PTS Update 23 - Feedback Thread for Jewelry Crafting Master Writ Improvements

RedBull_IR

BIG!!! thumbs up from me! 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

Addressing scarcity is a step in the right direction.

Dusk_Coven

Aznarb wrote: »

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

So basically everyone is now a jewelry Hireling. And every account is 1-18 hirelings. Hmm...

It's a good improvement, gonna lower price of these thing little by little.

RedBull_IR wrote: »

BIG!!! thumbs up from me! 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

Addressing scarcity is a step in the right direction.

TL;DR version: remove guaranteed drop and be careful about promoting alt-farming

Addressing scarcity is important. But the implications are disturbing.
What might happen is people start running a lot of alts -- guaranteed grain means possibly 1-2 plates per day at 8-18 alts. Each alt gets a chance at 2 grains instead of one, as well as a chance of a jackpot netting you 1 whole plate. So if they weren't running alts before, they sure as hell might now.

Price could become a secondary issue as we embark on a possibly new problem -- this may encourage too many alts. An excessive number of alts has typically led to all sorts of complications in various MMOs. We're already at 18, which is quite a lot. And once you increase the number of allowable alts, it's really, really, hard to decrease it because people don't like being told they have to delete an alt just to change it into something else.
If the go-to answer for master writ affordability is "farm more alts", that's not a good answer, IMO. That's starting to suggest people act like RMT bots. We must somehow avoid this.

(I honestly think instead of allowing more alts, they should have worked on class change in tandem with introducing the necromancer.
On the up side they might finally change Hirelings to auto-dump mats into the Crafting Bag once people are weighed down by all their alts and scream loudly enough at ZOS).

So either you farm your alts, or you just wait. Either way I don't see how ZOS expects this to achieve their other objectives, such as wanting people to actually do their writs.
If the people who buy plating now are not doing that to do master writs, then this is just a short-term cash grab for everyone until the price goes down -- which is fine. Except we are no closer to ZOS's objective of us wanting to do master writs.
Alternatively, people can draw the line at how many alts they want to farm, and just wait for the mats to pile up. Which means they are probably going to still destroy all master writs except for top-payout blues (if introduced) and golds.

As for price -- it could crash within a few months if botters and RMT and the rest of the player base really farm this (maybe even with multiple accounts!). And if the price crashes too low, master jewelry writs will become too good, especially if they also increase the voucher payout by the big numbers they've shown.
If the price does NOT crash... then we're right back where we started except with more inventory -- people trying to sell their mats because they are worth more that way than using them to do writs.

BenevolentBowd

I just started doing JC writ testing on PTS.

I have a couple of questions for my fellow crafters.

1. Do the items (intricate / ornate) reflect the crafters adventure level or crafting proficiency? It appears to be the adventure level.
2. Are improvement items always supposed to drop every time in the reward box? If so, I've had one case where I didn't get one.

Thanks.

Kolzki

tmbrinks wrote: »

Zulera301 wrote: »

having checked the new writs on the PTS, I can say that most of them short of Triune will be worth doing for me (thanks for removing swift BTW)
but my concern is the same as many others, in that the scarcity of Zircon is what I worry about the most. right now I've got about 48 Zircon in comparison to about 26 Chromium, and so if (when?) I get an excessive influx of purple jewel writs suddenly I'm going to run into the problem of a lack of Zircon.

(this is also actually low-key an issue I am starting to have with purple woodworking writs, although those materials are much more affordable.)

that said, the advent of a JC hireling could potentially alleviate the issue, because for most people it looks like the issue is more the rarity of purple than the rarity of gold, and that many people understand/are fine with the rarity of gold, for the most part.

just my 2¢ on the matter. in summary: Zircon is where JC is getting bottlenecked, and based on that, as well as remarks from other players in this thread/forum, that seems to be where the problem needs to be addressed the most/soonest.

Hopefully these changes in this week's patch notes will help that some. Will have to wait and see on the drop rates.

So the odds of getting a grain have increased (a certainty at rank 5) and we can get green, blue, purple or gold grains dropping now. So does that increase or decrease the chance of getting gold materials?

dsalter

honestly instead of needing 10 grains to get one material, i wish it was 4.

