Writ Improvements

Reorx_Holybeard

A bunch of ideas/suggestions on improving writs and master writs. First of all a *big* thanks to permitting writs to be handed in anywhere!

• Provisioning Recipes -- I have 14 crafters but on 12 of them I have chosen to do non-max level Provisioning writs in order to get access to all the non-max level recipes. My main is still missing 1 purple recipe I can't find anywhere. Could recipe rewards include all recipes from level 1 to the Provisioning writ level was? This way we could do max level writs and have a chance at both master writs and all recipes. I feel that I am penalized as a max crafter by having to choose to do non-max level writs.
• Master Writ Styles -- The style for a master writ should have some effect on the writ value. It seem absurd that a master writ for a Buoyant Armiger (+200k * 14) is worth the same as a base race (free). I don't know how the writ reward calculation is done but in order to prevent reward from being too high you could have a cap on rewards (say 350 vouchers). This would also help create more variety in writ reward values (see below).
• Stacking Master Writs -- Is there any reason master writs don't stack? Lore-wise they are just pieces of paper and should stack like surveys. Technically wise there is no obvious reason identical writs shouldn't stack. This is slightly useful for alchemy and enchanting writs where duplicates are reasonably common if you hoard them for a while.
• Accept Multiple Master Writs -- It would be really handy to be able to activate and accept more than one type of Master Writ quest at the same time. On PC there are add-ons to help solve this problem but it would be nicer to have the feature built into the game. Unsure if this is a design choice or technical limitation.
• Master Writ Reward Variety -- I'd like to see more variety in the reward values of master writs. For Clothier/Blacksmithing/Woodworking variety could be increased by having the writ style influence the reward by some amount as previously mentioned. I'd also like to see more variety in Enchanting/Alchemy/Provisioning master writs. Perhaps make the quantity required for the writ variable and have the reward to match (i.e., some Alchemy writs might require 20 potions, others require 100 potions, etc...). Provisioning writs could vary on the quantity and the recipe quality (ex: green = 2 vouchers, blue=4 vouchers, purple=6 vouchers, gold=8 vouchers).
• Poison Quantity for Master Writs -- Would be nice for the desired poison quantity to be a multiple of 16 instead of the requested 20 to avoid making extras. Note that max level crafters make potions 4 at a time but poisons 16 at a time.
• Perfect Roe Master Writ Rewards -- Master writs that use Perfect Roe need their reward value increased to match the value/rarity of their ingredients. A value of 20 vouchers seems more appropriate.
• Provisioning Master Writ Rewards -- From experience Provisioning master writs are the most rare and the hardest profession to increase your chance of receiving them. Alchemy/Enchanting is easy to max and Clothing/Blacksmithing/Woodworking is relatively easy (if time consuming) to max research and have a decent chance of a master writ (~10% as I've found). As a point of comparison with my main crafter I've received 1000 vouchers from Alchemy/Enchanting, 1700 vouchers from smithing, but only 90 vouchers from Provisioning (I have all but 1 purple/gold recipe). Given the difficulty in obtaining all purple/gold Provisioning recipes I think an increase in master writ chance and/or reward is worth looking into. Increasing the variety of rewards from Provisioning writs as mentioned above is one possible solution.
• Style Selection in Smithing -- Related to master writs I'm finding the left/right selection of styles in smithing screens difficult to use. Specifically with the addition of several dozens of styles since the game's release it is difficult to find the exact style in the list. A drop-down list or something that I can type the style name to quickly find it would be better. If anyone knows of any addons that accomplish this please let me know!

Would love to hear other peoples ideas on writs too!

dpencil1

Great suggestions all around. I would also suggest that the Master Writ vendor should have shipment containers for sale that contain a certain number of gold-level improvement materials.

I personlly do just about any master writ that I get, but I've never bought something for my house. I have guild halls available to me that have everything in them already. It would be nice to be able to spend some vouchers to get a bunch of tempers.

Reorx_Holybeard

dpencil1 wrote: »

Great suggestions all around. I would also suggest that the Master Writ vendor should have shipment containers for sale that contain a certain number of gold-level improvement materials.

I personlly do just about any master writ that I get, but I've never bought something for my house. I have guild halls available to me that have everything in them already. It would be nice to be able to spend some vouchers to get a bunch of tempers.

