Murkmire - another huge let down from the housing/furniture/itemization team

Carbonised

So, Murkmire landed, and many of us have had the opportunity to get a feel of the new furniture recipes, the droprates and the required materials, and much like with the Summerset and Culanda fiasco, my impression of Murkmire is unfortunately largely negative. This primarily due to two factors:

Droprate for recipes is way too tiny, and farming places way too few
Murkmire has extremely few containers that actually can contain recipes. Compared to Summerset and Vvardenfell, the amount of lootable bags, desks, wardrobes etc in Murkmire is just way too tiny. It's more comparable to Clockwork City, though even the Brass City in Clockwork has more containers you can loot than Lilmoth does. Doesn't help that up to a third of all the containers at any given time are shown as "opened", and therefore unlootable. Way too few farming places and way too tiny a droprate means the amount of recipes in circulation is way too small, and prices therefore crossing a million or more for a single purple recipe, and up to 500k or more for a blue. Sorry but a mil per recipe or half for a blue doesn't really strike me as a healthy balance.

Why is it that ZOS insists on showering us with motif sources? Motifs are easily farmed, you can usually buy them cheapish after a while, and we even have anniversary event that pretty much showers everyone with motifs for next to no price. Beyond that, all motifs are available in crown store or crown crates. But recipes are solely found by farming zone containers and hopening for a slim to none chance to actually get a DLC theme recipe and not just base game trash recipes which you find 19 times out of 20. There are 3 dailies in Murkmire, you could easily have included the recipes in the loottables, instead of only the motif.

ZOS repeats the style mat fiasco of the Culandas
So, Summerset gave us no set in Sapiarch style, but (at first) a chance per daily do get a Culanda drop. Murkmire repeats this terrible scheme, just the other way around. This time we get NO hackwing materials from the dailies, but an equipment piece instead. 1/3 of these pieces will be set in the useless Dead Water style, which only decons for croc hides. The two other set pieces will potentially decon into a hackwing mat, but only with RNG chance. So when you do a daily, you get a random chance to get the right set peice, then have to decon it for another random chance at a style mat - of course disregarding jewelry pieces. Already hackwing mats is up to 4-5k a piece, and there's little to none of them for sale anywhere at all. Who on earth thought this was a great way to source out required furnishing style mats after the Culanda let down we had last time?

ZOS is continually souring my furniture and housing experience by sourcing the recipes behind terrible RNG and extremely low dropchances, while gating the style mats behind RNG and dailies as well. Vvardenfell, after the documents and the increased droprate, worked well. Clockwork city and Tempered Brass also worked well. But after Summerset, and now also with Murkmire, you continually make the furnishing grind more and more inaccessible, no doubt to coerce people into your convenient shop to buy the stuff instead. Maybe it works for some people, but for me I'll just refrain from buying anything Murkmire related. No house, no furniture, this is what you get when you pull a stupid scheme like this once again.

And here are some constructive suggestions to alleviate some of the terrible implementation that you did:
- Have Murk recipes drop in the upcoming Undaunted Dungeon event. You did this with Clockwork city as well, and you should do it with Murk as well, to put more of these recipes into circulation.
- Have each daily in Murk at least drop one guaranteed hackwing mat like the dailies in Summerset drop one Culanda
- Add more lootable containers in Murk so you actually have a fair chance of farming some of these recipes, and look at the droprate so we don't get 19 out of 20 of the base game trash recipes. It's a DLC zone, it should drop DLC recipes. How many times do we need to repeat this?
- In future DLC, source furniture recipes behind other sources than only looting containers. Why not include them in the daily quest loottable along with motifs?

prof-dracko

When I started Murkmire I looted about three plans a rug and a tapestry within a few hours. I thought the drop rate was alright. That was day 1, and I haven't found a single thing since. RNGesus was with me that day, then flew out the window on what I can only assume were wings made of salt and irony. The drop rates are really ridiculous for these things.

Mavor

I second this.

Alpheu5

Carbonised wrote: »

Why is it that ZOS insists on showering us with motif sources?

They're showering us with motifs, but not their sources anymore. When motifs used to have decent drop rates it was actually fun to farm for them (Xivkyn, EP/DC/AD styles, TG and DB) because you could passively encounter them while playing the content or dedicate time to farming them outright. But now nearly all of them have a time gate or such an extensive grind to complete the set that it makes the Hema research farm in Warframe look like a cakewalk.

