ZOS, we need to talk about Culandas and furnishing recipes

Carbonised

I already made a long post about the lack of Culandas on the main forum, which got a lot of agreement. I see that you have noted that, and done something to alleviate the issue. That is nice, however, it is not quite enough.

Now Culandas will have a guaranteed drop from the Summerset daily quests instead of just a chance, and the requirement of Culandas for blue and green recipes has been lowered from 2 to 1. That means that there will be a slight increase in the number of Culandas available, as long as people are doing the dailies. And requirements for all the nice purple recipes that people want to make and sell, is unchanged. Once the next DLC is here, people will move on and farm that instead of Summerset. Already Sapiarch motif has fallen a lot in value, and it makes it less worthwhile to do the Summerset dailies.

What I suggest in addition to your changes, is to make the Gryphon set from Summerset drop in Sapiarch motif instead of Ancient Elf. All prior DLC have had their zone sets drop in the new motifs. Summerset is an exception, only one of the 3 zone sets drop in the Psijic motif, the other one drops in the Ebonshadow which was used in Clockwork City, and the style mats from that motif are worthless outside doing a few mastercrafter writs, because of the outfit system. The last set drops in the Ancient Elf motif, a worthless motif way back from the base game. This also does not make any sense at all lorewise. Ancient Elf is another word for Ayleid, which is why the motif and the Ayleid furnishing recipes share the same style material. Ayleids never set foot on summerset, they have nothing to do with the zone. It would make much more sense to have the set drop in Sapiarch motif, an organization native to the zone. This would also mean that at least 1/3rd of the zone sets could be decon'ed for a chance at a Culanda material. This would at least bring in a continual flow of the Culanda materials needed for the furnishing recipes.

This brings us to the new jewelrycrafting sketches. When you introduced the very much loathed grains-of-tempers system, I assume it was to make upgrading jewelry equipment more tedious and hard. I do not assume it was to make the new furnishing recipes just as tedious and hard. But since every jewelry furnishing recipe will require 2 tempers (green, blue, purple or gold), you have achieved just that. No one sells these items on guild traders, even the blue and purple furnishings cost materials of 30-40k to make. Even when I have farmed a huge amount of jewelry dust, I can still only make 2 or 3 of these items for myself, and it is unfairly punishing when you decide to use your jewelry tempers for furnishings instead of upgrading jewelry.
I suggest that you cut the temper cost in half, so that each jewelry furnishing will require 1 temper material instead of 2 to make, which is still essentially 10 temper parts, and thus much more than any other craft. That would at least make the jewelrycrafting furnishing recipes a bit more accessible, while still keeping them more than twice or thrice as hard to make as any other craft.

You have shown that you are willing to look into this issue with the proposed changes to Culandas in the PTS notes. I ask that you go a bit further with both the Culandas and the jewelry furnishing recipes, to take off some of the negative grind that is associated with Summerset so far.

Tl;dr: Change Gryphon zone set into Sapiarch motif, and cut temper requirement for all jewelry sketches from 2 full upgrade tempers to 1.

kind_hero

Fully agree with this. It is so hard to find Culanda! When I want to craft something from Alinor, I need to spend more than 30 mins browsing traders and traveling to various trading hubs to find some Culanda, which is usually overpriced. These furnishings also do not sell well, because of their high cost to make, which is really sad, because the furnishings are really well done. I wonder if the developers could increase the resolution texture for the older furnishings.

I would also ask to add planters only with soil in it (like we have already seen in the game), so we can place whatever flowers/plants we like.

Luthivar

I absolutely disagree here. I can't believe that purple furniture was ever meant to be sold for around 2k gold /u in guild stores. Instead, they should have implemented an equivalent to culanda lacquer for the base game and mw. Housing until Summerset suffered abundace and felt in no way "rewarding"; you didn't have to do anything to craft furniture but to farm guild stores. In my opinion culanda lacquer and brass shouldn't even be tradeable (saying that as a furniture seller; I make 200k a week for practically doing nothing but to farm mats in guild stores).

