motif since launch. I've purchased all legendary purple motifs.