Is companion rapport broken, or just a reeeeeeeally slow burn?

Saucy_Jack

I've been doing things I know Mirri likes (as evidenced by the green rapport thingy notification) as often as I can. I know there's a cooldown, but what I mean is that I've been doing them as often as the cooldown will allow, consistently. After HOURS/DAYS of this, my rapport with her is this:


...which is just BARELY right of center. Is the rapport supposed to go up faster? Or is getting rapport to even past "friendly acquaintance" supposed to be a month-long endeavour?

Linaleah

and while we are at it, WHY is there a cooldown? I was trying to level up Bastian and apparently he likes discovering lorebooks. which I already have very few left to discover, but with a cooldown, I know have to be extra careful WHEN and HOW I discover them?

virtus753

Linaleah wrote: »

and while we are at it, WHY is there a cooldown? I was trying to level up Bastian and apparently he likes discovering lorebooks. which I already have very few left to discover, but with a cooldown, I know have to be extra careful WHEN and HOW I discover them?

It feels like players who already took the time to collect lorebooks are being disadvantaged here for their effort. It won’t be possible for many vet players to discover new Mages Guild/Shalidor books with him, since they’re one time only, and for some characters we’ll only have the new 118-ish Blackwood lorebooks left to find, plus those two new entries under Impresario’s Catalogue and the post facto addition of Unsent Letter from Forsaken Citadel from Dragonhold. Since rapport is on a per-character basis, that’s very little (or nothing) in the way of lorebooks left to improve his rapport that way, particularly as it’s easy to collect books incidentally as you quest. Micromanaging lorebook acquisition is not a welcome idea to my mind, especially given all the other micromanagement being added recently (*cough*greentree*cough*).

Shantu

Along with more leveling and gear, even the rapport system is a grind?

Fata1moose

Most of the rapport should be gained through dialogue with overland interactions being used to gain back or boost rapport a bit if you say something the companion does not like. Unfortunately the world interactions acts as the primary rapport gain which makes the system rather boring and grindy.

AgentZenish

You can also get rapport with Bastion by harvesting nodes lol

virtus753

AgentZenish wrote: »

You can also get rapport with Bastion by harvesting nodes lol

Are there specific ones?

I know Mirri disapproves of harvesting torchbugs, but she doesn't seem to care about certain other things, like wasps, for rapport purposes.

ThorianB

virtus753 wrote: »

AgentZenish wrote: »

You can also get rapport with Bastion by harvesting nodes lol

Are there specific ones?

I know Mirri disapproves of harvesting torchbugs, but she doesn't seem to care about certain other things, like wasps, for rapport purposes.

IIRC he likes shrooms. I recall him saying something positive when i picked a mushroom.

virtus753

ThorianB wrote: »

virtus753 wrote: »

AgentZenish wrote: »

You can also get rapport with Bastion by harvesting nodes lol

Are there specific ones?

I know Mirri disapproves of harvesting torchbugs, but she doesn't seem to care about certain other things, like wasps, for rapport purposes.

IIRC he likes shrooms. I recall him saying something positive when i picked a mushroom.

Hm. I was despairing of finding a reason for liking him, but I might eventually spare some time for him if I can make jokes about that the whole time.

Excelsus

-looks around at Psijiic, Mages guild, mount speed, skyshards, legerdemain, daedric lord slayer, motif grind, 3600 cp system- its a slow burn, like everything else in the game. But for the low low price of 5000 crowns you can max your rapport with one companion (per character of course)

Linaleah

AgentZenish wrote: »

You can also get rapport with Bastion by harvesting nodes lol

oh that's good to know. I haven't been able to find a single node while running around Blackwood, which is weird now that i think of it as I did find a whole bunch of chests, so my original assumption that players picked up the nodes already might not be entirely correct. but anyways, as i haven't looted any nodes, I didn't realize that he likes that. he did like me discovering new crafting stations (which I attributed to lorebook discovery liking).


and while yes all these things mentioned above are a slow burn, quite a few of them can be finished in like 12 or so hours. some - less. actively playing with companion for 6 hours barely made rapport move for me. so I guess it does start to feel like potential scheme to sell rapport boosters and the like

Cireous

I'm thinking it has to be broken. It just doesn't seem to be moving at all.