10-12k per furniture in guild stores is absolutely fine. It equals the value of items sold from the npc furniture vendors.
If culanda lacquer is as rare as you say, raise your prices again. After I stopped letting undercutters chase me, I sell maybe 2-3 Alinor items per day in 3 guild stores, that's 4-6 lacquer I need and no problem for me. I'm just not as greedy as most of the furniture crafters.

Carbonised

Luthivar wrote: »

I absolutely disagree here. I can't believe that purple furniture was ever meant to be sold for around 2k gold /u in guild stores. Instead, they should have implemented an equivalent to culanda lacquer for the base game and mw. Housing until Summerset suffered abundace and felt in no way "rewarding"; you didn't have to do anything to craft furniture but to farm guild stores. In my opinion culanda lacquer and brass shouldn't even be tradeable (saying that as a furniture seller; I make 200k a week for practically doing nothing but to farm mats in guild stores).

10-12k per furniture in guild stores is absolutely fine. It equals the value of items sold from the npc furniture vendors.
If culanda lacquer is as rare as you say, raise your prices again. After I stopped letting undercutters chase me, I sell maybe 2-3 Alinor items per day in 3 guild stores, that's 4-6 lacquer I need and no problem for me. I'm just not as greedy as most of the furniture crafters.

What a load of rubbish. One recipe alone costs upwards to 400k. Not to mention 1-2k in mats to craft them, and on my server, several furnishing base mats are completely out of stock on all guild traders, so you either have to pay overprice or farm a paltry few yourself.

You may care nothing about having readily access to furniture, but I'm sure the people who buy my stuff for 1M+ each week sure appreciate me making it available to them for their houses. Not everyone is a crafter or have these 400k recipes themselves. It's how I make my living, as opposed to farming difficult vet content for motifs and stuff. I profit, the ones who buy my furniture profit, as without me they wouldn't have access to it at all, and everyone's happy.

I can just keep on ignoring Alinor furnishing and sell all the other stuff I can craft, I make plenty of money off of that, and then none of these items will be available for the broader public. In case you failed to notice, this is regular, common furniture. All the gold stuff costs upwards to 10k per item, and there is a reason we have a guy called the Luxury Furnisher NPC, all the super expensive stuff goes there. And he regularly sells blue and purple quality items for only a few K, so the prices are very much in tune with that.

And in case you failed to notice this as well, it's not merely about the price for furnishing items, the Culanda to make them is in such scarcity that it's always sold out everywhere and prices continue soaring. And what do you think will happen once people stop doing the dailies as much as they do now? For that time will come. Why do you think Bonemold ingredients were close to 5k a piece at the time they introduced the Hlaalu gong and turtle.

In any case, you're in a clear minority, as my original post about the Culandas on the main forum will show.

Luthivar

"load of rubbish", "In case you failed to notice..."

Yes, I'm stupid. And know what? I'm out of this discussion. Come back when you act like an educated grown up and can deal with different opinions.

Two last cents: If you stop selling Alinor furniture because nobody buys it (which is not true), there won't be anybody who misses it. All I get is your frustration of selling less than you expected. Second: prices for furniture plans are down to 60-100k in most cases. If you bought them for 400k (like I did with a few) and expect to get your investments back in no time, that's what I call greedy and it's absolutely not the problem of ZOS. You will earn enough on the long run!

Carbonised

Luthivar wrote: »

"load of rubbish", "In case you failed to notice..."

Yes, I'm stupid. And know what? I'm out of this discussion. Come back when you act like an educated grown up and can deal with different opinions.

Two last cents: If you stop selling Alinor furniture because nobody buys it (which is not true), there won't be anybody who misses it. All I get is your frustration of selling less than you expected. Second: prices for furniture plans are down to 60-100k in most cases. If you bought them for 400k (like I did with a few) and expect to get your investments back in no time, that's what I call greedy and it's absolutely not the problem of ZOS. You will earn enough on the long run!