Katahdin

I agree, it sucks the fun out of the housing stuff.

But here is a hint: furniture pattern are rare because hey want us to buy furniture from the crown store packs and from the housing crown store, which I will do in very limited fashion. If I can craft it, I won't buy it. If they continue making stuff unavailable in game, I just won't spend any more crowns on it period.

laurajf

I gave up on trying to get furniture recipes and subsequently gave up on housing some time ago. I suppose it's good in a way because I no longer spend money on overpriced houses on the store. I also do not buy the furniture from the store because I think it's too expensive.

I reinstalled another game with housing that I used to play. I don't actually do any questing or crafting or anything else in that game. I just go there now because ESO's housing is too frustrating and expensive and this other game got the housing right.

While you don't craft furniture in this other game, furniture is easily obtainable and not expensive (in the game or on the company's store). You can resize furniture. Many plots of land are empty and flat, allowing you to make your own structures/houses. Some properties allow for 2000 furniture slots (it may even be 2500 now but can't remember offhand).

Sorry ESO. You dropped the ball on this one. While I don't think you'll ever get to the point where you can give us housing like the game above, making it less expense and with less grind would go a long way.

Acrolas

Murkmire's only been out for a week. Distribution will always favor somebody in the beginning, partly from persistence, partly from proximity, and partly from luck.

I think we're comfortable at the rate we have. The trader in me likes having reasons to revisit zones for inventory. Clockwork City is still a strong trader source... except for the one switch plan that ZOS over-distributed straight to the clearance bin.

Synthwavius

inb4 furniture reciepes drops in next loot event, prices drop from 30k to 500 gold and destroyed market just like the anniversary event

VaranisArano

Housing was always intended to be a grind and a time sink. But yeah, ZOS keeps making the grind worse.

Jayne_Doe

I'm still trying to reconcile myself to the fact that housing is designed as a revenue stream, and so ZOS does as much as possible to get players to spend real money on housing, while still providing the allure of crafting and decorating one's home via in-game means.

The lure of crafting our own furniture was probably for many the main draw, initially, of purchasing homes, until we encountered the slot limits and also realized there wasn't much to actually DO in them.

Then, they started cranking out the exclusive and monstrous CS homes for lots of crowns. But, the slot limits remain a deterrent for some who might otherwise purchase them.

Then, with MW, they started gating recipes behind really harsh RNG, until almost a year later we got furnishing documents for them. Then, they tried giving us better access (initially) to the SS recipes, but severely gated the acquisition of the style mat for them.

These efforts are, no doubt, designed to funnel more players to the CS. Like the OP, it has the opposite effect on me. I have no interest in the Xanmeer home, although I've wanted one since player housing was introduced. But, like the Grotto, they gave us something we wanted, in a setting designed to justify charging more Crowns. And, with the new recipes extremely hard to find and extremely difficult to make? Nah, no thanks.

I still have several houses to decorate (including the Villa), as well as a number of homes yet to buy (with gold). Now, that's not to say that I would never buy a CS exclusive home (I did purchase Tel Galen), nor that I would never buy a home with Crowns (I bought both Amaya and the Townhouse with Crowns), but purposely sucking out the fun of collecting recipes and crafting furniture so that presumably they can generate more CS sales just turns me off from buying anything housing-related in the CS.

Jayne_Doe

VaranisArano wrote: »

Housing was always intended to be a grind and a time sink. But yeah, ZOS keeps making the grind worse.

It is that way for a couple reasons, I think. One, of course, is to give us long-term projects - something to work toward and sink a lot of time, and gold, into. The other reason is, I would argue, to generate CS sales.

While I do think it's fair to have housing as a revenue-generator in an MMO, since it's optional and largely cosmetic, it becomes discouraging when the in-game means that they created and touted in the beginning (the things that got many of us excited about housing) have become more and more of a grind. The harsher/more punishing the grind becomes, the less likely I am to remain interested/invested in housing.

biovitalb16_ESO

It's the same old routine with ZOS. Droprates of the race the expansion/DLC focuses on is pathetically low and in the future we will see,

"You are now more likely to get a Murkmire related plan while farming in Murkmire"...just like they did with Vvardenfell, Clockwork City and Summerset. They do it to force people to use the crown store.

