Shadowfen node farming wars

xeNNNNN

Upon entering Shadowfen, I have observed a large force of seemingly singular individuals camping specific nodes in Shadowfen. As a result, there are not enough nodes for the amount of people trying to farm for the lead.

As an experiment I approached by mount towards a node being camped, the node was quite visible for over 5 seconds, the individual seemingly AFK at the node didn't pick it up as I approached. I ride over, pick it up and move on. However I proceed to get the following messages instantly: "Seriously?", "yikes" "******* hell".

I am not one to question the logic of drop sources normally however for an item that was very clearly going to become meta in some capacity, exactly why did anyone think this was a good idea to have its leads drop from a source that was already limited vs demand in the first place?

I have played since beta and launch respectively and I have never seen so many people in Shadowfen before not only that but I have never seen so many people rage incoherently before either and I PvP ... a place where rage is all too common. There are people so upset in fact that they are actively putting people who have posted the Harpooners wadding kilt in chat on their ignore lists. Its gotten that bad.

This whole....."problem" has resulted in virtually no nodes showing up for those actually looking because everyone is camping every single node location like a hawk (when they're not asleep)

So one of three things need to happen for this specific lead;

A ) Node respawn times in Shadowfen need to be massively bumped (its been noted that this would attract even more bots so not the best choice)
B ) Change the source entirely to something far more reasonable.
C ) Alter the drop rate to be 1 in 10 instead of 1 in 100.

phaneub17_ESO

Bad Man's Hallows. There's less than two dozen mobs in that one small area.

xeNNNNN

phaneub17_ESO wrote: »

Bad Man's Hallows. There's less than two dozen mobs in that one small area.

Can't you just farm bosses there though? I got my lead in there from bosses. At least you can do it together there. WB, Delves, Dungeons and so forth those are all multiple people.

Water nodes? First come first serve and there just isn't enough for demand.

mzprx

xeNNNNN wrote: »

phaneub17_ESO wrote: »

Bad Man's Hallows. There's less than two dozen mobs in that one small area.

Can't you just farm bosses there though? I got my lead in there from bosses. At least you can do it together there. WB, Delves, Dungeons and so forth those are all multiple people.

Water nodes? First come first serve and there just isn't enough for demand.

the Pale Order Ring lead drops (or should) only from mobs, so not bosses..

xeNNNNN

mzprx wrote: »

xeNNNNN wrote: »

phaneub17_ESO wrote: »

Bad Man's Hallows. There's less than two dozen mobs in that one small area.

Can't you just farm bosses there though? I got my lead in there from bosses. At least you can do it together there. WB, Delves, Dungeons and so forth those are all multiple people.

Water nodes? First come first serve and there just isn't enough for demand.

the Pale Order Ring lead drops (or should) only from mobs, so not bosses..

Oh thats my bad, I got confused with the wild hunt drop. They share the same location just not the same source.

CP5

In badmans whats the difference between a trash mob and a boss anyway?

xeNNNNN

CP5 wrote: »

In badmans whats the difference between a trash mob and a boss anyway?

This is a good point, I guess just the health? and the names...and the scripts lol

ApoAlaia

xeNNNNN wrote: »

mzprx wrote: »

xeNNNNN wrote: »

phaneub17_ESO wrote: »

Bad Man's Hallows. There's less than two dozen mobs in that one small area.

Can't you just farm bosses there though? I got my lead in there from bosses. At least you can do it together there. WB, Delves, Dungeons and so forth those are all multiple people.

Water nodes? First come first serve and there just isn't enough for demand.

the Pale Order Ring lead drops (or should) only from mobs, so not bosses..

Oh thats my bad, I got confused with the wild hunt drop. They share the same location just not the same source.

I can't say I enjoyed my farming for those leads however at least there were drops and chest spawns.

This... travesty I don't have enough command of the English language to know if there is an adjective that is the superlative of asinine but if you were to illustrate the concept that hypothetical adjective describes I reckon this would be an excellent example.