When recipes cost 200k to 400k per item, it's a load of rubbish to claim it's easy peasy to get into the furnishing market.
And yes, the ultra popular ones like purple wisteria box do cost 400k on my server - still. And the timeworn bookcase and others still sit at 300kish. And in case you failed to notice, there's a nerf coming to the #1 farming spot next patch, so expect prices to increase again.

Like I plainly wrote in my post, it's nothing about my personal gain. I make more than a M every week selling plain old Redguard, Vvardenfell and other non-Alinor furniture, without the hassle of trying to find overpriced Culandas. I don't buy 400k recipes to try and get the coin back, I buy them for myself, so I can make whatever furniture I like in my many homes. I don't need more gold, I just feel pity for a furniture market that could have expanded into Alinor furniture, and brought those items to the sellers as well, for reasonable prices. Instead we see people fighting over the last few Culandas left at the traders, and prices for common blue and purple furniture that are out of reach for many of the casual players.

I am not selling Alinor furnishings, I am saving my precious few Culandas for my own needs, and right now I can create just about 18 pieces of furniture with the ones I got. Colour me unimpressed.

Here is my original post, and you can judge yourself on the feedback it received. There are always a few nay-sayers like yourself, who like to hold the contrary opinion, but the vast majority of the response to my post was agreement. Even ZOS agrees to some extent, as is evident from this very PTS and changes to Culanda drops. I can deal with disagreement, but it looks to me like you're the one who's in the wrong here.

Jayne_Doe

I haven't bothered to look at Alinor furnishings at guild traders on XB NA, so I don't know how much is out there. But, judging by the current drop rate of Culandas, I can't imagine the stock is as much as even Vvardenfell furnishings were, even with the punishing drop-rate on plans.

On XB NA, though, the Alinor plans themselves are fairly reasonable and readily available. I've been holding off on buying any, as I've been waiting for prices to fall further, given the availability. However, since they are going to nerf the #1 farming spot, then I'll have to start doing some purchasing and increase my own farming.

I wholeheartedly agree on the jewelry furnishings. Requiring even two platings to craft? Sheesh!

Vahrokh

I am selling tons of Culanda Laquer as of today and this when it's claimed to be "rare".

Saccarius

Carbonised wrote: »

You may care nothing about having readily access to furniture, but I'm sure the people who buy my stuff for 1M+ each week sure appreciate me making it available to them for their houses. Not everyone is a crafter or have these 400k recipes themselves. It's how I make my living, as opposed to farming difficult vet content for motifs and stuff. I profit, the ones who buy my furniture profit, as without me they wouldn't have access to it at all, and everyone's happy.

I couldn't agree more. I craft a little for myself and I enjoy decorating the few house I have but I don't play enough to turn crafting into a money maker so I can't justify spending the ridiculous amounts of money it costs to buy most purple furniture recipes so I rely on furniture crafters to sell the items I need. But Alinor furniture is way too expensive because it's too expensive/time consuming to craft one single item because of the lack of culanda lacquer.

This trend of making new decoration styles more and more inaccessible is taking the whole fun out of it for me. Starting with Morrowind, every item that should have been green was at least blue and everything else was purple on top of the recipes being insanely rare. I never did buy a MW house (and it would have been for Crowns because I don't have the gold) because I knew I'd never be able to furnish it but I did buy the Townhouse furnished and I regret it because I can't finish it off unless I'm willing to spend more real life money than I did when I overpaid for the thing in the first place.

I realise that all of you who have played since launch are all multi-millionaires by now but I only have 400k to my name and it's the most I've ever had. I'd rather use that money to fully furnish one of the older houses in the classic styles than bother with new homes and that annoys me when I've spent real money on the expansion and real money on the home and now the only way for me to furnish it in any reasonable amount of time is to spend a LOT more real money on individual pieces. I just feel like I'm being fleeced. I don't except to have all the coolest looking furniture handed to me but why is a bookcase or a stool so bloody expensive?

