Shadowfen node farming wars

xeNNNNN

Elsonso wrote: »

xeNNNNN wrote: »

Ok let me put it another way, a more blunt way. If you are the Shepherd (Devs) and you have sheep (the players) - and you herd your sheep into a specific area of the field with your sheepdog (the patch) and where they are herded is a feed troth (the lead) is it the sheeps fault where they were herded or the shepherd?

Wow. Awesome use of an analogy.

Sadly, it is heading in the right direction, but it is a little off. You suggest that the sheep have no choice but to go to that location and eat out of that trough. Yes, if they want that food, they go there. However, in this case, they are not being forced to eat out of that tough. The sheep choose to eat out of that trough. They are not compelled to do it by the Shepherd.

Herd mentality. Some of the people are there because they need that lead, some are there because they want that lead. Sadly, all too many are there because they see other people doing it and figure they should be doing it, too.

This is why I am not a sheep.

Depends on the context of need, if they are not end game raiders who need it to "run" the raid with their super serious group but rather just want it but think they need it as a result of wanting then they very much do not need it.

But if they are then they very much do.

Then of course there are those who are in the middle who want to be at the top and so follow the meta. Then just everyone else wanting to say they got it lol

And thanks btw, considering I wrote that rather early in the morning I am somewhat proud of it mostly because I am not a morning person at all... my brain just...its just mush super early lol

SeaGtGruff

kargen27 wrote: »

They decide to sit on the nodes.

Sitting on a node isn't the problem, it's what people do after they open the node.

If they open it, loot the lead if it's there, and then close the node without looting the water, the node will still be available for other players to check.

Being grouped offers no benefit that I can see, other than making it more convenient for the grouped players to share XP from killing nearby mobs, communicate with each other, and possibly coordinate when splitting up to watch a few nodes that are near each other. If you loot the contents of the node, the node will not magically remain there for the other players in your group. If you get the lead, the other players in your group won't automatically see it, too.

So, whether you're in a group or not, open the node but leave the water so others can check it.

Commander_Kjlp

Still nothing on this garbage? For the companion role players - no it won't be any different even month from now. There are pay to win MMO's, ESO is pay to be hated by casual dev team that despises anything above 1000cp and 80K dps.

SeaGtGruff

I'm beginning to think that camping on a particular node actually decreases your chances-- that the way to maximize your RNG is to check several nodes, if only so you'll be able to check more in a given time period instead of waiting for a particular node to respawn.

Rogue_WolfESO

I found a great water node for camping this lead, it has a chest that spawns literally right beside it.

kargen27

furiouslog wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

furiouslog 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?

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.

So my guess that in about a month things will settle down seems about right. This really isn't anything new or different from past new content releases. There is always something a few players want right away. It is why the first few days after a new release there is a lot of gold to be made from motif and furniture plan drops. The price of wanting to be among the first to get this lead in Shadowfen is you have to compete with all the other players that want to be among the first to get the lead. I don't see any need to make adjustments to the game for a problem that is essentially player created. Those who decide to wait a few weeks before giving it a go will likely have a much easier time of it.

I could not disagree more. The node limits and toxicity are a symptom of player urgency, but making someone sit there for more than 20 hours mindlessly doing the most boring thing in the game is just straight up player punishment. That time requirement will not change much after the node limits settle down, not until the zone is just empty. Why even make it that way? It's madness.

Nobody is making players do twenty hours straight anything in the game. Players are doing that all on their own because they want to. They could be off doing trials, PvP, new quests or any number of things. Because they want to be among the first to get the drop they choose to sit on a node. That is their choice.

kargen27

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

They decide to sit on the nodes.

Sitting on a node isn't the problem, it's what people do after they open the node.

If they open it, loot the lead if it's there, and then close the node without looting the water, the node will still be available for other players to check.

Being grouped offers no benefit that I can see, other than making it more convenient for the grouped players to share XP from killing nearby mobs, communicate with each other, and possibly coordinate when splitting up to watch a few nodes that are near each other. If you loot the contents of the node, the node will not magically remain there for the other players in your group. If you get the lead, the other players in your group won't automatically see it, too.

So, whether you're in a group or not, open the node but leave the water so others can check it.

I don't think a node works like what you are suggesting? My understanding is when a node spawns what in it has been determined. A player can take all or part but that won't change anything as far as what spawned. If the player takes one item and leaves the rest if nodes work like chest they will eventually disappear then spawn again later. If they do not work like that then I would assume they would just sit there waiting for a player to take everything. More stuff isn't going to show up as I understand it. So the best thing to do would be take everything in the node so others don't waste time checking something that will not have what they want.