Good idea...I was thinking about that and selling of max level materials as well. I'm not a big house decorator either so other things to spend vouchers on would be great.

helediron

Overall good suggestions. Some additional comments:

• Master Writ Styles: I made earlier a suggestion to change MW formula which should make style and set more important in low-end writs and less important in high-end writs.
• new: Master Writ Rewards: I have completely exhausted the MW rewards. There is nothing left to buy. There should be significantly more stuff added to Rolis. Half dozen new recipes are just way too little.

I don't want golden temper boxes because writs already produce good amount of them. Adding new sources has a risk of collapsing the prices. But i do agree there should be more different kind of purchaseables from Rolis beyond housing. Housing stinks too much of battlefronts anyway, when in-game plan collecting turned to impossible.

victoriana-blue

A lot of good ideas, but there are some things already in the game here. The system is designed to reward time instead of money/cash, and I'd like to keep it that way.

Reorx_Holybeard wrote: »

[*] Provisioning Recipes -- Could recipe rewards include all recipes from level 1 to the Provisioning writ level was? This way we could do max level writs and have a chance at both master writs and all recipes. I feel that I am penalized as a max crafter by having to choose to do non-max level writs.

It there was a way to do this without making CP150 purples a lot harder to get, I'm all in favour - we need the 150s for the writs, after all.

[*] Master Writ Styles -- The style for a master writ should have some effect on the writ value. It seem absurd that a master writ for a Buoyant Armiger (+200k * 14) is worth the same as a base race (free). I don't know how the writ reward calculation is done but in order to prevent reward from being too high you could have a cap on rewards (say 350 vouchers). This would also help create more variety in writ reward values (see below).

It already does, except as a multiplier instead of an additive. Yes, obnoxiously rare motifs BA should absolutely be worth more than they do in the writ calculations, but it's already part of the calculation, and there are tiers of "rarity" bonus. Rounding just gets in the way sometimes, so the rare motif bonus isn't as obvious on small writs.

Roughly, the total vouchers on a gear writ is equivalent to [base value] multiplied by [(9-trait multiplier) + (DLC multiplier) + (motif rarity) + 1, then rounded to the nearest whole number.

Think about gear writs like they're tiered. Tier 1 - basic purple gear - ranges 5-7 vouchers ime. (Tier 2: epic nirnhoned armour, Tier 3: epic nirnhoned weapons, Tier 3.5 legendary woodworking stuff.) Tier 4* - legendary blacksmithing & clothier - is ~60-200+ vouchers. DLC gear, 9-trait gear, and rare motifs add a multiplier to base voucher count, so that rare motifs are worth more than basic racial motifs.

The multipliers are small, something like .10 or .25, so that on a tier 1 they only bounce the voucher value up from (base 5) by 1 or 2 vouchers, but on a Tier 4 they bounce it up from (base 60?) to 75, 110, 200+ vouchers. So with made up numbers:
On BA divines purple hist bark rubedo armour: (base 5) * (0 dlc multiplier + 0 9-trait + 0.09 motif +1) = 5*(1.09) = 5.45 = 5 vouchers
On BA divines gold hist bark rubedo armour: (base 60) * (0 dlc multiplier + 0 9-trait + 0.09 motif +1) = 60*(1.09) = 65.4 = 65 vouchers
On BA divines gold eternal hunt rubedo armour: (base 60) * (0.2 dlc + 0.2 9-trait + 0.09 motif + 1) = 60*(1.49) = 89.4 = 89 vouchers

*Tier 5 & 6 are legendary nirn gear, but they're pretty rare

[*] Master Writ Reward Variety -- I'd like to see more variety in the reward values of master writs. For Clothier/Blacksmithing/Woodworking variety could be increased by having the writ style influence the reward by some amount as previously mentioned. I'd also like to see more variety in Enchanting/Alchemy/Provisioning master writs. Perhaps make the quantity required for the writ variable and have the reward to match (i.e., some Alchemy writs might require 20 potions, others require 100 potions, etc...). Provisioning writs could vary on the quantity and the recipe quality (ex: green = 2 vouchers, blue=4 vouchers, purple=6 vouchers, gold=8 vouchers).

