Jewelrycrafting General Review

Recremen

Let's get this right out of the way.

The Good :

• Cool new traits! I was surprised to see so many new traits added with the advent of jewelrycrafting but then again I never put any thought into it. Naturally we'd need 9 traits so that we could actually make 9-trait crafted jewelry sets but still, these are some great new additions!! From more niche-application traits like Swift to some truly role-defining traits like Bloodthirsty these are some phenomenal ideas!
• Cool new station! Obviously not something everyone's going to care about but I think it's a wonderfully detailed little workdesk, its only flaw being that its high-quality texture seems ever so slightly out of place in some of the less-detailed parts of the world.
• Crafting! Jewelry! Like at all!! Honestly I wasn't expecting this for years, but here we are. We can finally make every type of gear and upgrade every type we find in the world. The crafting system really feels like it's complete now, at least from a combat perspective.
• Very diverse acquisition methods! It really feels like you took the time to work out how to make sure every type of gameplay can bring something to the market. And of course, those of us who play a variety of content types will surely see a commensurate benefit.

Well OK, hold up, let's examine that last part as a way to segue into the "healthy and constructive criticism" portion of the post. Is everyone really bringing something of equal value to the table? No, I don't believe so, although I would like to reiterate that there was clearly a strong effort made to do so. In particular, many of these traits are relatively easy to come by, while the effort needed to get the Harmony trait looks immensely out of place. 20 writ vouchers or 100k AP for a fully-formed trait stone is, at most, a few hours worth of engaging with the relevant content. Even the daily dungeonfinder method for getting the Protective trait is quite grindable if you need it Right Now. But Harmony? You have to get TWELVE PEOPLE together and at best go through all the available trials on normal mode, and even then you can only do them once per week (per character, no doubt, but not many people have a slew of trial-ready characters). And for what, mostly dust and a chance at the actual jewelry? That's a huge amount of effort for a very small reward, and that means that on the market these are going to command an unimaginable premium. And you can't just bump the price on Bloodthirsty and Swift because you're letting us buy those with currencies that are already at extreme market saturation. That would not be a good way to achieve parity, but stuffing more trait items in the trial quest reward boxes might be.

While we're on the topic of monumental effort... what is going on with the research grind? Or the material grind? We can only research one item at a time? Research scrolls cost more than three times as much as for other crafts? We have to mine dust from apparently impossible-to-find crafting nodes? And the trait items and tempers require ten pieces to make ONE usable item?? And we can't deconstruct existing jewelry??? I truly do not see the purpose of this so I'll just go over some hypotheses and argue those.