I could be wrong though as I've not bothered with serious farming on any nodes.

Nagastani

xeNNNNN wrote: »

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.

Both farming nodes for leads as well as the Gaze of Sithis Helm were both terrible ideas and more things we don't need.

Realizing this might make life easier for some folks.

Nagastani

kargen27 wrote: »

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

They decide to sit on the nodes.

Sitting on a node isn't the problem, it's what people do after they open the node.

If they open it, loot the lead if it's there, and then close the node without looting the water, the node will still be available for other players to check.

Being grouped offers no benefit that I can see, other than making it more convenient for the grouped players to share XP from killing nearby mobs, communicate with each other, and possibly coordinate when splitting up to watch a few nodes that are near each other. If you loot the contents of the node, the node will not magically remain there for the other players in your group. If you get the lead, the other players in your group won't automatically see it, too.

So, whether you're in a group or not, open the node but leave the water so others can check it.

I don't think a node works like what you are suggesting? My understanding is when a node spawns what in it has been determined. A player can take all or part but that won't change anything as far as what spawned. If the player takes one item and leaves the rest if nodes work like chest they will eventually disappear then spawn again later. If they do not work like that then I would assume they would just sit there waiting for a player to take everything. More stuff isn't going to show up as I understand it. So the best thing to do would be take everything in the node so others don't waste time checking something that will not have what they want.

I could be wrong though as I've not bothered with serious farming on any nodes.

I agree also, something I have known for a very long time now...

It has been said, that a node also has a sensory function that checks for nearby players. So guess what... if players are camping the node or there is alot of traffic around the node, then it should not respawn with any special loot.

Therefore, all you social criminals and bots camping the nodes are screwing a) yourselves and b) everyone else.

No one gets anything. Ahhh that Karma. I lovvvvvve me some juicy Karma. Like a summer rain...

Stevie6

kargen27 wrote: »

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

They decide to sit on the nodes.

Sitting on a node isn't the problem, it's what people do after they open the node.

If they open it, loot the lead if it's there, and then close the node without looting the water, the node will still be available for other players to check.

Being grouped offers no benefit that I can see, other than making it more convenient for the grouped players to share XP from killing nearby mobs, communicate with each other, and possibly coordinate when splitting up to watch a few nodes that are near each other. If you loot the contents of the node, the node will not magically remain there for the other players in your group. If you get the lead, the other players in your group won't automatically see it, too.

So, whether you're in a group or not, open the node but leave the water so others can check it.

I don't think a node works like what you are suggesting? My understanding is when a node spawns what in it has been determined. A player can take all or part but that won't change anything as far as what spawned. If the player takes one item and leaves the rest if nodes work like chest they will eventually disappear then spawn again later. If they do not work like that then I would assume they would just sit there waiting for a player to take everything. More stuff isn't going to show up as I understand it. So the best thing to do would be take everything in the node so others don't waste time checking something that will not have what they want.

I could be wrong though as I've not bothered with serious farming on any nodes.

I think farming the node is the best way. Trying to loot the node with autoloot off doesn’t work. Tried it for three days and got a lot of water out of it. Gave up on node farming and started doing missions in the area. Got the lead on a water skin. I would just do normal activities instead of node camping. It’s all chance based. Sitting on a single node all day is just crazy and you might not see a lead at that particular node for several days or if ever.

IrishOphidia

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

They decide to sit on the nodes.

Sitting on a node isn't the problem, it's what people do after they open the node.

If they open it, loot the lead if it's there, and then close the node without looting the water, the node will still be available for other players to check.

Being grouped offers no benefit that I can see, other than making it more convenient for the grouped players to share XP from killing nearby mobs, communicate with each other, and possibly coordinate when splitting up to watch a few nodes that are near each other. If you loot the contents of the node, the node will not magically remain there for the other players in your group. If you get the lead, the other players in your group won't automatically see it, too.

So, whether you're in a group or not, open the node but leave the water so others can check it.

That's not how nodes work. Once opened, the contents are decided. The first person to open a node has set what's in it and that's it. Hence why if someone before my has no skill points in alchemy and opens a pure water node and gets x2 Clear Water, but decides to leave it, then I come up behind them and it's still x2 Clear Water. It doesn't just reset when i open it and give me x2 Lorkhan's Tears.