John_Falstaff

I'm also curious if the fact that multiple grain types can drop now means that chance for gold grains have actually decreased. I do welcome more readily available purple platings, for one, but generally it might be a hidden move to decrease availability of gold platings, not increase it.

Lord_Eomer

Guaranteed Grain from Crafting Writ is a fair change but will unbalance jewellery crafting market.

Many players having alt and more characters will tend to take advantage of this change.

The odds of getting purple and golden grain should be lower

tmbrinks

Kolzki wrote: »

tmbrinks wrote: »

Zulera301 wrote: »

having checked the new writs on the PTS, I can say that most of them short of Triune will be worth doing for me (thanks for removing swift BTW)
but my concern is the same as many others, in that the scarcity of Zircon is what I worry about the most. right now I've got about 48 Zircon in comparison to about 26 Chromium, and so if (when?) I get an excessive influx of purple jewel writs suddenly I'm going to run into the problem of a lack of Zircon.

(this is also actually low-key an issue I am starting to have with purple woodworking writs, although those materials are much more affordable.)

that said, the advent of a JC hireling could potentially alleviate the issue, because for most people it looks like the issue is more the rarity of purple than the rarity of gold, and that many people understand/are fine with the rarity of gold, for the most part.

just my 2¢ on the matter. in summary: Zircon is where JC is getting bottlenecked, and based on that, as well as remarks from other players in this thread/forum, that seems to be where the problem needs to be addressed the most/soonest.

Hopefully these changes in this week's patch notes will help that some. Will have to wait and see on the drop rates.

So the odds of getting a grain have increased (a certainty at rank 5) and we can get green, blue, purple or gold grains dropping now. So does that increase or decrease the chance of getting gold materials?

Don't know. Won't know until testing across thousands of JC writs are done. Something that is probably not even possible in this current iteration of PTS since you can only do 18 a day

tmbrinks

John_Falstaff wrote: »

I'm also curious if the fact that multiple grain types can drop now means that chance for gold grains have actually decreased. I do welcome more readily available purple platings, for one, but generally it might be a hidden move to decrease availability of gold platings, not increase it.

Chromium was never really a issue... Zircon was the huge bottleneck in the system.

This will certainly increase the supply there. Coupled with the fact that the Blue and Purple MASTER writs that got changed seemed viable to do, I don't think you're going to see much change in pricing

tmbrinks

BenevolentBowd wrote: »

I just started doing JC writ testing on PTS.

I have a couple of questions for my fellow crafters.

1. Do the items (intricate / ornate) reflect the crafters adventure level or crafting proficiency? It appears to be the adventure level.
2. Are improvement items always supposed to drop every time in the reward box? If so, I've had one case where I didn't get one.

Thanks.

Question 1: I know for sure with Jewelry (since I'm actively looking at those for decon and leveling) that it's split approximately 50/50 between Character Level and Crafting Proficiency. I will sometimes get an intricate/ornate Platinum ring on my CP level character that's rank 1 in jewelry crafting, but will also sometimes get intricate/ornate pewter rings as well. I feel like it's different for BS/WW/Cloth however, and that you get the character level. I'll look more closely today... I only have 3 character that aren't CP rank, that I'm still working on leveling.

Question 2: According to the Patch Notes, the guarantee is ONLY at Rank 5 in Jewelry Crafting. Thus, if they weren't doing them at max level, there's not a guaranteed drop.

Inklings

I'll be doing 36 jewelry writs everyday on pts for a whole week to trest these new drop rates. The first day of testing yielded a 41.6% drop rate of chrome grains. I'm hoping I just got lucky cause that's double of what the current 20% live drop rate is and imo WAY to rewarding.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tlCLhGo6NqKHd2mbsZYUOK_-WELiC0a_G3AQJfOmkHk/edit#gid=0

tmbrinks

Inklings wrote: »

I'll be doing 36 jewelry writs everyday on pts for a whole week to trest these new drop rates. The first day of testing yielded a 41.6% drop rate of chrome grains. I'm hoping I just got lucky cause that's double of what the current 20% live drop rate is and imo WAY to rewarding.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tlCLhGo6NqKHd2mbsZYUOK_-WELiC0a_G3AQJfOmkHk/edit#gid=0

These were my results from the 21 characters that I have that can do Tier 5 JC writs

I received 2 "double drops" both were Zircon.