ZOS pushed me away from this game last year because of RNG Crown Crates containing all the best looking stuff in the game but I came back because of a few QoL improvements, especially the outfit system (bit of a letdown) but it turns out that the money grubbing has only gotten worse (Radiant Apex rewards, seriously?). Anyone who thinks it's OK to lock cosmetic items behind a paywall because that's not pay2win needs to consider that for some of us "winning" means cool mounts, houses, furniture, outfits and living the fantasy life and looking the part.

So I'm playing less and less again and considering letting my ESO+ lapse because I already spent too much damn money on this racket. It's the cycle I seem to go through with every MMO I play. I get sucked in, spend way to much money, feel like crap and then leave. I guess that business model must work for them but surely if everything was a bit more reasonable, then a player like me would spend less in one go but more overall because I'd stay longer and then you'd have a loyal paying customer who only had good things to say instead of "ESO Housing is cool but don't go down that rabbit hole if you want a life outside the game or any money left in your bank account when you're done furnishing just ONE house."

Mix

I would like to see a set drop in Sapiarch style to help with Culanda acquiring.

I would like ZoS to look at the rare style items in general (Dwarven stuff needs a huge reduction in the amount of Frames needed to craft!)

@Vahrokh You might want to define "tonnes" of Culanda for us.

Right now you can do 6 delve, 6 world boss and the Geyser and if you are REALLY lucky you could get 13 Culanda per day per character. That is a lot of dailies to do on many characters and the drop rate is such that you might get 4 or 5 per character instead of the max.

I think it is more tedious than anything else and you have to do a LOT of dailies to get enough to furnish a whole house in Alinor lol.

SenorCrouch

Luthivar wrote: »

I absolutely disagree here. I can't believe that purple furniture was ever meant to be sold for around 2k gold /u in guild stores. Instead, they should have implemented an equivalent to culanda lacquer for the base game and mw. Housing until Summerset suffered abundace and felt in no way "rewarding"; you didn't have to do anything to craft furniture but to farm guild stores. In my opinion culanda lacquer and brass shouldn't even be tradeable (saying that as a furniture seller; I make 200k a week for practically doing nothing but to farm mats in guild stores).

10-12k per furniture in guild stores is absolutely fine. It equals the value of items sold from the npc furniture vendors.
If culanda lacquer is as rare as you say, raise your prices again. After I stopped letting undercutters chase me, I sell maybe 2-3 Alinor items per day in 3 guild stores, that's 4-6 lacquer I need and no problem for me. I'm just not as greedy as most of the furniture crafters.

I have to strongly disagree here, but then again you are coming at this from the perspective of a stock broker where as I am coming at this as a level designer. I am not looking for housing or furnishing to be as an "End Game Reward". When inspiration hits on how to furnish a portion of a house I don't want to sit there being restricted by the rarity of an item that is so hard to obtain that it will take an egregious amount of time to farm or a ridiculous amount of gold to obtain.

For the first time in ESO's history there are finally some good quality building blocks for housing and yet they are very difficult to build/obtain in bulk. Building Blocks should always be the cheapest items to obtain since it will be the items most commonly used to create foundations to structures. Where as ornate, decorative items should always be the ones more expensive as not many are needed and yet are the most important to bring life into a space.

I am happy to see Culanda having its drop rate increased, but I still feel there is room for more avenues to obtain Culanda.

Carbonised

Turn Gryphon set into Sapiarch style, and that's a good addition to the other Culanda changes this patch.

Also, it still makes no sense from a lore perspective to have a Summerset drop in an Ayleid/Ancient Elf style.

Plus, could you please make all jewelry sketched require ONE upgrade temper instead of two?
One temper is still the equivalent of 10 normal tempers for all the other crafts. Don't punish jewelrycrafting furnishing items because you want to have gold jewelry rare. ONE green/blue/purple/gold temper for a housing item, which again corresponds to 10 tempers of all the other crafts, is plenty enough.