See above spoiler. For gear, it's already in place. For alchemy, you can already predict how many vouchers something is worth by how many times you need to hit "craft;" no way would I want 100-potion writs though, the price/time to get 25 columbine would be obnoxious and at the same time it'd be far too quick & easy to make 100-potion writs relative to a piece of gear. For provisioning, I think it should be easier to get the required purple plans (if there's a way to do this without diluting the purple furnishing plan pool even more), but I'd rather ZOS stick with purples, golds, and dlc recipes here.

Some people make their writ consumables in bulk, then keep the extra in the bank; it'd be difficult to manage more variety with the problems we have wrt bank space. Anyone who does that want to chime in on this point?

[*] Perfect Roe Master Writ Rewards -- Master writs that use Perfect Roe need their reward value increased to match the value/rarity of their ingredients. A value of 20 vouchers seems more appropriate.

100% agree, and 20 vouchers seems reasonable.

[*] Provisioning Master Writ Rewards -- From experience Provisioning master writs are the most rare and the hardest profession to increase your chance of receiving them. [snip] Given the difficulty in obtaining all purple/gold Provisioning recipes I think an increase in master writ chance and/or reward is worth looking into. Increasing the variety of rewards from Provisioning writs as mentioned above is one possible solution.

I get provisioning, enchanting, and alchemy writs at about the same rate, because I have nearly all the existing purple consumable plans, all the runes translated, and all the ingredients identified.

Given that the purple recipes are so cheap to make I'm a-okay with them being frequent but with small rewards. Consumable writ rates are about how much money you have to buy ingredients/recipes, not how long you've been playing (ie gear), so I don't think I should make as much per week from consumables as from gear writs. Consumables are also much easier to make than trekking across IC for Redistributor, or into Bangkorai for Willow's Path, so the difference in reward seems proportionate there too.

[*] Style Selection in Smithing -- Related to master writs I'm finding the left/right selection of styles in smithing screens difficult to use.

Mouse scroll wheels helps a lot, fwiw. I want to be able to scroll with gamepad mode, instead of touching the stick for every. single. style. i go past.

Stacking writs, accepting multiple writs at once, and changing the poison quantity are all fabulous additions/changes.

Appleblade

Make them worth doing if I don’t have fourteen crafters

code65536

+1

coplannb16_ESO

+1

on PC at least there are some really good addons to improve the crafting experience, e.g. CraftStore CC, Multicraft, Dolgubon's Lazy Writ Crafter,...

Wreuntzylla

Reorx_Holybeard wrote: »

[*] Master Writ Styles -- The style for a master writ should have some effect on the writ value. It seem absurd that a master writ for a Buoyant Armiger (+200k * 14) is worth the same as a base race (free). I don't know how the writ reward calculation is done but in order to prevent reward from being too high you could have a cap on rewards (say 350 vouchers). This would also help create more variety in writ reward values (see below).

Although I totally agree with the sentiment, you always have to look at adjustments from the perspective of the game company.

1. Today Buoyant Armiger is 200k gold, tomorrow some new motif is worth that much and BA is cheap. However, the voucher value on a master writ isn't variable and high value master writs can be stored for the future. To make it variable without being exploitable would be difficult, or at least time consuming, and something else that needs to be monitored, especially since the market is easily manipulated. Anything that would add to company headcount is difficult to justify internally.

2. Game companies tend to tread carefully when it comes to cash store items that convert $ to gold through game sales because it's often that line in the sand for people who will leave a game as being pay-to-win, or at least a major step in that direction. ZoS already gets enough crap for making crown store items instrumental in the writ system. It is, in fact, a weak $ to gold converter. If they make it into a strong one... Contrast repair kits that are also converters, but at a fixed rate limited by playtime as the crown store repair crates can't be traded.

3. ZoS controls the amount of total vouchers provided to the ESO economy based on statistics and controllable factors. They in fact reduced the number of high voucher value writs, I think twice, once on PTS and definitely once on live. In exchange, they increased the number of low value writs dramatically to essentially eliminate the total RNG screw over of some people with very bad luck. In order to scale the vouchers to motifs, something has to give, and it's likely not going to be the ratio of high value writs to low value writs. Further, even if they were open to making that change, rare motifs would become even more expensive as people work to control the voucher market.

Again, I agree there should be a stronger correlation, just laying out the problems you'll have to solve for it to happen.