Dusk_Coven

Lord_Eomer wrote: »

Guaranteed Grain from Crafting Writ is a fair change but will unbalance jewellery crafting market.

It's probably fine IF (big IF) ZOS's benchmark is for people to really only play one toon or maybe maintain a small number of alts.

So if their stats show most players do only that and aren't seriously alt-farming, and are not likely to start up a sweatshop of orc crafters just for jewelry, then they might be happy to just ignore the repercussions and let the market sort itself out.

Theoretically, it could work out. Worst case we are no different from the current situation, except that people who insist on waiting for enough plates from their daily writs will get the master writs done at "no cost".
Would be very nice if they gave us some context on their benchmarks and assumptions though. @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_RobGarrett

Zulera301

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

How many writs did you do to test, @Zulera301, just out of curiosity?

in terms of master writs, I tested a few groups from the "Big Bag O' Writs™" there was a guy who did a spreadsheet though and his data was about the same as mine.

as for regular JC writs... I was unaware of the latest PTS changes when I had made that post tho, so now Im gonna go give it a spin on my 17 characters and see what happens. I'll post results when I get them.

Jayne_Doe

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

Lord_Eomer wrote: »

Guaranteed Grain from Crafting Writ is a fair change but will unbalance jewellery crafting market.

It's probably fine IF (big IF) ZOS's benchmark is for people to really only play one toon or maybe maintain a small number of alts.

So if their stats show most players do only that and aren't seriously alt-farming, and are not likely to start up a sweatshop of orc crafters just for jewelry, then they might be happy to just ignore the repercussions and let the market sort itself out.

Theoretically, it could work out. Worst case we are no different from the current situation, except that people who insist on waiting for enough plates from their daily writs will get the master writs done at "no cost".
Would be very nice if they gave us some context on their benchmarks and assumptions though. @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_RobGarrett

I have never and will never buy mats to complete daily crafting writs or master writs. Of course, with the basegame crafts, that's never been an issue, since I had built up plenty of mats before they introduced master writs (or regular crafting writs for that matter). The same is and will be the case for me with JC. I don't do writs unless I have the mats. Not too difficult with the regular writs since I've built up enough platinum from all the surveys I've gotten. I've only done 2, iirc, JC master writs, when I had enough zircon, since chromium was easier to obtain just by doing top-tier writs.

Now that I have a chance at zircon from crafting writs, I might do more of them, but will probably still only do legendary ones unless I get enough zircon built up. I will probably also do the superior ones, since I already have a decent supply of iridium, but who knows, I may still only do the legendary writs when I get them (if I get any, since it sounds like they are going to be pretty rare now).

There are those of us who like to be self-sustaining. I also do sell excess mats when I have them, though I've never sold any JC ones, since I'm trying to build them up for my own crafting and for completing worthwhile master writs. But, I only do top tier JC writs on 4 characters - soon to be 5. I won't be adding any more, though, as the idea of alt farming writs for mats is tedious since I'm on console and don't have add-ons to do it for me.

tmbrinks

Added in a 2nd day of testing. 42 total tier 5 JC writs.

Morimizo

tmbrinks wrote: »

Added in a 2nd day of testing. 42 total tier 5 JC writs.

I hope the chance for Chromium remains at the same level as on live, near 20% (as your test would indicate), otherwise it will be a nerf to one of the principal ways in which to obtain it (other than refining of course; deconstructing legendary rings is not as common an occurrence as with purple jewelry).

When I first read this change in the 5.1.3 notes, I admit that I thought, "Great; now there will be Terne 96% of the time, Iridium 2.9%, Zircon 1.099%, and Chromium .001%! Wonder when this will become standard with the rest of the crafting disciplines?
And how soon will legendary materials arrive on the Crown Store?"

I restrained this justifiable reflex however (through intense effort), and am determined to be optimistic. Though, like Zukki, I struggle with this mindset.

tmbrinks

Added a 3rd day of results. 63 total Tier 5 JC writs

baratron

I too am testing Jewelry Crafting Writs every day - 2 at Tier 5, 1 at Tier 3, 1 at Tier 1.

Here's a surprise:


I checked the Patch Notes and only saw mention of occasional complete platings - nothing about getting complete trait stones.

Dusk_Coven

baratron wrote: »

I checked the Patch Notes and only saw mention of occasional complete platings - nothing about getting complete trait stones.