• You want it to be hard because you don't want end-game players to feel like their existing gear is suddenly devalued. Would be the most understandable position, but it still falls pretty flat. End-game PvP jewelry is easy to come by and only a few PvP sets even fit into end-game PvP builds across all PvP content types. There was even that whole Midyear Mayhem event that let us straight up buy gold versions of the ones we liked for AP. That was nice, I'm not complaining about that, but we aren't going to feel like our efforts aren't giving us a degree of exclusivity. We already feel that way and are content with our player skill being the distinguishing feature. And while I'm not in a competitive trial guild, the switch to Imperfect and Perfect versions of gear is already going to be setting those guilds apart from their peers, you don't have to double-dip and make the grind permanently harder just because someone is going to gold out their blue Alkosh ring. And obviously since overland and dungeon sets have NEVER come in gold quality (minus being on The Golden, which again uses currencies you can just grind) that's not going to be a matter of contention. So what's the point here?
• You want it to be hard because you don't want people to get gold jewelry on day 1. I mean, for one thing I already have gold jewelry, so I'm... not really sure about this point. But I vaguely remember hearing something about this from one of the devs so I wanted to address it. Anyway, in addition to existing gold jewelry, there's already a certain type of person who can get it on day 1, and that's people with a fuckton of gold. If we have it, we can just buy all the materials, all the (new) stuff for deconning and ranking up, bam done. It is here where I truly don't understand the rationale behind not letting us decon existing jewelry. Sure, it gives hoarders a launch-day advantage, but we already have a class of players with a launch day advantage if they're sitting around on piles of gold. Why are we letting wealthy players be the only class of people with good options on the first day? Trial guilds, PvP guilds, farmers, all of these people have to slog it with the casual base pop? Doesn't seem right.
• You want it to be hard because you want to delay content completion so the experience lasts longer. This would be the second worst possibility because it's trading long-term, permanent access difficulties for a short-lived increase in engagement. Unless it backfires miserably, of course, like how people left the game in droves once Imperial City launched and we had that unconscionable resource grind for VR15 and vr16 gear. Remember that? Gods, I sure do. That was also when we had to suddenly spend ten times the number of base materials to get max-level gear. Now that we can farm those materials out in the world it's not nearly so bad, but those were some rough months. I watches as even PvP guilds dissolved all around me out of frustration, and those were the very people that content was aimed at!! The animosity for that system I felt coming from other players completely overshadowed all the cool things about that DLC, like the fun new environments, dungeons, and quests. I really don't want to see Summerset get that same treatment, especially since there's a certain class of people who are going to have LESS of a grind to deal with, which brings me to my next hypothesis.
• You want it to be hard so you can sell more cash-shop exclusive buy-to-win research scrolls. Now I don't mean these are permanent pay-to-win items, but until the base population has had a chance to research everything the normal way these definitely give a distinct, numerical advantage to cash shop enthusiasts. If ZOS started selling Bloodthirsty Spriggan's necklaces on the cash shop everyone would immediately understand that to be P2W trash, but somehow because it's obfuscated by needing to have a crafter (a triviality for anyone who's been playing for more than 6 months) some folks can't seem to see the difference. Well let's be clear, there is no effective difference! People willing to shell out a few hundred dollars for these research scrolls will be able to craft and transmute to whatever trait arbitrarily, and won't have to worry about spending in-game gold on in-game research scrolls, freeing up more of their resources to just buy the trait jewelry they need. If this really is what's going on, ZOS, all I can say is shame on you! You said you wouldn't!

And let's not forget other considerations, like overall potential player market issues. Since this is a brand new end game system, it is absolutely possible for a small handful of players to completely control the market for the associated crafting, trait, and upgrade materials. From other feedback on the PTS, it sounds like these nodes are rare, their drops are abysmal, and the whole experience is frustrating. If that's the case, it will take entirely too long for the player market to have an adequate supply to resist monopolies on these end-game goods. Market manipulation is tolerable on frivolous things like mythic ambrosia, but on necessary goods like this it's a recipe for alienating the playerbase. Let's leave aside the potential for bot farmers and third-party gold sellers to see a resurgence and just accept that the player alienation alone would be nice to avoid.

Complicating matters even more is the jewelrycrafting master writ situation. I saw a writ calling for Legendary jewelry and it was only giving out 115 writ vouchers. How is that going to be the least bit worth anyone's while unless the market gets suddenly saturated with a boatload of raw and upgrade materials from gods-know-where? It would take a while for that to be worth it even if jewelrycrafting was set up like a normal crafting profession, just because there won't be much in the way of legendary mats on the market as people will use them up on gear first, but even when we get a steady supply it's going to take EIGHTY gold mats to finish that writ! Are you kidding me?? Vouchers aren't even worth 1k a pop on the PC NA market but you want us spending 80 gold rarer-than-tempering-alloy upgrade mats on this thing??? We are already at the point in the crafting writ economy where we are operating at a loss by completing most of our own writs (selling writs outright versus completing them and using expensive materials in the process), but this is a whole different level of suckery. A serious look at the economic side of these writs, or just jewelrycrafting in general, should be done.

So what are my recommendations for fixing these issues?