Elsonso

Nagastani wrote: »

It has been said, that a node also has a sensory function that checks for nearby players. So guess what... if players are camping the node or there is alot of traffic around the node, then it should not respawn with any special loot.

I think you are giving ZOS more credit than is due.

They might change respawn rates based on total zone population (for that channel) so that they spawn faster when more people are playing. This effect would likely be zone wide. I would not expect them to do it for each discrete node as a player gets close, as this would be CPU intensive on the server.

IrishOphidia wrote: »

Once opened, the contents are decided. The first person to open a node has set what's in it and that's it.

Schrödinger's Node. No one knows what is in it until someone looks.

what_the

deyjasagus wrote: »

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.

Karnors, Velks lab, Upper/Lower Guk, etc etc. almost endless camping for that one rare weapon/armor drop..yikes...
It was the best of times in any Mmo ever....

James-Wayne

I know your not allowed to use macros but this kind of implementation will encourage the use of a macro to grab node when available under cursor.

Surely ZOS thought about this before hand, they have done enough events to know how to not grief players.

SeaGtGruff

I don't even know why I'm trying to farm the lead, other than to get it over with.

It took me only 2 or 3 hours on PC NA, if even that long; I wasn't keeping track, so I'm just going by a subjective feeling of how long I was running around farming everything before I settled down and grouped with 2 other players for somewhat less than an hour and found it.

I spend just about the entire day on PC EU without getting it. Much of the time I was camped out at a specific node, which I shared with other players as far as not looting the node when I checked it, and I encountered some hostile or trollish behavior from a few players. But later I just ran around farming everything.

My main concern is trying to figure out whether leaving the node unlooted is actually of any benefit to other players, or if it's basically just teasing them with false hope. There doesn't seem to be anyone who can give a definitive answer, so I'm torn between wanting to leave the nodes unlooted and wanting to just go ahead and loot them.

HumbleThaumaturge

Completely agree with Original Poster.

I would classify this situation (using the ZOS bug-reporting categories) as: "Crash/Blocks Progress" (when players are spending 15 hours to days "grinding" for one lead, its broken).

ZOS must change the manner of obtaining Tide-Glass Beads Lead. I would have to classify the current method as insane, or perhaps cruel. I, for one, have not spent much time farming for this lead, compared to others. I spent 30 minutes riding around the Shadowfen and only managed to find 7 water plants in all that time. I did this around 3 a.m. East Coast U.S. time! Yet the zone was still overrun with lead-farmers, viciously competing for water plant nodes.

So, ZOS, either:
1. Reduce the drop-chance to 1-in-10 and keep water plant nodes the source, or
2. Expand drop-source to ALL plants in Shadowfen, maybe even all nodes, or
3. Change the source of the Tide-Glass Beads lead (example, to all delve bosses in another Zone, since Shadowfen delves already in use)

furiouslog

furiouslog wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

furiouslog 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?

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.

So my guess that in about a month things will settle down seems about right. This really isn't anything new or different from past new content releases. There is always something a few players want right away. It is why the first few days after a new release there is a lot of gold to be made from motif and furniture plan drops. The price of wanting to be among the first to get this lead in Shadowfen is you have to compete with all the other players that want to be among the first to get the lead. I don't see any need to make adjustments to the game for a problem that is essentially player created. Those who decide to wait a few weeks before giving it a go will likely have a much easier time of it.

I could not disagree more. The node limits and toxicity are a symptom of player urgency, but making someone sit there for more than 20 hours mindlessly doing the most boring thing in the game is just straight up player punishment.

kargen27 wrote: »

furiouslog wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

furiouslog 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?

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.

So my guess that in about a month things will settle down seems about right. This really isn't anything new or different from past new content releases. There is always something a few players want right away. It is why the first few days after a new release there is a lot of gold to be made from motif and furniture plan drops. The price of wanting to be among the first to get this lead in Shadowfen is you have to compete with all the other players that want to be among the first to get the lead. I don't see any need to make adjustments to the game for a problem that is essentially player created. Those who decide to wait a few weeks before giving it a go will likely have a much easier time of it.

I could not disagree more. The node limits and toxicity are a symptom of player urgency, but making someone sit there for more than 20 hours mindlessly doing the most boring thing in the game is just straight up player punishment. That time requirement will not change much after the node limits settle down, not until the zone is just empty. Why even make it that way? It's madness.