Jackey

I can imagine someone at ZOS HQ going: Muahahaha!
Maybe they hired uncle Sheo to design this one.

furiouslog

The bead lead design is clearly intended to be a punishment to infuriate sweaty endgamers who keep blowing through ZOS's trial hard modes before the chapters even drop. It's the worst grind in the game to date - it's has the trifecta of being unbearably boring, offering little to no associated reward, and it pits players against each other to the point of extreme toxicity. Worst 13 hours I've spent in the game. Essentially an unending minimally interactive screensaver.

click.. no lead


click.. no lead






click.. no lead

Seriously terrible.

Wolf_Eye

phaneub17_ESO wrote: »

Bad Man's Hallows. There's less than two dozen mobs in that one small area.

Oh sweet, I should just casually waltz in there on all my alts and grab the skyshard for them.

The_Lex

Yeah, I'm not sure what the thought process was behind the Shadowfen water plant node drop and the Dark Brotherhood "20-hr cooldown for a chance at a lead.


But this is likely the future of mythic lead drops.

Elsonso

xeNNNNN wrote: »

A ) Node respawn times in Shadowfen need to be massively bumped. (if they have been already then its not enough)
B ) Change the source entirely to something far more reasonable.

When they do A, then it attracts bots. B is fine. They just need to make the drop rate something that can be accomplished in the same decade.

blktauna

I guess its to keep literally everyone from having something extremely overpowered on day 2.

Wolf_Eye

"I've seen horrors before. I was there; during the Shadowfen node farming wars."

*gaze off into the distance overdramaticly*

Oreyn_Bearclaw

blktauna wrote: »

I guess its to keep literally everyone from having something extremely overpowered on day 2.

The sad thing is that its not even close to extremely overpowered. Just powerful enough to outweigh the wreckage of what remains of the monster sets after the nerf.

yoyo420232

I agree is ridiculous and for those who bring up the pale order leads tediousness at least I was able to move around and actively play the game not just stand on a node in the middle of nowhere and hit e every 2 to 15 minutes depending on spawn which in itself is the most *** part of this whole lead farm and the lead itself needs a higher drop rate I have spent 2 hours and 30 minutes each farming session only to log off empty handed I seen some ppl have spend upwards of 30 hours there with out a drop is insane

Elsonso

blktauna wrote: »

I guess its to keep literally everyone from having something extremely overpowered on day 2.

It does not even need to be "extremely overpowered". It is often enough that there is something that they don't have, even if they never use it.

SirAndy

I might just go there for a while today and do some fishing. It'll be entertaining.

furiouslog

Pro tip: unattended bots (of which there are many) can be gradually led away from the node by putting the meat sack just out of reach. The bot will slightly move forward to pick it up, and eventually out of the active node area.

Elsonso

furiouslog wrote: »

Pro tip: unattended bots (of which there are many) can be gradually led away from the node by putting the meat sack just out of reach. The bot will slightly move forward to pick it up, and eventually out of the active node area.

Opens up the node for another bot to take over. Brilliant!

furiouslog

Elsonso wrote: »

furiouslog wrote: »

Pro tip: unattended bots (of which there are many) can be gradually led away from the node by putting the meat sack just out of reach. The bot will slightly move forward to pick it up, and eventually out of the active node area.

Opens up the node for another bot to take over. Brilliant!

All bots get exposed eventually. I'm surprised at the number of people willing to risk a ban.

Ratzkifal

blktauna wrote: »

I guess its to keep literally everyone from having something extremely overpowered on day 2.

What's the point in not letting people have it on day 2 if they want to be doing that rather than explore the new zone or trial? Why put it in the game at all if you don't want people to get it. Makes no sense.
Besides, it's not "extremely overpowered" and even if it was, ZOS would be to blame for that too.

blktauna

Because if they don't put in new additions, people whinge. When they do, people whinge. If its easy to get people whinge. If its a PITA like these, they whinge.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with the OP here.
This sort of thing is daft and the quest designers should absolutely know better.

I circumvent it by waiting a week or three until things have calmed down, if I bother with them at all.

No it isn't ideal, no it isn't they way it 'should' be but I'm not wasting my energy on something out of my hands.

kargen27

Once the players that need to have everything right now are done camping nodes things will settle into place. A whole lot of players made that priority number one so of course there will be supply issues in the first few days. If a month from now it is still a problem then maybe an adjustment will be needed.