I got a whole unit of Zinc on the LIVE server today doing Tier 5. Maybe they snuck that in on one of the earlier patches.

Jayne_Doe

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

baratron wrote: »

I checked the Patch Notes and only saw mention of occasional complete platings - nothing about getting complete trait stones.

I got a whole unit of Zinc on the LIVE server today doing Tier 5. Maybe they snuck that in on one of the earlier patches.

Huh...interesting. I admit that when opening the JC writ coffers, I only pay attention if there is a grain, a swift research piece, or a survey. Never really looked at the other rewards, except, of course, for the useless master writs.

Dusk_Coven

Jayne_Doe wrote: »

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

baratron wrote: »

I checked the Patch Notes and only saw mention of occasional complete platings - nothing about getting complete trait stones.

I got a whole unit of Zinc on the LIVE server today doing Tier 5. Maybe they snuck that in on one of the earlier patches.

Huh...interesting. I admit that when opening the JC writ coffers, I only pay attention if there is a grain, a swift research piece, or a survey. Never really looked at the other rewards, except, of course, for the useless master writs.

I'm really bad that way what with Dolgubon's opening the boxes for me while I'm turning in another writ...

lillybit

tmbrinks wrote: »

Added a 3rd day of results. 63 total Tier 5 JC writs

Those drop rates look great, thank you. In the long term, Chrome drops looks roughly the same with the double drops pushing it up a bit. Glad to see they didn't just load up the green drops with a smaller chance at the others - I have lots of green already, it'll be nice to be able to build up enough blue and purple to have working stock for a change!

f047ys3v3n

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for the improvements made to Jewelry Crafting Master Writs. Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:

• Do you feel these writs are worth completing?
• Do you anticipate doing these once the update goes live?
• Do you have any other general feedback?

To answer your questions....

Do you feel these writs are worth completing?
No, they still look like a higher cost per voucher than other writs. Furthermore, since the things you can buy with writ vouchers have been neglected for a few years now there is actually little profit in doing any master writs to sell the stuff you buy with vouchers and not much to buy with vouchers that I would want for myself anyway. I actually sell all gold writs I get now and only do the occasional purple one if I feel like wasting time. I really only do that to see the stack of writ vouchers I have get higher since I never spend them anyway.

Do you anticipate doing these once the update goes live?
Not a chance, but maybe they will be worth 2k gold instead of 25 gold and will be worth selling at least. It's also kind of a thing now. You created a completely dysfunctional system that should have been obvious to all involved was going to be dysfunctional before it even launched. You will have to make it functional for me to participate.

Do you have any other general feedback?
So... the big problem with jewelry crafting is not really so much the writs but the fact that any utilization of the system beyond transmuting is crazy expensive. For instance, it costs around 320k on pc (I expect much more on console) to make one piece of purple jewelry gold. Given that gold jewelry is what, 150k gold from the golden (and much cheaper from folks who bought it with AP) that is some crazy stuff. You could actually pay the cheat engine folks that do carries for the gold endgame jewelry and it would probably still be cheaper than just to upgrade the same number of jewelry pieces from purple to gold.
The costs are insane and that doesn't even touch on what the costs would be for a player who actually wanted to make crafted jewelry and upgrade it.

Just remember, we told you that all this would happen when you added a 10x multiplier but you all didn't listen and now your crying because nobody is doing anything with the entire system and you spent time and funds making it. I don't know what to tell you, learn middle school math maybe?

Dusk_Coven

f047ys3v3n wrote: »

Not a chance, but maybe they will be worth 2k gold instead of 25 gold and will be worth selling at least.

So someone feels they are currently worth doing because they are actually buying writs? O.O

tmbrinks

Added in a 4th day for the new grain drop rates. 84 total tier 5 jewelry daily writs.

baratron

@Wicked_Shifty and I did 20 Tier 5 Writs, 7 Tier 3 Writs and 7 Tier 1 Writs. Full data.