Nobody is making players do twenty hours straight anything in the game. Players are doing that all on their own because they want to. They could be off doing trials, PvP, new quests or any number of things. Because they want to be among the first to get the drop they choose to sit on a node. That is their choice.

I've already explained why you're wrong, unless you're just taking the logically pointless stance of "well no one is making them play the game in the first place," which essentially negates the entire point of the discussion.

I assure you, no one "wants" to be doing this unbelievably boring and mindless task. They are choosing to do it because it's a condition of further participation in their in-game activities of interest given considerable sunk costs, which is not the same thing as wanting to do it. I don't understand why you can't seem to grasp that concept.

HumbleThaumaturge

bmnoble wrote: »

Last one I remember was one of the leads in the Alikir desert that drops from one delve boss, might be a pale order lead piece can't remember, had entire groups there circling the boss spawn location constantly putting down ground based AOE's hoping to get a hit in for the lead.

When a specific delve boss is mentioned on someone's list of leads, I have found that the lead may also drop from ANY delve in the Zone. For example, someone's list for "Gaze of Sithis" states that the "Pad-Sa Shark Teeth" Lead drops from the Knbobra Kwama Mine delve boss in Shadowfen. True that; but I also got the lead from the Atanaz Ruins delve boss (also in Shadowfen). Another example, someone's list mentions that the Snow Treader lead "Magicka-Imbued Metal Plates" drops from the Raelynne Ahham Boss in Underpall Cave in Cyrodiil. True that; but I have had it drop from many other (different) delve bosses in Cyrodiil as well. Similarly, when someone's list of leads gives a specific worldboss, I have found that ANY worldboss in the Zone may drop that lead.

Elsonso

furiouslog wrote: »

I assure you, no one "wants" to be doing this unbelievably boring and mindless task. They are choosing to do it because it's a condition of further participation in their in-game activities of interest given considerable sunk costs, which is not the same thing as wanting to do it.

Then, not to put too fine a point on it, this is the price you pay for doing that. Everything comes at a cost.

If ZOS wanted you to have that Mythic item on Day 1, they could have mailed it to you when you logged in or made it trivial to get. It is fairly clear with this grind mechanism that they want to spread out when people get these so that everyone doesn't have one right away and people have to play the game for RNG days before they can complete the item. I assume they know that some people are going to try and get it right away, but I also have to think that they don't want a grind that will make it trivial. If you want it _now_ you will have to pay a price in that grind, or decide not to grind it.

If they want to stop the grind, all they have to do is drop the lead from a specific daily quest and you will get it in RNG days, but that removes your choice to try and get it more quickly, while still preventing the item from being everywhere right after release.

As far as Grinds go, this one is fairly good. It is a wide array of possibilities across an entire zone. This is much better than the ones where you have to kill a dungeon boss, forcing a repeat of that same dungeon over and over and over and over and over and over and over to get it. It is even better than fishing for the lead. It is definitely better than an RNG tied to a daily quest.

Honestly, how this grind is progressing tells me more about the players than it does about the game developers.

Alurria

Elsonso wrote: »

furiouslog wrote: »

I assure you, no one "wants" to be doing this unbelievably boring and mindless task. They are choosing to do it because it's a condition of further participation in their in-game activities of interest given considerable sunk costs, which is not the same thing as wanting to do it.

Then, not to put too fine a point on it, this is the price you pay for doing that. Everything comes at a cost.

If ZOS wanted you to have that Mythic item on Day 1, they could have mailed it to you when you logged in or made it trivial to get. It is fairly clear with this grind mechanism that they want to spread out when people get these so that everyone doesn't have one right away and people have to play the game for RNG days before they can complete the item. I assume they know that some people are going to try and get it right away, but I also have to think that they don't want a grind that will make it trivial. If you want it _now_ you will have to pay a price in that grind, or decide not to grind it.

If they want to stop the grind, all they have to do is drop the lead from a specific daily quest and you will get it in RNG days, but that removes your choice to try and get it more quickly, while still preventing the item from being everywhere right after release.

As far as Grinds go, this one is fairly good. It is a wide array of possibilities across an entire zone. This is much better than the ones where you have to kill a dungeon boss, forcing a repeat of that same dungeon over and over and over and over and over and over and over to get it. It is even better than fishing for the lead. It is definitely better than an RNG tied to a daily quest.