• Scrap the "dust" part of the upgrade and trait mat system in its entirety. The potential benefits are entirely outweighed by the exorbitant, permanent, repeating cost. It's like the VR16 gear controversy all over again. The last time an end-game system this important was implemented in such a way players left in droves out of frustration. I'm not saying it will be exactly that bad this time (after all, we can at least craft the rest of our gear normally), but making it this grindy for no good reason is definitely going to drive some folks away.
• Do not sell cash-shop research scrolls until normal players have had adequate time to complete their research. Don't do this P2W ***, it's not cool. You used to put buckets and brooms on the cash shop as a joke but now we really are here. It's not like when the other research scrolls launched, normal players had already had years to get all their research done so it really was just a convenience thing. What you're pulling with this is an entirely different situation.
• Reduce writ voucher jewelrycrafting research scrolls to the same price as the other professions. Over three times as much, and again for no discernible good reason. We're already paying for Summerset to access the system, give your paying customers some parity with their existing crafts.
• Increase trait drops and accessibility across the board. If the above is accomplished, then having Bloodstone cost 100k AP seems needlessly steep. Drop it to 10k to put it in line with the other mats, which should now always drop in their usable form, not that "pulverized" silliness. Increase the number of drops from Trial quests. You can give trial content something marketable without making it so over-the-top.
• Let us deconstruct existing jewelry. As previously stated, a handful of people are already walking into the next patch with a distinct advantage in the system just by having a huge stockpile of gold to buy research/decon/raw material items with. PvPers, PvEers, and farmers should not be penalized for engaging with the content. Let them use their equipment stockpiles to a similar effect.
• Possibly increase material spawns for jewelrycrafting across the overland environment and don't make them take the place of blacksmithing nodes? Question mark because I'm less sure on this point, I'm just trusting that other people on the forums have been giving accurate information about the behavior of crafting nodes. I did some farming in Alik'ir to see if it "felt off" to me, and it definitely did, but I don't have hard comparative numbers to share on it so I don't think it's the strongest point of feedback.

Sorry for the long-winded nature of the post, but I wanted to be thorough. I truly believe that ZOS listens to quality feedback and this is my honest, no-nonsense criticism. I want this to be a good system that's accessible and melds nicely into the existing marketplace, but the above concerns have me very worried about the health of this system. It's great that jewelrycrafting is finally coming to the game, but without some small-but-consequential tweaks it's going to cause trouble.

Carbonised

Agree with all of this. I have tried to support many of these things already, such as the huge grinds associated with jewelrycrafting, and especially upgrade mats and trait mats.
And even more frustrating, the extremely low voucher rewards for jewelrycrafting writs.

Unfortunately I'm more pessimistic about this, and I don't really foresee any significant changes on this before going live, for the exact same reasons you have mentioned there. Cash shop greed coupled with artificially lengthening of the content since ZOS believes that grind = good. At least it keeps the players in the game longer (until they are finally fed up and leave for good).

VaranisArano

I dont have a strong opinion on P2W, but its not even a few thousand for the jewelry crafting scrolls.

Once you have all the traits available for research and all research passives, you'll spend 50k to 55k crowns to buy all the scrolls, or around $360 to $400 (PC/NA non-sale prices) to buy enough scrolls to max jewelry research.

Or you could wait for the research timers, which takes about 5 months with no down time, so realistically longer. It'll take a little longer than a month to get 6 traits researched for something like Julianos or Hundings.

More detailed math here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/408045/how-much-does-it-cost-to-max-research-jewelry-with-crown-scrolls/p1


So if you have enough gold to buy the white quality platinum jewelry from the Mages Guild at 1,387 gold a piece to decon, and acquire the traits jewelry for research quickly enough, we could see Jewelry Masters very quickly. The real delay is going to be getting the traited jewelry for research.

Note: I briefly tested buying the Mages Guild Jewelry method. 392 pieces was enough to get me to Level 18 in Jewelry Crafting, but its slow going. (543,704 gold so far).

Joy_Division

I tend not to be the person who cares about "only" reaching 98.6% of performance as opposed to 100%, so I'm sure there will be people who disagree with me here, but here's how I feel about the whole "P2Win!" and "#OMGpleasenerfmegagrind" posts I come across: I'm not overly concerned. At all.

I'm not.

Not concerned because without spending a single cent or single crown I still will be able to beat the vast majority of players I come across in Cyrodiil and I'll still be able to complete the hardest PvE content the ZoS throws at me. If there is really one jewelry trait I *really* want, then I will simply research it and acquire the mats that I need, both will take hours, not months, and I'll have my jewelry and then I'll be done with it. I don't care that Swift or Protective or Healthy will take months because I'm not going to ever use those traits. The only reason why I will research them in the first place is because of seeing a half-filled skilline is not aesthetically pleasing. It will not be long at all until I have everything that I care - and don't care - about.