MyNameIsElias

I was really interested in buying the Murkmire walkway for my house, but i can't find a single furnishing plan for it on the entire server. Someone is selling the crafted item for 25k an item though Oh and the furnishing recipe for the walkway is green

Sheezabeast

there are too few homes to burgle, and items to loot. i agree

Sylvermynx

I wish we could have the same system used in RIFT. Now THAT was a premier housing system. The rest of the game - meh, they went a direction I wasn't interested in. I'm considering going back though, just for the quality housing experience.

WeylandLabs

Only if they made housing decor an Esport 😂

weedgenius

Carbonised wrote: »

Beyond that, all motifs are available in crown store or crown crates. But recipes are solely found by farming zone containers and hopening for a slim to none chance to actually get a DLC theme recipe and not just base game trash recipes which you find 19 times out of 20. There are 3 dailies in Murkmire, you could easily have included the recipes in the loottables, instead of only the motif.

Someone else mentioned above but I want to reiterate because I do think the crown store is at the heart of this. ZOS don't want you to have the recipes, even if they sell them to you, because then you can (theoretically) craft an unlimited amount of the furnishings for yourself, your friends, and to put up for sale in the guild traders. That leads to less crown purchases of the individual furnishings through the Housing Editor and less interest in buying the datamined Murkmire furnishing pack(s) when they hit the crown store.

Bottom line is that by making it harder to craft the desirable furnishings through limited style mats and rare plan drops ZOS is purposely funneling housing enthusiasts to the crown store. And guess what? It WORKS because this is the same pool of people who will spend literally $100 on whatever new crown exclusive mansion they push out.

MornaBaine

Since I'm not a huge Argonian far I'm not buying Murkmire and I'm not going to be doing content there. There are a few nice furniture pieces that would work well outside of Argonian themed stuff but with, once again, laughable drop rates for plans and an obscene lack of style mats, I just have zero interest in any of it. Maybe 6 months from now we'll see what the situation is. Nice way to continue to make your players angry and disappointed ZO$.

Carbonised

@weedgenius I know the store is the main reason behind this. I even write it in the OP. That doesn't mean it doesn't deserve being called out, every time they make the grind for recipes and style mats even more grindy and time consuming. It's bad behaviour, and that deserves to be called out, no matter if it results in any changes or not. Besides, if the outcry is large enough, ZOS does backpedal, like they did with Culandas, with Pyandonean motif etc.

@Acrolas The only people who are happy with the current droprate are the ones scouring the market, buying up every recipe no matter the cost to ensure their monopoly, then continue to sell Murk items with a crafting cost of less than 5k for 25k on the market and get even richer off of it.
It doesn't really matter that the content is new, for two reasons. One, if farming spots are few and far in between, the prices will never drop. CWC recipes managed to stay very pricey for a year after release, even with the dungeon event bonanza after release. Murk recipes have not gone through a drop bonanza yet, though hopefully they will, with the upcoming dungeon event. Also, Murk farming spots and containers are even worse than Brass City, a lot worse actually. Do you see any drop in the prices of purple Ayleid and the 5 rare purple Dwarven? They are almost 2 years old by now.
Two, the style mat sourcing doesn't change with time either, the supply stays the same, and as more people learn more recipes, the demand actually goes up. I made this post about the lack of Culandas right after Summerset released, and lo and behold, it turned out to be absolutely correct. Had it not been for the increase in Culanda drops and the reduction in Culanda requirements, it would have been nigh impossible to find any for sale at all. Even as it is, Culanda prices have been steady at about 3k for a long time, with a spike to 6k or more with the Psijic house release. Who knows what the situation looks like a year from now with a new chapter, when very few people run the dailies.
The situation with the hackwing mats is even worse than the Culandas, and we don't need the passing of time to verify that.

Frawr

I lost motivation to do housing in ESO when I realised that IRL crafting for my IRL house was actually less of a time sink compared to ESO

robpr

While I agree that there is not enough containers to loot, but its also an issue that all "empty" you see happen because someone already looted them. It's the same case with Alinor - I searched whole city for safeboxes and couldn't find any, so I decided to trespass one of houses. Found some blue treasures, time to go back. By the time I was at the door, 2 players were already in.
I wish containers had separate loot for everyone rather than sneak race who get the loot first.