Reorx_Holybeard wrote: »

[*] Poison Quantity for Master Writs -- Would be nice for the desired poison quantity to be a multiple of 16 instead of the requested 20 to avoid making extras. Note that max level crafters make potions 4 at a time but poisons 16 at a time.

I'm surprised that you run 14 crafters through writs and would care about this. I have a mini crafting empire and typically funnel all the master writs through one toon, usually on a single account per mega server either to complete the master writ achievement or to concentrate vouchers. I typically will have 50-150 master writs to run after a relatively short period of time, and because the number of recipes used is limited, will have 3-5 of the same recipe for most alchemy master writs. So I count up the number of identical master writs, craft enough to cover the gamut, and any leftover will be used the next time I tear through the pile.

Reorx_Holybeard wrote: »

[*] Perfect Roe Master Writ Rewards -- Master writs that use Perfect Roe need their reward value increased to match the value/rarity of their ingredients. A value of 20 vouchers seems more appropriate.

I agree, and because it's based on a commodity and due to it's rarity, I don't see an exploitable factor. I also don't seem to get enough of these to make a significant difference in the overall voucher output.

victoriana-blue wrote: »

... The system is designed to reward time instead of money/cash, and I'd like to keep it that way.

I, uh, huh wha? The major factor in high value master writ drop rate is supposedly motifs. You can spend months to years in the game, depending on playtime, and never get all the motifs. Or, buy every one the cash store offers and then focus on the remainder, cutting the required time a huge amount.

In contrast, the time it takes to craft is inconsequential (if you use dolgubons addon, more inventory management required on console). Further, you can limit your time expenditure by simply selling the master writs instead of running them.

If you are talking about getting to 9/9, that used to be true at 440 days of diligent research. The research scrolls reduce the time down to ~ 184 days or roughly to 6 months from 1.2 years.

Research scrolls are a good source of revenue when I need a little bit more in the stream...

victoriana-blue wrote: »

See above spoiler. For gear, it's already in place. For alchemy, you can already predict how many vouchers something is worth by how many times you need to hit "craft;" no way would I want 100-potion writs though, the price/time to get 25 columbine would be obnoxious and at the same time it'd be far too quick & easy to make 100-potion writs relative to a piece of gear. For provisioning, I think it should be easier to get the required purple plans (if there's a way to do this without diluting the purple furnishing plan pool even more), but I'd rather ZOS stick with purples, golds, and dlc recipes here.

Some people make their writ consumables in bulk, then keep the extra in the bank; it'd be difficult to manage more variety with the problems we have wrt bank space. Anyone who does that want to chime in on this point?

Would absolutely love if the number of mats scaled, and in general much prefer high value writs to low value writs. However, setting crafting aside, I mostly pvp and by far the fastest way to earn mats for alchemy is flower bags in IC. You can actually farm without much risk of pvp, but farming the districts when your faction has all the flags is much, much faster. If you are the sort that simply hates even the idea of PvP, it's a problem.

For perspective, if I go on district boss hunting excursions with my guild, after about 10 hours (a couple hours a week) I will have enough mats for months. During the IC double tel var event I usually invest a few hours a day until I have a thousand of each mat, then keep going to stock up on 30-40 hakeijo... (Note that there are at least 1-2 mats that aren't in the bags, but they aren't primary potion ingredients and relatively cheap to buy.) Otherwise, my available play time would be completely used up just farming to make potions for PvP, let alone for writs. From my perspective, this is the largest QoL improvement ZoS has made - I almost stopped playing because I couldn't PvP with potions a significant portion of the time.

victoriana-blue wrote: »

I get provisioning, enchanting, and alchemy writs at about the same rate, because I have nearly all the existing purple consumable plans, all the runes translated, and all the ingredients identified.

Given that the purple recipes are so cheap to make I'm a-okay with them being frequent but with small rewards. Consumable writ rates are about how much money you have to buy ingredients/recipes, not how long you've been playing (ie gear), so I don't think I should make as much per week from consumables as from gear writs. Consumables are also much easier to make than trekking across IC for Redistributor, or into Bangkorai for Willow's Path, so the difference in reward seems proportionate there too.