I don't have a problem with Zenimax making players put some effort in to have everything and everything possible with jewelry crafting and not ave everything by the end of the first week. I don't. In fact, the game is kind of boring if there isn't anything to chase so I kind of like that I'm not just being handed this stuff. Do you know right now I have over 50 unread rewards of the worthy mails in my inbox, about 30 unopened transmutation geodes, and 8 50 transmutation stone geodes unopened because I am literally drowning in transmutation stones? I have already transmuted things like my shield of barahara's curse that I know I'll never wear. The transmutation system was kind of fun for the first month, now it;s just a bore and now it just clogs up space in my inventory because it's too easy. I have done nothing to go out of my way to grind the stones.

I don't care that some tryhards out there are going to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars to get that extra 1.4% performance over me (their build is already better than mine since I willingly playing the worst race) because as I said, if there is really one trait I want, I'll soon have it anyways. And even so, at the end of the day, that extra 1.4% isn't going to make a difference if I bump into this tryhard in cyrodiil. If I am so invested in this game that 98.6% performance is absolutely unacceptable, then I'm not going to be in a position where finding 11 other people to do a weekly trial is going to be a big deal.

I understand the people who min-max their characters at the absolute earliest possibility are probably not going to agree with my perspective and that's fine. Their entitled to that opinion just as I am entitled to mine. I'm just saying that I am a competitive person and I'm not overly concerned with the way ZoS has it's jewelry system set up if I understand it correctly

Recremen

VaranisArano wrote: »

I dont have a strong opinion on P2W, but its not even a few thousand for the jewelry crafting scrolls.

Once you have all the traits available for research and all research passives, you'll spend 50k to 55k crowns to buy all the scrolls, or around $360 to $400 (PC/NA non-sale prices) to buy enough scrolls to max jewelry research.

Or you could wait for the research timers, which takes about 5 months with no down time, so realistically longer. It'll take a little longer than a month to get 6 traits researched for something like Julianos or Hundings.

More detailed math here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/408045/how-much-does-it-cost-to-max-research-jewelry-with-crown-scrolls/p1


So if you have enough gold to buy the white quality platinum jewelry from the Mages Guild at 1,387 gold a piece to decon, and acquire the traits jewelry for research quickly enough, we could see Jewelry Masters very quickly. The real delay is going to be getting the traited jewelry for research.

Note: I briefly tested buying the Mages Guild Jewelry method. 392 pieces was enough to get me to Level 18 in Jewelry Crafting, but its slow going. (543,704 gold so far).

Edited to reflect the difference. I was confused because it was your post I got the couple thousand figure from, but I see now you were referring to all the other crafting research scrolls combined, not jewelry specifically.

jwellsub17_ESO2

Greetings,

So I decided to create a new character and run them through the tutorial followed by the Psijic skill line quests without playing the housing game or grouping with late game player. I am currently on rank 6 of the skill line, so I have done a lot of running around. As part of this testing, I have been watching specifically for JC nodes to get a feel for how (un)common they are.

From my personal experience, the number of JC nodes appears to be roughly 30ish - 40ish percent of the number of BS nodes. Additionally, I appear to get about the same number of materials from the JC nodes as the BS nodes.

Also, I have been watching the amount of deconstruction targets and I am seeing roughly 5x the BS deconstruction targets as compared to JC deconstruction targets.

Given the disparity in numbers of items that can be created, I think the number of resource nodes should be fine... Except that the game is 3+ years old...

People have managed to stock up on a lot of other crafting materials. But they are going to be starting from scratch with no stockpiles. That means every JC node is going to be hunted to extinction, and given the limited number of deconstruction targets for JC, it is going to be a long time before JC is really a viable skill for the average player.

Recremen

Joy_Division wrote: »

I tend not to be the person who cares about "only" reaching 98.6% of performance as opposed to 100%, so I'm sure there will be people who disagree with me here, but here's how I feel about the whole "P2Win!" and "#OMGpleasenerfmegagrind" posts I come across: I'm not overly concerned. At all.