Honestly, how this grind is progressing tells me more about the players than it does about the game developers.

Hold on, the players didn't set it up this way. There is no way they are responsible for how this lead was set up. Knowing people and how this could turn bad or toxic like any other thing, that is limited. oh let's just look at history in the real world, toilet paper shortage during pandemic due to hoarding. How about handsanatizer, or disenfectiant. So any I mean any reasonable thinking person can deduce that something like this would happen and along with this toxic behavior. I am sorry this can totally laid at the feet of ZOS. It was created by ZOS. I haven't stepped foot in shadowfen and it's one of my favorite zones since reading about the toxic behavior that limiting this lead has caused.

Starshadw

furiouslog wrote: »

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.

Except if it didn't offer a reward, people wouldn't be camping nodes for hours on end. So the reward aspect is most assuredly there.

I think the issue is that ZOS continues to seriously underestimate how far some players will go to "get an edge" with regards to doing nothing in-game except farm for mythic leads. These items are supposed to be ultra-rare, yet within a week of a new expansion/content dropping, hundreds of players have their new preferred mythic.

I honestly wonder if a better solution might be to pull mythic items out of antiquities altogether, and instead add them into an Endeavor-style system, whereby completing certain quests would earn you tokens - earn enough, and you can buy the mythic item you want.

I can't blame ZOS for trying to slow down how fast people chew through content - that's been an issue for every game company out there for years. New content comes out, people are done with it a week later, and complaining about being bored. It's an issue that has led to content getting pushed out before it was ready, riddled with bugs, all in an effort to placate / keep customers happy.

I do think they need to re-think how they design certain leads. Putting a lead behind a single node type in a single map region was NOT a good idea. I can think of a couple of fixes - either make it a water node in any map region OR make it any node type in Shadowfen. That at least would help mitigate the camping issue.

furiouslog

Starshadw wrote: »

furiouslog wrote: »

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.

Except if it didn't offer a reward, people wouldn't be camping nodes for hours on end. So the reward aspect is most assuredly there.

I think the issue is that ZOS continues to seriously underestimate how far some players will go to "get an edge" with regards to doing nothing in-game except farm for mythic leads. These items are supposed to be ultra-rare, yet within a week of a new expansion/content dropping, hundreds of players have their new preferred mythic.

I honestly wonder if a better solution might be to pull mythic items out of antiquities altogether, and instead add them into an Endeavor-style system, whereby completing certain quests would earn you tokens - earn enough, and you can buy the mythic item you want.

I can't blame ZOS for trying to slow down how fast people chew through content - that's been an issue for every game company out there for years. New content comes out, people are done with it a week later, and complaining about being bored. It's an issue that has led to content getting pushed out before it was ready, riddled with bugs, all in an effort to placate / keep customers happy.

I do think they need to re-think how they design certain leads. Putting a lead behind a single node type in a single map region was NOT a good idea. I can think of a couple of fixes - either make it a water node in any map region OR make it any node type in Shadowfen. That at least would help mitigate the camping issue.

When I say "associated reward", I mean the additional benefit from the activity. When a lead drops from a WB, for example, you can get an achievement for killing it, you get gear drops, and also it's an interactive experience which can be enjoyable, even on repetition. Hitting a water node over and over only gives you water, which is so cheap and plentiful that it's essentially useless. Less so for the plants, but that was pretty much what I was saying.

Elsonso

Alurria wrote: »

Hold on, the players didn't set it up this way. There is no way they are responsible for how this lead was set up. Knowing people and how this could turn bad or toxic like any other thing, that is limited. oh let's just look at history in the real world, toilet paper shortage during pandemic due to hoarding. How about handsanatizer, or disenfectiant. So any I mean any reasonable thinking person can deduce that something like this would happen and along with this toxic behavior. I am sorry this can totally laid at the feet of ZOS. It was created by ZOS. I haven't stepped foot in shadowfen and it's one of my favorite zones since reading about the toxic behavior that limiting this lead has caused.

Your entire description describes how the players are the problem and ends with ZOS not solving the problem with player behavior. Generally, when venues deal with a demand that is well above supply, it never ends with everyone being happy. Not for toilet paper and not for GPUs. Many things are tried, but in the end, the problem always involves the people. In this case, some players are part of the problem.

So, bottom line is that people will be self-centered jerks whenever there is a lot more demand than supply.

xeNNNNN

Nagastani wrote: »

xeNNNNN wrote: »

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.