Saucy_Jack

Wait, the lead comes from water plants, right? Isn't Shadowfen like...90% swamp? Wouldn't MOST of the plants in Shadowfen be water plants? What am I missing here?

Gederic

Saucy_Jack wrote: »

Wait, the lead comes from water plants, right? Isn't Shadowfen like...90% swamp? Wouldn't MOST of the plants in Shadowfen be water plants? What am I missing here?

You would think that wouldn't you... And yet there are surprisingly few.

Belegnole

Gederic wrote: »

Saucy_Jack wrote: »

Wait, the lead comes from water plants, right? Isn't Shadowfen like...90% swamp? Wouldn't MOST of the plants in Shadowfen be water plants? What am I missing here?

You would think that wouldn't you... And yet there are surprisingly few.

And they are all taken by one or more players as well.

furiouslog

Saucy_Jack wrote: »

Wait, the lead comes from water plants, right? Isn't Shadowfen like...90% swamp? Wouldn't MOST of the plants in Shadowfen be water plants? What am I missing here?

There are, based on my HarvestMap, 85 water plant nodes, and 90 pure water nodes.

Based on prior data for the rarity of other lead drops coming from nodes collected through addons as well as times reported in the zone chat (and this is an assumption, granted), I'm estimating the lead drop rate to be 1 in 100.

Based on personal data collected and data posted in the zone chat, the average respawn time ranges from 2 to 10 minutes (some people reported higher, but I didn't see it and other people aggregating data did not report that, so those are probably outliers or bad reports). The average reported seemed to be about 4 minutes and 30 seconds.

Given those odds and timing, this is the probability that you'll get a drop after spending a certain amount of time harvesting:



The 50% break point is at about 5 hours. The proper way to figure this next bit out would be to simulate the results and behavior conditionally, but I really don't want to spend the time coding that when ZOS will not address it and others will just poke holes in the assumptions anyway, so I'm going to give a "back of the envelope" estimate of lead drop clear rates based on the quartiles.

ZOS has stated that there are 15 million accounts. Let's say that 40% are on PC-NA, and that only one percent of them play a lot, and a quarter of those guys actually care about the lead. That gives us a pool of 15000 players on PC-NA who would like to farm the lead for one reason or another. That kind of lines up with Steamcharts and ESOLogs data, assuming that people who upload logs and parses to ESOLogs are interested enough in playing well to farm this item, while others are just collectors.

Assuming that all nodes are being farmed 24/7, given the available nodes, interested players, one node per player, players leaving once lead is farmed, and the stated odds of a drop, that means that it will take that pool of players about 26 days to clear the zone before it's no longer saturated if they were persistently working at it perfectly and efficiently at all hours of the day. Once you introduce the inefficiencies, that time gets longer. And, of course, there are going to be some unfortunates who will potentially spend well over 20 hours sitting and staring at a plant before getting rewarded, some of whom I have seen in zone chat, and are quite clearly clinically depressed.

So that's kind of the beef with the design, I think. If anyone has issues with my assumptions, feel free to say so, these numbers are very hypothetical and heavily conditional on the odds of a drop.

Shantu

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

blktauna wrote: »

I guess its to keep literally everyone from having something extremely overpowered on day 2.

The sad thing is that its not even close to extremely overpowered. Just powerful enough to outweigh the wreckage of what remains of the monster sets after the nerf.

Just something about this fiasco feels contemptibly manipulating. [snip] I really don't get it.

Reinforces my decision to pass on this chapter. This game is no game anymore.

[Edited for Bashing]

deyjasagus

Maybe it's just me but have I been playing online games so long that this doesn't even seem unreasonable to me? I played Everquest and camping a mob for a single component to gear like Ivy Etched could take up to a week of online time. You had one mob that was the placeholder for the one you needed and the one you needed didn't drop the item whenever he spawned.

Silly kids, we used to have kill mobs while kiting backwards, going uphill both ways.

p.s. Yes I agree with the OP about how this was implemented but I wanted to make a point and have fun at the same time.