I'm not.

Not concerned because without spending a single cent or single crown I still will be able to beat the vast majority of players I come across in Cyrodiil and I'll still be able to complete the hardest PvE content the ZoS throws at me. If there is really one jewelry trait I *really* want, then I will simply research it and acquire the mats that I need, both will take hours, not months, and I'll have my jewelry and then I'll be done with it. I don't care that Swift or Protective or Healthy will take months because I'm not going to ever use those traits. The only reason why I will research them in the first place is because of seeing a half-filled skilline is not aesthetically pleasing. It will not be long at all until I have everything that I care - and don't care - about.

I don't have a problem with Zenimax making players put some effort in to have everything and everything possible with jewelry crafting and not ave everything by the end of the first week. I don't. In fact, the game is kind of boring if there isn't anything to chase so I kind of like that I'm not just being handed this stuff. Do you know right now I have over 50 unread rewards of the worthy mails in my inbox, about 30 unopened transmutation geodes, and 8 50 transmutation stone geodes unopened because I am literally drowning in transmutation stones? I have already transmuted things like my shield of barahara's curse that I know I'll never wear. The transmutation system was kind of fun for the first month, now it;s just a bore and now it just clogs up space in my inventory because it's too easy. I have done nothing to go out of my way to grind the stones.

I don't care that some tryhards out there are going to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars to get that extra 1.4% performance over me (their build is already better than mine since I willingly playing the worst race) because as I said, if there is really one trait I want, I'll soon have it anyways. And even so, at the end of the day, that extra 1.4% isn't going to make a difference if I bump into this tryhard in cyrodiil. If I am so invested in this game that 98.6% performance is absolutely unacceptable, then I'm not going to be in a position where finding 11 other people to do a weekly trial is going to be a big deal.

I understand the people who min-max their characters at the absolute earliest possibility are probably not going to agree with my perspective and that's fine. Their entitled to that opinion just as I am entitled to mine. I'm just saying that I am a competitive person and I'm not overly concerned with the way ZoS has it's jewelry system set up if I understand it correctly

So what I'm getting from this is that one of the most competitive players out there isn't even going to be bothering with the jewelrycrafting system. That seems like kind of a bad place for the system to be.

As for transmutation, I never considered that to be an issue. Sure, it was "grindy" at first, but it also wasn't a baseline crafting system. It was there to replace the grind for perfect-trait weapons and armor, which it did fantastically. Now if you have a VMA destro staff but it's in the wrong trait, you can fix it way more easily than the Possibly Never by running yet more VMA. As such, it's done an incredible job making end-game gear accessible for end-game players. Even the absolute pros were feeling the strain of having to run content more than their peers just because they wound up on the shallow end of the RNG curve. Overall, then, transmutation system makes the game less grindy, while the jewelrycrafting system makes it ten times as grindy.

Joy_Division

I suppose that's one way to look at it. Eventually I will come to research all the traits just because I'm something of a completionist, but you are correct in that I am not going to be out there grinding everything as fast as I can or buying research scrolls or something in an effort to be first (or try to monetize it). I will have the traits I want researched soon enough and I'll be able to access the mats.

My biggest issue here and where I would most agree with the critics of the system is the tenfold increase in improving "tempers" (or whatever they are calling the material to improve quality from green to blue to purple etc) if I understand the system correctly. That is patently ridiculous. I get it jewelry should be special and we don;t quite need as many golds because there are only 3 slots (as opposed to 7 armor for instance), but, wow, tenfold is overly excessive, overly grindy, overly favoring the despicable invisible bot-farmers.

I kind of wish instead of requiring us to accumulate hordes or materials, ZOS instead would have required less but made the way we acquire them more meaningful. They could be given as a quest reward for those who like overland PvE questing. We can get them for rewards of the worthy for those who like PvP. They could drop from veteran dungeon bosses for those who like undaunted stuff. They could be given for just registering achievements. In short, actually playing the game rather than writing an illegal script for an invisible bot to steal the nodes from other players.