Saucy_Jack

UPDATE: The top is the original from the OP. The bottom is after about 8 hours of adventuring and making sure I do good rapport things and don't do bad rapport things. So it IS moving, just aaaaaachingly slow.

Casul

Yeah I'm gonna hold off on blackwood. Rather wait a few updates when they inevitably buff the rate.

miteba

Maybe it is intended to take time, 'cause we are talking about reaching a "friendship" or an high level of confidence with these companions.
So i assume that it should take time and not be something that you can achieve in 2 or 3 days, probably neither in 2 or 3 weeks.

MageCatF4F

If Mirri read what I said about her in the Companion thread the bar would drop like a rocket.

In the end it is a game. In real life it might take several months to a year to develop a cordial relationship with your skilled companion who is helping you murder countless...I mean quest.

In this game that never fails to amuse me every three months it should develop on a more speedy schedule, kind of like day and night cycles in ESO. As an example.

redlink1979

miteba wrote: »

Maybe it is intended to take time (...)

Of course it's intented to take time and not just "a couple of" days, as the majority of things in ESO.

GreenHere

She's heard about guys like you, @Saucy_Jack , you sly dog! She won't be bamboozled into liking you so easily! ;P


Out of curiosity, have you tried gaining affinity with from the negative side of the scale? Do you know if it's as slow to recover back to neutral after upsetting her?

starlizard70ub17_ESO

AgentZenish wrote: »

You can also get rapport with Bastion by harvesting nodes lol

Well, ... at least he's good for something then. His new role will be to follow my crafter around on mat farming days

Saucy_Jack

GreenHere wrote: »

She's heard about guys like you, @Saucy_Jack , you sly dog! She won't be bamboozled into liking you so easily! ;P

GreenHere wrote: »

Out of curiosity, have you tried gaining affinity with from the negative side of the scale? Do you know if it's as slow to recover back to neutral after upsetting her?

After seeing how long it takes to increase the meter while doing everything *right*, I'm a HUNDRED percent sure I don't want to try to do anything *wrong*.

crazepdx

After seeing how long it takes to increase the meter while doing everything *right*, I'm a HUNDRED percent sure I don't want to try to do anything *wrong*.[/quote]

Did a daily quest with Mirri where you have to collect endangered torchbugs. While trying to collect the quest one, a non quest torching flew into target area and I just caught and let go. The rapport hit just for accidently catching a torchbug wiped out 2 days of work raising it. She REALLY HATES THAT.

Starlock

BuildMan wrote: »

Yeah I'm gonna hold off on blackwood. Rather wait a few updates when they inevitably buff the rate.

They won't.

Grind game is intentionally injected into the design for various reasons. Remember jewelry crafting? Instead of getting rid of the stupid grains system and making trait stones more accessible, jewelry crafting remains the most horrendously grindy crafting tree in the game. How about leveling antiquities? Perhaps it's not so bad on one character, but when you start trying to do a second one and the purple leads aren't repeatable? Yeah... this is baked in, on purpose, and is unlikely to be changed.

On the one hand, it wouldn't feel right if progression for something like this was too fast. But if they're going to do this, the game would benefit from more transparency with the meter so players aren't thinking it's straight up broken.

Saucy_Jack

Starlock wrote: »

...if they're going to do this, the game would benefit from more transparency with the meter so players aren't thinking it's straight up broken.

Frankly I'd be happy with some sort of numerical indicator on the meter, like a -100 to +100 and a value of where your cursor's at. If I hadn't screenied then lined up my rapport meter from two different days, the change is so subtle that I honestly would've thought it hadn't moved.

Cireous

They'll have to change it. It's that bad. You feel zero sense of progression while rapport-ing.

AgentZenish

starlizard70ub17_ESO wrote: »

AgentZenish wrote: »

You can also get rapport with Bastion by harvesting nodes lol

Well, ... at least he's good for something then. His new role will be to follow my crafter around on mat farming days

As an update, it may only be runestones. Some have reported getting rapport with lorebooks with Bastion, but I didn't see that.

Then, I opened one thieves trove and got 3 negative rapports so that was great

Also, Mirrir's Treasure Hunter passive is pretty lame. You get a separately sourced Treasure Bag, which has generally contained a green recipe or a hundredish gold. However, it does work even if you don't have Mirri with you at the time. So once you get their Achievement tokens you can dump them, I guess and they still work

Belegnole

lol, I thought that it was broken. I spent an evening doing things with my companion and there was no growth. Guess I was just doing the wrong things. But I would think that after a certain amount of time not getting any, you might be given a hint.