I'm with you, except for the trekking. Access to all crafting stations through housing is more and more available. I have access and while slower than consumables, not nearly as slow or irritating as having to travel all over the place. I also typically wait to run master writs until I have the same set in each craft so that I only have to run to one crafting are in the housing.

victoriana-blue wrote: »

... Stacking writs, accepting multiple writs at once, and changing the poison quantity are all fabulous additions/changes.

Agreed as to the first two, I would slip the last down to the bottom of ZoS' to-do list.

Edit: actually I wouldn't resource the accepting multiple master writs at once either, with a simple excel table you can figure out how many of each item you need just by entering the number of same writs, craft everything, and just hand-in, accept new writ, hand-in without moving.

Reorx_Holybeard

Wreuntzylla wrote: »

...
Agreed as to the first two, I would slip the last down to the bottom of ZoS' to-do list.

Edit: actually I wouldn't resource the accepting multiple master writs at once either, with a simple excel table you can figure out how many of each item you need just by entering the number of same writs, craft everything, and just hand-in, accept new writ, hand-in without moving.

Thanks for all your comments...great stuff! For these last few items it is mostly likely just a matter of flipping a "switch" in the item data from 0 to 1 so is potentially very little work for a large gain. If, however, there was significant coding work required to get multiple writs at the same time then I agree that it bumps this request down a lot on the list.

Also regarding the rarity of styles, specifically the Buoyant Armiger style...due to how this style is found I think the price is more likely to increase in the future rather than decrease. Assuming that they don't change the drop rate in a few years there will be less people doing Morrowind content and thus a lot fewer BA motifs on the market and their price will increase. More common styles tend to drop in price quickly and stay their due to constantly being acquired.

You can see this affect in the low level purple recipe market. When the game first came out a lot of people were doing the low level content and their price was in the 5-15k range. Now, however, very few people are doing content that drops these recipes and their price has risen to the 15-50k range. Still looking for one purple recipe myself....

kivaann

Reorx_Holybeard wrote: »

A bunch of ideas/suggestions on improving writs and master writs. First of all a *big* thanks to permitting writs to be handed in anywhere!

• Accept Multiple Master Writs -- It would be really handy to be able to activate and accept more than one type of Master Writ quest at the same time. On PC there are add-ons to help solve this problem but it would be nicer to have the feature built into the game. Unsure if this is a design choice or technical limitation.

which addon is it? I've been searching for this forever o_o

helediron

kivaann wrote: »

Reorx_Holybeard wrote: »

A bunch of ideas/suggestions on improving writs and master writs. First of all a *big* thanks to permitting writs to be handed in anywhere!

• Accept Multiple Master Writs -- It would be really handy to be able to activate and accept more than one type of Master Writ quest at the same time. On PC there are add-ons to help solve this problem but it would be nicer to have the feature built into the game. Unsure if this is a design choice or technical limitation.

which addon is it? I've been searching for this forever o_o

Dolgubon's Lazy Writ Crafter does it. In the addon settings switch to right-click mode. Then right-click each gear writ and select "Craft this writ". Visit the tables to manufacture them all. Travel to Rolis. Now you can activate and return them all at once because the items are already waiting in inventory.

Combine this with a house having all the stations and it gets very effective.

helediron

Wreuntzylla wrote: »

..snip....

Reorx_Holybeard wrote: »

[*] Poison Quantity for Master Writs -- Would be nice for the desired poison quantity to be a multiple of 16 instead of the requested 20 to avoid making extras. Note that max level crafters make potions 4 at a time but poisons 16 at a time.

I'm surprised that you run 14 crafters through writs and would care about this. I have a mini crafting empire and typically funnel all the master writs through one toon, usually on a single account per mega server either to complete the master writ achievement or to concentrate vouchers. I typically will have 50-150 master writs to run after a relatively short period of time, and because the number of recipes used is limited, will have 3-5 of the same recipe for most alchemy master writs. So I count up the number of identical master writs, craft enough to cover the gamut, and any leftover will be used the next time I tear through the pile.
...snip...

Close to my solution too. I store alchemy and enchant writs away. When there are few hundred in store, there are enough duplicates. Then i craft them all in one session. Crafting 5*16=80 poisons makes four poison writs without waste. I don't even bother counting my writs. I just craft five - both poisons and potions.