Temeraire507

1. I feel like JC should have its own and different spawn locations. From what I've tested around 40% of the BS nodes spawn as JC nodes instead. That reduces the spawn rate of both, meaning that BS mats will become harder to farm and become more expensive at all. It is not that relevant for me, but this will result in more grind for new players. Also it will decrease the viability of BS master writs.
2. The JC master writs should return a valuable amount of vouchers, meaning that investing 25 times the grind for mats (10 times for mats and *2,5 for reduced spawn rate (of 2/3 = *0,4 = 40%)) should result in at least 10 times the vouchers (although you would still make a massive loss with tenfold vouchers).
3. I really like the idea of putting the sources for jewelry mats into the content the player likes, so that a CP160+ would be able to fish, play quests, play dungeons, raid or play PvP (or do whatever they like, can you even build in rewards for roleplaying? I can't think of a possible way ) for a comparable gain of platinum (and maybe upgrade mats).

Recremen

Joy_Division wrote: »

I suppose that's one way to look at it. Eventually I will come to research all the traits just because I'm something of a completionist, but you are correct in that I am not going to be out there grinding everything as fast as I can or buying research scrolls or something in an effort to be first (or try to monetize it). I will have the traits I want researched soon enough and I'll be able to access the mats.

My biggest issue here and where I would most agree with the critics of the system is the tenfold increase in improving "tempers" (or whatever they are calling the material to improve quality from green to blue to purple etc) if I understand the system correctly. That is patently ridiculous. I get it jewelry should be special and we don;t quite need as many golds because there are only 3 slots (as opposed to 7 armor for instance), but, wow, tenfold is overly excessive, overly grindy, overly favoring the despicable invisible bot-farmers.

I kind of wish instead of requiring us to accumulate hordes or materials, ZOS instead would have required less but made the way we acquire them more meaningful. They could be given as a quest reward for those who like overland PvE questing. We can get them for rewards of the worthy for those who like PvP. They could drop from veteran dungeon bosses for those who like undaunted stuff. They could be given for just registering achievements. In short, actually playing the game rather than writing an illegal script for an invisible bot to steal the nodes from other players.

I think when it comes down to it my big complaint regarding the traits is that the master writ side of things wasn't taken into account in the slightest. If we only had to consider crafting jewelry for personal use then that would be one thing, but the master writs on the PTS did not appear to account for the rarity of the new trait items. If that gets fixed, then sure, no issue regarding trait items.

And I'm totally with you regarding the biggest issue being the tempers, I was just giving as general overview as I could and so covered some less-important aspects as well that I believe could use some improvement. The tempers issue is going to mess up the gear crafting itself, as well as all the secondary systems like furniture crafting and master writs, which once again also didn't take into account the 10-times-rarer tempers when calculating voucher rewards.

code65536

This was a system that I was looking forward to. No longer would my lowbies be stuck with a random hodge-podge of mismatched set jewelry. It would've opened up new builds to play around with.

Instead, it's all been a disappointment. From the lack of deconstruction (Why are items that we had earned before a magical line somehow deemed less worthy? Why is time that we spent playing the content in the past somehow considered worthless?) to utterly ridiculous material grind, I've been completely turned off from the system.

I don't give a f*** about jewelry crafting at this point. And I think that's sad--that one of the hotly anticipated features of Summerset has been reduced to something so worthless and so hostile.

And I feel like that's a general theme from ZOS. From the material grind introduced in IC (which only became bearable after huge adjustments to the sourcing of those materials in subsequent patches many months later) to the controversial combat changes in Morrowind, it increasingly feels like we players are treated with contempt by ZOS. I trust that's not their intent, though, but they've given us little reason to keep maintaining that trust.

Do the right thing, ZOS. Eliminate the ridiculous upgrade grind. Stop punishing players for having played your game in the past with this asinine deconstruction restriction. Show us some respect.

Elephant42

code65536 wrote: »

This was a system that I was looking forward to. No longer would my lowbies be stuck with a random hodge-podge of mismatched set jewelry. It would've opened up new builds to play around with.

Instead, it's all been a disappointment. From the lack of deconstruction (Why are items that we had earned before a magical line somehow deemed less worthy? Why is time that we spent playing the content in the past somehow considered worthless?) to utterly ridiculous material grind, I've been completely turned off from the system.

