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

Zathras

Carbonised wrote: »

Acrolas wrote: »

Also, you can keep trying to defend it any way you like, but there's no denying that the recipe grind, and style mat grind, has been increasing with every DLC, as other people in this thread have already confirmed, and we believe that the threshold of unreasonable wasting of time farming this nonsense has been met a while ago.

^^ Quoted for truth.

What the Devs need to realize, is that their playerbase has not only caught on to their tactics to funnel us into the Cash Shop, but that we have gotten fatigued by the transparency of it all.

We are no longer at the beginning of this cycle, where one example can be defended as an outlier. There is a solid ~2 years of concerted effort to gradually, then full on, introduce punishing grind and absurd scarcity to make the Cash Shop alternative a sigh of relief to end the pain.

Given the sheer amount of feedback each and every time something like this happens, it makes me wonder why they make it worse. Oh, right.. $$$. What they aren't taking into consideration (or maybe they are, who knows) is the bad reputation this has been giving their game. Gameplay/lore..awesome. Monetization..terribad. Given how the focus on their Cash Shop expands exponentially, their ratings can't help but slide even further.

MornaBaine

Just another reason why I won't be buying Murkmire or doing its content. Actually, it's the main reason.

Khaleesi8688

Adding my voice to the choir.... I really like the Lakemire house that's yet to be released. But I make my own furnishings. After finally decorating the free villa last week and spending a good 400k on culandas I have no desire to go thru something similar again with a different house. Giving everyone a free mansion will have the opposite effect they were going for if all it does is show people how costly furnishing a house can be. If I can't decorate a house with relative ease, why would I buy another one ZOS? I will not spend over a hundred dollars on a house and then spend another hundred to decorate it.

weedgenius

Zathras wrote: »

Carbonised wrote: »

Also, you can keep trying to defend it any way you like, but there's no denying that the recipe grind, and style mat grind, has been increasing with every DLC, as other people in this thread have already confirmed, and we believe that the threshold of unreasonable wasting of time farming this nonsense has been met a while ago.

^^ Quoted for truth.

What the Devs need to realize, is that their playerbase has not only caught on to their tactics to funnel us into the Cash Shop, but that we have gotten fatigued by the transparency of it all.

We are no longer at the beginning of this cycle, where one example can be defended as an outlier. There is a solid ~2 years of concerted effort to gradually, then full on, introduce punishing grind and absurd scarcity to make the Cash Shop alternative a sigh of relief to end the pain.

Given the sheer amount of feedback each and every time something like this happens, it makes me wonder why they make it worse. Oh, right.. $$$. What they aren't taking into consideration (or maybe they are, who knows) is the bad reputation this has been giving their game. Gameplay/lore..awesome. Monetization..terribad. Given how the focus on their Cash Shop expands exponentially, their ratings can't help but slide even further.

There is SO MUCH truth to this! I'm jaded and not excited for future content anymore because the grind for things I care about (motifs, patterns, collectables) has only gotten worse and worse since I started playing earlier this year. At first, I cared about collecting these things and completing motifs and whatnot but it has become beyond obvious to me that ZOS's priority is getting me to buy things in the Crown Store, not earn them myself. It's tiring and frankly feels disrespectful to me as a player.

NoTimeToWait

Actually, monetization is the least of all housing problems. Especially compared to some other MMOs.

Collecting motifs and blueprints is bad though. Just consider it an endgame in farming playstyle. You need to be really 1337 player to be able to compete in this area. You need to pull at least 15 toons per hour to be able to afford your house and you have to stand Tythis while he stands (in one place).

Anotherone773

@MornaBaine Murkmire is free with the Nov login rewards. Why would you buy it?

NoTimeToWait wrote: »

Actually, monetization is the least of all housing problems. Especially compared to some other MMOs.

Your right, the biggest problems with housing are:

1) not near enough space even with ESO plus. Space needs to be doubled on small and medium homes. Tripled on large homes and quadrupled on notable.

2) Way to many limited time crown exclusive homes. Killing my interest in housing. It is also killing my wife's interest in housing which is literally the only reason she plays this game and she is an ESO plus member.

3) Not near enough small and Medium gold houses. The ones we get are just empty versions of an existing building in game which is ok but not that exciting.

4) Housing has a lot of potential to lure players in and keep players playing. However ZOS is very short sighted on housing and only looking to make a quick buck instead of making it something that many people really want to invest both time and money in. Sure you have whales that will buy anything you put in front of them, but there is a whole untapped market out there. Right now, we are being sold houses that dont have enough slots to decorate and dont really have a lot of function or make it a place we want to spend time. You have to lure in some of the people that just dont spend money on everything you put a price tag on.

Carbonised

Three pages of pretty much agreement with my OP. Would be nice if ZOS staff at least would consider looking into this, and have some discussions with the itemization and furnishing team.

weedgenius

Anotherone773 wrote: »

Housing has a lot of potential to lure players in and keep players playing. However ZOS is very short sighted on housing and only looking to make a quick buck instead of making it something that many people really want to invest both time and money in. Sure you have whales that will buy anything you put in front of them, but there is a whole untapped market out there. Right now, we are being sold houses that dont have enough slots to decorate and dont really have a lot of function or make it a place we want to spend time. You have to lure in some of the people that just dont spend money on everything you put a price tag on.