Both farming nodes for leads as well as the Gaze of Sithis Helm were both terrible ideas and more things we don't need.

Realizing this might make life easier for some folks.

Baby steps naga, baby steps.

Alurria

Elsonso wrote: »

Alurria wrote: »

Hold on, the players didn't set it up this way. There is no way they are responsible for how this lead was set up. Knowing people and how this could turn bad or toxic like any other thing, that is limited. oh let's just look at history in the real world, toilet paper shortage during pandemic due to hoarding. How about handsanatizer, or disenfectiant. So any I mean any reasonable thinking person can deduce that something like this would happen and along with this toxic behavior. I am sorry this can totally laid at the feet of ZOS. It was created by ZOS. I haven't stepped foot in shadowfen and it's one of my favorite zones since reading about the toxic behavior that limiting this lead has caused.

Your entire description describes how the players are the problem and ends with ZOS not solving the problem with player behavior. Generally, when venues deal with a demand that is well above supply, it never ends with everyone being happy. Not for toilet paper and not for GPUs. Many things are tried, but in the end, the problem always involves the people. In this case, some players are part of the problem.

So, bottom line is that people will be self-centered jerks whenever there is a lot more demand than supply.

While you completely ignore the first few lines in my post. Who set it up to be this way?

SeaGtGruff

I saw the following insult in Shadowfen zone chat this morning:

"<so-and-so> is an autolooter"

Obviously, I've replaced the actual character name with "<so-and-so>" to avoid naming and shaming, which raises the question of whether the insult can be deemed naming and shaming-- and if so, would it be a punishable offense? The insult, that is; not the autolooting-- obviously (I hope).

Elsonso

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

I saw the following insult in Shadowfen zone chat this morning:

"<so-and-so> is an autolooter"

Obviously, I've replaced the actual character name with "<so-and-so>" to avoid naming and shaming, which raises the question of whether the insult can be deemed naming and shaming-- and if so, would it be a punishable offense? The insult, that is; not the autolooting-- obviously (I hope).

I think that "naming and shaming" is an offense, but I am not sure what ZOS would do about it in the game. I mean, if they were obsessive about it, they could ban them.

Automation designed to loot nodes, which is different from the auto loot setting, should be bannable.

SeaGtGruff

Elsonso wrote: »

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

I saw the following insult in Shadowfen zone chat this morning:

"<so-and-so> is an autolooter"

Obviously, I've replaced the actual character name with "<so-and-so>" to avoid naming and shaming, which raises the question of whether the insult can be deemed naming and shaming-- and if so, would it be a punishable offense? The insult, that is; not the autolooting-- obviously (I hope).

I think that "naming and shaming" is an offense, but I am not sure what ZOS would do about it in the game. I mean, if they were obsessive about it, they could ban them.

Automation designed to loot nodes, which is different from the auto loot setting, should be bannable.

I agree with all of that. I wasn't entirely serious; but, then again... It was more of a "Look what we've come to" comment.

Myrddin1357

Something is very wrong with this lead. I spend about about 2 hours each farming session to avoid getting too frustrated. The first 3 or 4 days, the zone was packed and it was hard to farm nodes. This is completely ok and happens every release - people who want to get it instantly on release just have to deal with many others who want it so I wasn't too bothered with not making progress.

The last few days I have been farming off peak hours and I'm actually hitting about 10 different nodes (including all 4 types) consistently on my route since the number of people has gone down a lot. Spent about 6 hours pretty much constantly farming with very little wait time. Probably hit about a 100 node. I know people are getting it so it cant be the lead itself is glitched. But the lead just isn't dropping for a lot of people at even a 1 percent drop chance.

Elsonso

Myrddin1357 wrote: »

Something is very wrong with this lead. I spend about about 2 hours each farming session to avoid getting too frustrated. The first 3 or 4 days, the zone was packed and it was hard to farm nodes. This is completely ok and happens every release - people who want to get it instantly on release just have to deal with many others who want it so I wasn't too bothered with not making progress.

The last few days I have been farming off peak hours and I'm actually hitting about 10 different nodes (including all 4 types) consistently on my route since the number of people has gone down a lot. Spent about 6 hours pretty much constantly farming with very little wait time. Probably hit about a 100 node. I know people are getting it so it cant be the lead itself is glitched. But the lead just isn't dropping for a lot of people at even a 1 percent drop chance.

RNG. Half the people will get it before the average amount of time.