I don't give a f*** about jewelry crafting at this point. And I think that's sad--that one of the hotly anticipated features of Summerset has been reduced to something so worthless and so hostile.

And I feel like that's a general theme from ZOS. From the material grind introduced in IC (which only became bearable after huge adjustments to the sourcing of those materials in subsequent patches many months later) to the controversial combat changes in Morrowind, it increasingly feels like we players are treated with contempt by ZOS. I trust that's not their intent, though, but they've given us little reason to keep maintaining that trust.

Do the right thing, ZOS. Eliminate the ridiculous upgrade grind. Stop punishing players for having played your game in the past with this asinine deconstruction restriction. Show us some respect.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who has been sensing this "theme". Starting with the IC patch and the V16 mats fiasco, the feeling in me has been growing stronger with nearly every patch that ZOS is openly hostile towards those people who don't want to grind or farm till their fingers bleed, who don't want to spend hours and hours and hours on a practice dummy, who don't want to play with a mouse in one hand and a calculator in the other, to players who just-like-to-play-their-effing-game

Oh and BTW I too was really looking forward to being able to gift my babies some green and maybe blue crafted set jewellery to use while levelling...

Jayne_Doe

Joy_Division wrote: »

I suppose that's one way to look at it. Eventually I will come to research all the traits just because I'm something of a completionist, but you are correct in that I am not going to be out there grinding everything as fast as I can or buying research scrolls or something in an effort to be first (or try to monetize it). I will have the traits I want researched soon enough and I'll be able to access the mats.

My biggest issue here and where I would most agree with the critics of the system is the tenfold increase in improving "tempers" (or whatever they are calling the material to improve quality from green to blue to purple etc) if I understand the system correctly. That is patently ridiculous. I get it jewelry should be special and we don;t quite need as many golds because there are only 3 slots (as opposed to 7 armor for instance), but, wow, tenfold is overly excessive, overly grindy, overly favoring the despicable invisible bot-farmers.

I kind of wish instead of requiring us to accumulate hordes or materials, ZOS instead would have required less but made the way we acquire them more meaningful. They could be given as a quest reward for those who like overland PvE questing. We can get them for rewards of the worthy for those who like PvP. They could drop from veteran dungeon bosses for those who like undaunted stuff. They could be given for just registering achievements. In short, actually playing the game rather than writing an illegal script for an invisible bot to steal the nodes from other players.

I think that is the real issue that most players have with JC in its current form. Research won't really take that long as there are only 2 pieces to research in 9 traits. Won't take any longer than WW with all research passives.

They upped the frequency of seams spawning from the nodes that are shared with ores, so hopefully people will be able to find mats, although initially, I think they'll still be scarce since everyone will be farming them. But, we're all used to having to refine 10 raw base materials to get 7-10 refined materials, so in that sense, it's no different. However, with JC most traits are only available in raw form and you have to refine 10 to get a stone. While this is somewhat excessive, you only need 1 trait stone for 1 piece of jewelry, so not terrible when crafting. Plus, if you're just retraiting, then you don't even need the stone.

The tempers, as you said, are another story, needing 10 raws to refine into 1 bar. So, if crafting, with the appropriate passives, you'll need 20 green, 30 blue, 40 purple, and 80 gold grains to refine into the platings you'll need. But, if you're only upgrading a dropped piece from purple to gold, you'll "only" need the 80 golds.

What is nice is that the research pieces and trait stones do come from a variety of sources - trials, PvP dailies, undaunted pledges, SS quests/dailies, crafting, etc.

Also, I think it worth emphasizing that there is a LOT of room between overly grindy and getting things handed to you day one. NO ONE (well most of the folks who've provided feedback on the system) wants this to be handed to them day one. I think many are willing to put in the effort, but are concerned that the grind might actually deter people from participating fully in the system.

I got the idea from your previous post that you aren't really planning to participate much in it. You'll get what you need in order to be able to retrait (which will be really easy to do - research is the easiest part of this system) and then get the rest whenever. But, for those of us who actually were looking forward to CRAFTING jewelry in crafted sets - it'll be much more of a slog to get to that point.