I agree with this completely, I definitely think they are going about it the wrong way and losing out in the long term. I read a really good comment when I was looking at the old PTS housing feedback thread about this:

Tandor wrote: »

I haven't explored all the achievements and crafting arrangements yet but can well believe that they will provide a major amount of content and enjoyment for many, myself included, and as such could represent both a time sink and gold sink as well as a significant revenue option for ZOS through the Crown Store. However, if the houses are generally too small and over-priced then people won't actually get to the stage of appreciating all the extra features that come with them. The house purchase itself needs to be seen almost as a loss-leader to draw the players into the extra time, gold, and Crown commitments that will be hugely advantageous to both them and ZOS.

Instead of just pumping out mansions twice a year and slapping a $100 price tag on them, big/new houses should be more accessible to the average player because that is how they will get more people to spend more time and crowns with decorating over time. Seems obvious but I guess the suits see those thousands of dollars in instant sales when their 15k limited time crown exclusive mansions hit the store and think "MORE!"

Zathras

weedgenius wrote: »

Zathras wrote: »

Carbonised wrote: »

Also, you can keep trying to defend it any way you like, but there's no denying that the recipe grind, and style mat grind, has been increasing with every DLC, as other people in this thread have already confirmed, and we believe that the threshold of unreasonable wasting of time farming this nonsense has been met a while ago.

^^ Quoted for truth.

What the Devs need to realize, is that their playerbase has not only caught on to their tactics to funnel us into the Cash Shop, but that we have gotten fatigued by the transparency of it all.

We are no longer at the beginning of this cycle, where one example can be defended as an outlier. There is a solid ~2 years of concerted effort to gradually, then full on, introduce punishing grind and absurd scarcity to make the Cash Shop alternative a sigh of relief to end the pain.

Given the sheer amount of feedback each and every time something like this happens, it makes me wonder why they make it worse. Oh, right.. $$$. What they aren't taking into consideration (or maybe they are, who knows) is the bad reputation this has been giving their game. Gameplay/lore..awesome. Monetization..terribad. Given how the focus on their Cash Shop expands exponentially, their ratings can't help but slide even further.

There is SO MUCH truth to this! I'm jaded and not excited for future content anymore because the grind for things I care about (motifs, patterns, collectables) has only gotten worse and worse since I started playing earlier this year. At first, I cared about collecting these things and completing motifs and whatnot but it has become beyond obvious to me that ZOS's priority is getting me to buy things in the Crown Store, not earn them myself. It's tiring and frankly feels disrespectful to me as a player.

What really bothers me, is that even though you pay your subscription, you are treated to F2P monetization tactics.

MasterSpatula

I swear, I haven't found anything, and I do mean anything, in Murkmire containers other than provisioning resources.

MornaBaine

Zathras wrote: »

weedgenius wrote: »

Zathras wrote: »

Carbonised wrote: »

Also, you can keep trying to defend it any way you like, but there's no denying that the recipe grind, and style mat grind, has been increasing with every DLC, as other people in this thread have already confirmed, and we believe that the threshold of unreasonable wasting of time farming this nonsense has been met a while ago.

^^ Quoted for truth.

What the Devs need to realize, is that their playerbase has not only caught on to their tactics to funnel us into the Cash Shop, but that we have gotten fatigued by the transparency of it all.

We are no longer at the beginning of this cycle, where one example can be defended as an outlier. There is a solid ~2 years of concerted effort to gradually, then full on, introduce punishing grind and absurd scarcity to make the Cash Shop alternative a sigh of relief to end the pain.

Given the sheer amount of feedback each and every time something like this happens, it makes me wonder why they make it worse. Oh, right.. $$$. What they aren't taking into consideration (or maybe they are, who knows) is the bad reputation this has been giving their game. Gameplay/lore..awesome. Monetization..terribad. Given how the focus on their Cash Shop expands exponentially, their ratings can't help but slide even further.

There is SO MUCH truth to this! I'm jaded and not excited for future content anymore because the grind for things I care about (motifs, patterns, collectables) has only gotten worse and worse since I started playing earlier this year. At first, I cared about collecting these things and completing motifs and whatnot but it has become beyond obvious to me that ZOS's priority is getting me to buy things in the Crown Store, not earn them myself. It's tiring and frankly feels disrespectful to me as a player.

What really bothers me, is that even though you pay your subscription, you are treated to F2P monetization tactics.

THAT right there totally frosts me. I could not possibly agree more.

mikegundy

You could of just stopped at "another huge let down".

Carbonised

MasterSpatula wrote: »

I swear, I haven't found anything, and I do mean anything, in Murkmire containers other than provisioning resources.

Like I write in a post above, I also find a large amount of provisioning ingredients in normal containers such as cabinets and trunks. These containers usually don't drop these kinds of ingredients, you normall have to loot specific containers such as barrels and burlap bags to find these. So I have a strong suspicion that ZOS diluted the loottables of containers in the Murkmire zone, to make the Murkmire recipes even rarer than usual.

SantieClaws

This one has also observed that the lootable treasures of Murkmire, unlike in other places, do not have a category. Meaning they are not presently useable for quests such as the hoarding countess or the crows in the Clockwork City.

Khajiit was able to make this observation as she must have acquired many hundreds of them in pursuit of the recipe for a chair she eventually acquired.

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

redlink1979

Yup, drops rates of some stuff it's a pure shame. I got 2 sketches so far from all my furnishings farming (since Summerset was released)...

ZOS - for your information: If I can't get furnishings to ble able to craft stuff for my houses, my houses will remain empty because I WON'T SPEND A SINGLE CROWN on furniture packs.

Pyxbites

I agree - the drop rates are awful and the hackwing situation is depressing. I've farmed several hours every day since launch on two characters optimized for crime and I've looted 3 green recipes.

Good luck zos selling me the murkmire ziggurat when I won't be able to craft furniture to furnish it.