Carcamongus

It takes many good things to repair rapport lost by a single bad thing... they disapprove when you do minor naughty things like murder... Humm, looks like marriage but without the benefit of a honeymoon.

S_O_B

Rapport is broken with Bastian for me. I BARELY used Mirri and she already has higher rapport than Bastian. I unlocked one of her quest just by leveling her guild skills. I did the quests with Bastian and switched to Mirri to turn them in. Why? Because I already leveled Bastian's guild skills to 20. He also has level 20 in all 3 armor skills, sword & shield, resto staff, destruction staff, and bow. I have been leveling scrying with one of my toons for the past 4 days and took him along. I am almost level 9 scrying and I get the rapport message every time but it still has not gone up. I still have not received a quest from him.

VaranisArano

S_O_B wrote: »

Rapport is broken with Bastian for me. I BARELY used Mirri and she already has higher rapport than Bastian. I unlocked one of her quest just by leveling her guild skills. I did the quests with Bastian and switched to Mirri to turn them in. Why? Because I already leveled Bastian's guild skills to 20. He also has level 20 in all 3 armor skills, sword & shield, resto staff, destruction staff, and bow. I have been leveling scrying with one of my toons for the past 4 days and took him along. I am almost level 9 scrying and I get the rapport message every time but it still has not gone up. I still have not received a quest from him.

This might be a silly question, but have you been doing the Mages Guild daily and turning it in with Bastian active? That give +125 rapport and is his only major source of rapport.

Mirri gets +125 rapport from the Fighters Guild and Ashlander relic dailies.

FrancisCrawford

VaranisArano wrote: »

S_O_B wrote: »

Rapport is broken with Bastian for me. I BARELY used Mirri and she already has higher rapport than Bastian. I unlocked one of her quest just by leveling her guild skills. I did the quests with Bastian and switched to Mirri to turn them in. Why? Because I already leveled Bastian's guild skills to 20. He also has level 20 in all 3 armor skills, sword & shield, resto staff, destruction staff, and bow. I have been leveling scrying with one of my toons for the past 4 days and took him along. I am almost level 9 scrying and I get the rapport message every time but it still has not gone up. I still have not received a quest from him.

This might be a silly question, but have you been doing the Mages Guild daily and turning it in with Bastian active? That give +125 rapport and is his only major source of rapport.

Mirri gets +125 rapport from the Fighters Guild and Ashlander relic dailies.

This. Other repeatable things generally are +1 or +5 to rapport. If you want to build a few thousand rapport with any speed, do the dailies, plus the rapport quests when they are offered.

Idinuse

Starlock wrote: »

BuildMan wrote: »

Yeah I'm gonna hold off on blackwood. Rather wait a few updates when they inevitably buff the rate.

They won't.

Grind game is intentionally injected into the design for various reasons. Remember jewelry crafting? Instead of getting rid of the stupid grains system and making trait stones more accessible, jewelry crafting remains the most horrendously grindy crafting tree in the game. How about leveling antiquities? Perhaps it's not so bad on one character, but when you start trying to do a second one and the purple leads aren't repeatable? Yeah... this is baked in, on purpose, and is unlikely to be changed.

On the one hand, it wouldn't feel right if progression for something like this was too fast. But if they're going to do this, the game would benefit from more transparency with the meter so players aren't thinking it's straight up broken.

You are generally right, but since it is such a painstaking grind, no one (or not many) wants their companion to give a negative rapport. It destroys the immersion(?) effect of having a companion that "interacts" with you. If it wasn't such a ridiculous grind, it'd be far more forgiving if you get a neg one.

I'd like it if you could be rather relaxed with your companion. I mean like IRL, sometimes you do something a friend doesn't like, more often you do something they appreciate, in a natural flow. In ESO? forget about it, I won't drop in rapport status just to do 250 wine drinks, read a book every 30mins, chase for Psijic Portals, 45 days Fighters Guild Dailies and what have you not...

It just destroys the overall feeling of "casually" having the companion around imo.

Buuuut ZOS and unrewarding grinding....need I say more.