Carbonised

robpr wrote: »

While I agree that there is not enough containers to loot, but its also an issue that all "empty" you see happen because someone already looted them. It's the same case with Alinor - I searched whole city for safeboxes and couldn't find any, so I decided to trespass one of houses. Found some blue treasures, time to go back. By the time I was at the door, 2 players were already in.
I wish containers had separate loot for everyone rather than sneak race who get the loot first.

That's actually not correct. Safeboxes are indeed shared with other players, but all loot in all containers like bags, packs, counters, wardrobes and such are personally instanced and it doesn't matter if anyone else already looted them.
You could see that easily in the Traitor's Vault before the nerf, where the wardrobes were being farmed constantly by many people simultaneously.

I'm not sure what causes some containers to spawn "opened", it seems to be simply a random chance for any container at a given chance to be "already opened", that's my experience anyway, from having looted in many areas in many different characters.

NoTimeToWait

Synthwavius wrote: »

inb4 furniture reciepes drops in next loot event, prices drop from 30k to 500 gold and destroyed market just like the anniversary event

What market? I hardly ever see many of the default races' blue and purple recipes on the market. And when I do see them, that means the recipe was bought for 20-30k gold and being resold for 70-100k (for Redguard blueprints). This is ridiculous.

The Alinor blueprints that flooded the market during Vault exploit are now being traded 3-4 times more pricey, around 20-30k gold (I do see this as a reasonable price, but it could get more expensive due to reduction of supply).
The purple Alinor blueprints are still mostly inaccessible with 500k price per item.

Carbonised

NoTimeToWait wrote: »

Synthwavius wrote: »

inb4 furniture reciepes drops in next loot event, prices drop from 30k to 500 gold and destroyed market just like the anniversary event

What market? I hardly ever see many of the default races' blue and purple recipes on the market. And when I do see them, that means the recipe was bought for 20-30k gold and being resold for 70-100k (for Redguard blueprints). This is ridiculous.

The Alinor blueprints that flooded the market during Vault exploit are now being traded 3-4 times more pricey, around 20-30k gold (I do see this as a reasonable price, but it could get more expensive due to reduction of supply).
The purple Alinor blueprints are still mostly inaccessible with 500k price per item.

Indeed. I saw Alinor purples from 500k to 1M or more, after the farm nerf. CWC purples also sit at 500-600k easily, even though we had the bonanza of CWC recipes in the dungeon event. It's rediculous when a single furniture recipe costs more than several full motif books combined.

In comparison, the Welkynar motif book, probably the rarest and most expensive motif we currently have, was sold for 6k Crowns, which is less than 2M gold with the current conversion price. You can also buy the individual pages for around 2M for the full motif. So that's an entire motif book from the rarest motif in the game, or perhaps 2-3 purple furniture recipes. Doesn't really strike me as a healthy balance.

Ermiq

When the Homestead has been released, people were saying the drop rates for blueprints and mats are too low. I've been saying opposite, in my opinion the drop rates were ok. Purple furnishings had cost like 15-50k first weeks. Purple blueprints cost was like 30-60k.
I still think those rates and prices were reasonable.
But then Morrowind has been released and of course I've tried to farm some new blueprints and motifs. A week. Not a single one blueprint. Not even a green one. Not a single one Telvanni/Redoran motif page.
That day I realized ZOS gone too far with RNG, and they decided to make the housing be crown store exclusive feature.

AoEnwyr

I agree entirely with what you have said. The drop rate is insanely small, with so few places to farm. I have found two blue quality recipes and have been thieving and pickpocketing like mad since launch (not even to sell but for personal use because I love Argonian furniture).

Because there are only limited areas to farm, everyone is constantly running around killing npc's as well which is a bit of a pain, even if they do respawn fairly quickly. I can break into a house and the person will be walking around with their corpse-clone dead on the floor, it's a bit jarring.

As it stands, I'll probably leave Murkmire alone for now. The low furniture recipe and style mat drop rate, as well as what feels like a light on sprinkling of general crafting nodes means it's not a profitable place for me to be at the moment.