For Tier 5, here are our results formatted like @tmbrinks' above:


Including @tmbrinks' data:


At Tier 5, a Grain drop was guaranteed. We also obtained 5 Soul Gem (Empty), 6 Pulverised Antimony, 4 Pulverised Cobalt, 8 Pulverised Zinc, 1 complete Antimony, 1 complete Zinc, and 5 Master Writs:

• blue 28 w.v. Triune, Tava's Favor
• blue 30 w.v. Infused, Shalidor's Curse
• blue 26 w.v. Healthy, Night Mother's Gaze
• blue 28 w.v. Bloodthirsty, Alessia's Bulwark
• purple 193 w.v. Triune, Clever Alchemist

We also obtained ZERO Jewelry Crafting Surveys.

I'm very confused by the addition of Soul Gem (Empty) to the drop table for Jewelry Crafting - it's not as if there isn't a great abundance of these in the game already. I am also rather concerned by the lack of Jewelry Crafting Surveys. It's no use getting free Grains if we aren't also getting a decent quantity of Platinum.

For Tier 3, here are our results formatted like @tmbrinks' above:


At Tier 3, a Grain drop was not guaranteed. We also obtained 2 Soul Gem (Empty), 2 Pulverised Antimony, 3 Pulverised Cobalt, 2 Pulverised Zinc, and one Jewelry Crafting Survey.

For Tier 1, here are our results formatted like @tmbrinks' above:


At Tier 1, a Grain drop was not guaranteed. We also obtained 2 Soul Gem (Empty), 6 Pulverised Antimony and 2 Pulverised Zinc.

Recommendations:

1. Remove Soul Gem (Empty) from the drop table for Tier 5 Jewelry Crafting writs. By the time you're doing Tier 5 you're likely Level 50, and not short of Soul Gems.
2. Figure out what's happened to the missing Jewelry Crafting Surveys. Getting a guaranteed Grain in every coffer is not helpful if you are also only making 7 Platinum per Tier 5 writ. This isn't enough to self-sustain on materials.
3. The new Master Writs look much more worth doing, though I'm still concerned about the presence of the Triune style stone. Either remove this from the drop table for Master Writs, or decrease the AP price for it. 100,000 AP is the price of a cheap Akaviri Motif or 5 x the cost of a Forward Camp or Recall Stone. It's too expensive to show up in a blue Master Writ which only gives 28 writ vouchers.

Dusk_Coven

f047ys3v3n wrote: »

Just remember, we told you that all this would happen when you added a 10x multiplier but you all didn't listen and now your crying because nobody is doing anything with the entire system and you spent time and funds making it. I don't know what to tell you, learn middle school math maybe?

If one of the ZOS staff talked like that to us, you bet people would pull out the double-standard card and demand they apologize.
And people wonder why the devs don't engage with us on the forums more.

Obviously not everyone posts like this, but it just takes one.

Dusk_Coven

baratron wrote: »

I'm still concerned about the presence of the Triune style stone. Either remove this from the drop table for Master Writs, or decrease the AP price for it. 100,000 AP is the price of a cheap Akaviri Motif or 5 x the cost of a Forward Camp or Recall Stone. It's too expensive to show up in a blue Master Writ which only gives 28 writ vouchers.[/list]

I think their internal calculations assume these style stones to be "free".
If you do a lot of trials, Slaughterstone would be "free" because you get it as a matter of course.
100K AP is nothing to be scoffed at, but if someone did PvP a lot, by the time they needed one, they could probably easily afford it.
And between you and your friends who do different content, maybe they assume we'd just swap 1:1. Or, like established players with literally thousands of a material, just give it away free.

echo2omega

The fundamental issue with jewel crafting is the upgrade materials.

It takes 10 Terne to upgrade to green. (not 2 like every other crafting profession)
It takes 20 Iridium to upgrade to blue. (not 3 like every other crafting profession)
It takes 30 Zircon to upgrade to purple. (not 4 like every other crafting profession)
It takes 40 Chromium to upgrade to gold. (not 8 like every other crafting profession)

Until you address this...basic....issue jewel crafting master writs will always be trash.

Edit:
The OBVIOUS...and best solution is to eliminate grains altogether.

Deconstructing jewelry now awards plating.
Daily crafting writs have a chance at awarding plating.
And if you want jewelry to still be more expensive (for whatever..."reason") Then you can make it so that it takes:
It takes 4 Terne to upgrade to green.
It takes 6 Iridium to upgrade to blue.
It takes 8 Zircon to upgrade to purple.
It takes 16 Chromium to upgrade to gold