There is always some waste after the session but it's much reduced from making them one-by-one. I store the leftovers for next session.

This is a nice way to earn the master writ achievement eventually to all characters.

kivaann

helediron wrote: »

kivaann wrote: »

Reorx_Holybeard wrote: »

A bunch of ideas/suggestions on improving writs and master writs. First of all a *big* thanks to permitting writs to be handed in anywhere!

• Accept Multiple Master Writs -- It would be really handy to be able to activate and accept more than one type of Master Writ quest at the same time. On PC there are add-ons to help solve this problem but it would be nicer to have the feature built into the game. Unsure if this is a design choice or technical limitation.

which addon is it? I've been searching for this forever o_o

Dolgubon's Lazy Writ Crafter does it. In the addon settings switch to right-click mode. Then right-click each gear writ and select "Craft this writ". Visit the tables to manufacture them all. Travel to Rolis. Now you can activate and return them all at once because the items are already waiting in inventory.

Combine this with a house having all the stations and it gets very effective.

Thank you!!!! I had been writing down all the writs and do them manually, this would save me so much time!!!

Reorx_Holybeard

Another pet peeve (literally) I have is that when other players pets and assistants are standing near the writ return crates I cannot target the crate to complete the quest. If my mouse cursor is "on" the crate there is no reason why a nearby NPC should take focus and prevent me from activating it.

helediron

Reorx_Holybeard wrote: »

Another pet peeve (literally) I have is that when other players pets and assistants are standing near the writ return crates I cannot target the crate to complete the quest. If my mouse cursor is "on" the crate there is no reason why a nearby NPC should take focus and prevent me from activating it.

Petsorcs, no lollygagging next to crates! The bat is the worst.

code65536

helediron wrote: »

kivaann wrote: »

Reorx_Holybeard wrote: »

A bunch of ideas/suggestions on improving writs and master writs. First of all a *big* thanks to permitting writs to be handed in anywhere!

• Accept Multiple Master Writs -- It would be really handy to be able to activate and accept more than one type of Master Writ quest at the same time. On PC there are add-ons to help solve this problem but it would be nicer to have the feature built into the game. Unsure if this is a design choice or technical limitation.

which addon is it? I've been searching for this forever o_o

Dolgubon's Lazy Writ Crafter does it. In the addon settings switch to right-click mode. Then right-click each gear writ and select "Craft this writ". Visit the tables to manufacture them all. Travel to Rolis. Now you can activate and return them all at once because the items are already waiting in inventory.

Combine this with a house having all the stations and it gets very effective.

Well, you could do this even without the addon (e.g., the downtrodden console players). The addon just makes it faster and reduces the risk of human error (errors that would be difficult to spot because you don't have the quest in your books).

code65536

Reorx_Holybeard wrote: »

Another pet peeve (literally) I have is that when other players pets and assistants are standing near the writ return crates I cannot target the crate to complete the quest. If my mouse cursor is "on" the crate there is no reason why a nearby NPC should take focus and prevent me from activating it.

That's a general problem with interactions when there's a non-combat pet around. In a bank, where there's a zoo of bears, scamps, and twilights, I often can't target containers to loot.

helediron

code65536 wrote: »

helediron wrote: »

kivaann wrote: »

Reorx_Holybeard wrote: »

A bunch of ideas/suggestions on improving writs and master writs. First of all a *big* thanks to permitting writs to be handed in anywhere!

• Accept Multiple Master Writs -- It would be really handy to be able to activate and accept more than one type of Master Writ quest at the same time. On PC there are add-ons to help solve this problem but it would be nicer to have the feature built into the game. Unsure if this is a design choice or technical limitation.

which addon is it? I've been searching for this forever o_o

Dolgubon's Lazy Writ Crafter does it. In the addon settings switch to right-click mode. Then right-click each gear writ and select "Craft this writ". Visit the tables to manufacture them all. Travel to Rolis. Now you can activate and return them all at once because the items are already waiting in inventory.

Combine this with a house having all the stations and it gets very effective.

Well, you could do this even without the addon (e.g., the downtrodden console players). The addon just makes it faster and reduces the risk of human error (errors that would be difficult to spot because you don't have the quest in your books).

Yeah, i did master writs manually when they were new. And i did the errors. Don't want to do so any more. Feel sorry for consoles.