The balance between the thrill of finding a rare item and the frustration of days of farming with no results is way off here.

Carbonised

"Undaunted Celebration
We’re kicking off another dungeon event later this year to give you a chance to earn a number of in-game items, including the third Indrik feather!
To get started, simply utilize the Dungeon Finder and queue for a random Normal or Veteran dungeon.
Upon completion of the dungeon, you’ll receive a Mysterious Reward Box that contains a bevy of items, and could include one of the following:"

• Survey Reports
• Treasure Maps
• Undaunted Plunder
• Transmute Crystals
• Undaunted Keys
• Scalecaller Themed Pets
• Motif Chapters
• Mounts
• Houses

Last dungeon event last year included the Clockwork recipes in the loottable for Mystery Boxes. Including the Murkmire furniture recipes in the loottable for the dungeon event this year would go a long way in correcting some of the grievances we have with the droprate of these recipes.

Honestly who gives a thing about survey reports and treasure maps. Treasure maps are trash and we all spend hours already collecting surveys. And yet again you hand out motifs like candy, as if it wasn't enough that you shower everyone with motifs with the Anniversary event. Do we really need two annual events handing out motifs to everyone, on top of the usual sources for motifs, on top of Psijic portals and what not? You should include the Murkmire furniture recipes in the lootable to incentivize people actually participating in this event, as well as a counterweight to the extremely low droprate and low amount of lootable containers in the zone.

Saucy_Jack

What I don't understand is people listing purple murk plans for 2mil+. There was a purple ayleid on the NA/PC traders for 2mil, and it just sat for the longest time. Do these people honestly think purple murk plans are rarer than the purple ayleid? Because if so, I'll take a hit of whatever's in their pipe.

Frawr

NoTimeToWait wrote: »

Synthwavius wrote: »

inb4 furniture reciepes drops in next loot event, prices drop from 30k to 500 gold and destroyed market just like the anniversary event

What market? I hardly ever see many of the default races' blue and purple recipes on the market. And when I do see them, that means the recipe was bought for 20-30k gold and being resold for 70-100k (for Redguard blueprints). This is ridiculous.

The Alinor blueprints that flooded the market during Vault exploit are now being traded 3-4 times more pricey, around 20-30k gold (I do see this as a reasonable price, but it could get more expensive due to reduction of supply).
The purple Alinor blueprints are still mostly inaccessible with 500k price per item.

Since items are permanent in this game, it is simply a matter of time before prices drop. MM, for the many complaints about how it drives up prices, actually demonstrates perfectly the downward trend of the prices of motifs over time.

Take the Dremora motifs for example. when they first came out, my MM shows several guilds with sales at 49k per motif. Many of those are now down below 1k. The very first few sold for 49k before the real supply had kicked in because those very first players to buy them are desperate to have them and so they will pay massive amounts of gold for them.

Sure the more rare ones maintain more value, however, once the people with millions of gold have bought them (for 100k each or whatever) then the only people left to buy can/will only spend 50k or 25k or 5k - hence the price drops.

Passage of time devalues every 'single use' tradeable item in this game.

Deep_01

I think they want you to buy furnishings with crowns.

Carbonised

Frawr wrote: »

Passage of time devalues every 'single use' tradeable item in this game.

No it doesn't. Alinor recipes even went up with the passing of time. You completely ignore the fact that people spend their time on the new content and abandon the old content.

Basically all recipes, motifs and other DLC content follow a U curve. It starts out expensive, gets farmed/overfarmed, drops in price, then reaches a point where people abandon the farming to farm something else, and content gets old. Then the prices rise again due to rarity and scarcity. At that time it might get farmed again since prices are high, and you're in a cycle of increasing/decreasing prices.

All motifs and recipes have followed that cycle, heck, even crafting mats follow that cycle.

And to get back on topic, I just did 3 dailies in Murkmire today, got 5 pieces of Bright Throat equipment, 2 from delve/world bosses. Decon'ed all 5 for a grand total of 0 Hackwing materials. What a complete and utter failure to implement the sourcing of the style mats. This makes even Summerset and the Culandas seem downright generous in comparison.
ZOS, you need to make these Murkmire dailies drop a guaranteed Hackwing mat in ALL reward boxes, in addition to the equipment pieces ...

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_RobGarrett