The Green Tree - Is there any hope left?

Lerozain

There are many aspects of the game I enjoy, and it's encouraging to see that the devs have been continually striving to make improvements to the game as they also build out new content.

What's discouraging, however, is that the micromanagement which has plagued the Crafting tree has seemingly gone ignored since early this year.

It's been said that the primary driver for the CP 2.0 revision was, among other concerns, to limit the number of active perks in an effort to reduce server checks in congested high-intensity situations (e.g. Cyrodiil, trials, BGs, certain overland encounters).

SO, in light of that, I'm still curious after all this time why non-combat perks are being limited in the same way? Assuming that crafting- and thievery-related perks aren't checked in combat (and they shouldn't be unless some poor decisions were made on the backend), I see no reason why the Crafting tree can't be revised to allow for more of the most useful perks to be active concurrently.

Here is a list of Crafting tree perks that have nothing to do with combat whatsoever:

Crime / Stealth

• Friends in Low Places (remove gold from bounty)
• Infamous (value of fenced items)
• Shadowstrike (blade of woe proc)
• Cutpurse's Art (pickpocket loot quality)
• Fade Away (guard heat)

Crafting / Harvesting

• Meticulous Disassembly (improves mat extraction yield)
• Treasure Hunter (improves chest loot quality)
• Master Gatherer (harvest time)
• Plentiful Harvest (harvest node yield)
• Homemaker (furnishing plan)
• Professional Upkeep (repair cost reduction)
• Reel Technique (fishing cast duration)
• Angler's Instincts (fish quality)

In my view, every single one of these should be a passive perk if the tree structure remains the same, but I'd settle for even a portion of the most commonly used ones.

Please Zos, take another look at this tree and give us some QoL improvement.

Sarannah

On one hand I can see why ZOS made the green tree this way. So that players can only have 1 or 2 major sources of wealth-income per character. And have to choose which CP-stars they want to use.
On the other hand I would like this entire green tree to become passives, so getting high CP would actually be giving some small non-gameplay bonusses. As you could keep adding CP points to increase the passive bonusses you receive, while you level your CP. Right now leveling CP points feels like "Why bother".
And I can see why ZOS choose the first option, otherwise high CP players would be making too much gold.

Personally I'm not sure which solution I like better, but I'm fine with both to be honest.

DinoZavr

Is there any hope left? Hardly.
U31 is upcoming and there are no changes to the micromanagement in question.

Honestly, making non-combat perks slottable was a terrible idea.
Compared with CP1.0 the new system provides with a constant stress not to forget to slot the proper start according to what you do now, as 4 green slots apparently are not enough for the wide range of non-combat activities. This is not fun and makes the game for me way less enjoyable than before at CP1.0 times.
The only reason keeping me subscribed is "Jack of All Traders" addon partially alleviating this non-players-friendly design.

There are more than a hundred Forum treads dedicated to this certain annoyance, most of then tag Zenimax employees, but as far as i remember none of them were answered/commented by game developers.

bmnoble

At the bare minimum I think these 3 should be passives:

Treasure Hunter (improves chest loot quality)
Master Gatherer (harvest time)
Plentiful Harvest (harvest node yield)

I can live with the others being slottable but those 3 tend to be ones I have slotted most often by default.

colossalvoids

The only excuse I can think of is that they're working on optimising game code and how certain effect works, meaning different "checks" and how/when it's applied as currently some of them aren't performance friendly at all checking it way more than needed or persisting all the time instead of some niche scenarios. Probably tied with their Cyrodiil team working on optimisation and performance so it's the way it is for now, no way of knowing when they're be able to make any changes.

richo262

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/570383/should-the-green-tree-even-have-slottable-passives#latest

I posted about this a while ago.

Firmly agree all of the Green tree should be passive. No slots should be needed for Green.

It is actually a step backwards. We have some nice new features, but now we are required to micromanage them.

Back when I posted the above thread an addon Jack of All Trades came out that addressed the tedium ZOS added.

ZOS went one step forward with CP2.0, then 2 steps back with the tedious additions of having to swap out your Green slotable depending on what activity you are doing.

ApoAlaia

I personally don't think there is.

Since the release of CP 2.0 they have hacked and slashed the red and blue trees and left the green one untouched.

it would seem that micromanagement is part of their current vision for CP.

At least they haven't done something like nerfing one of the slottable nodes only to add a new node that does exactly the same as the old one *when new conditions are met*

That however I would not put it past them.

Something like halving the speed bonus of Steed's Blessing and then creating a new node called Mare's Blessing that gives you the current speed bonus of Steed's Blessing but only if you are wearing blue clothes and both moons are bright in the sky.

Lerozain

Sarannah wrote: »

... otherwise high CP players would be making too much gold.

The CP amount players have is the limiter, and would serve as more of an incentive to gain more. The economic impact would be minimal, since people already do their best to change perks to align with whatever activity they're doing, then change them again for another situation, and so on.

All this would do is remove the ever-present low level anxiety many of us have about which slottables we have activated, and the frustration of discovering you forgot to equip a perk after the fact.

Refined/deconned and forgot to slot Meticulous Disassembly? crap.
Looted chests and forgot to slot Treasure Hunter? crap.
Harvested mats and forgot to slot Plentiful Harvest? crap.
Stole from NPCs and forgot to slot Cutpurse's Art? crap.
Looted urns and forgot to slot Homemaker? crap.
Fenced all your stolen items and forgot to slot Infamous? crap.

These are all mild annoyances that slowly add up to an experience I would describe as a "pain in the rear end".

Kel

There's zero reason the green tree can't all just be passives as there's hardly anything in it that gives advantage in combat.
You can debatedly make a case that the potion and enchantment nodes do, but if that's the case just remove or change them.
That you have to micromanage this tree is one of the dumbest changes they've made in a long while.

Hope left?
Zero....🤷‍♂️

netch_a_sketch

I was just about to type about how I disagree but then realised halfway through that I agree with you completely

Mumbles_the_Tank

Sarannah wrote: »

And I can see why ZOS choose the first option, otherwise high CP players would be making too much gold.

The gold available via CP is peanuts compared to the bank balance of any long time trader, raider or PvP player with half a braincell aimed at making money in this game. None of your reasons put forward make any sense when compared to the actual economy in game.

There is only one reason for the Green tree remaining as it is. Zenimax do not like being told they are wrong or that their design choices were bad. They will not respond to or acknowledge any of the feedback that sees almost every single person who bothers to comment on the situation suggest exactly the same problems or solutions. They will keep making unnecessary additions and changes to blue and red trees to create noise while keeping their fingers in their ears about the green.

This has been their MO for years with very very few exceptions. It’s why we have god awful skills like Stone Fist still existing despite constant, repeated criticism from the get go. New CP is no different - the green tree is fundamentally bad but they will not make changes because it would mean admitting their mistakes.

rpa

You may have to wait until devs at ZoS feel that they need to overhaul things for appearance of progress. And there is no guarantee modified one would be any better. Likely they just put CP trees trough cross cutting shredder, tape the pieces together in random order and spray glue some sprinkles on it. As usual.

Just slot whatever and let it rot.

Hurbster

I pretty much ignore it now. Too much hassle. Got my treasure chest, disassembly, nodes. Got about 100 points or so that are not worth doing anything with.

redlink1979

The green tree micro management...

SaintSubwayy

I agree that the Green Tree should have less slotables...even tho I dont care about stuff like getting more gold when selling stolen items etc.

Most of them have nothing to do with combat anyways.
I'd consider the Riding and sprinting CP as having an effect on combat, especially PVP since you ride long distances, so 10% can make the difference between safeing a keep of loosing it(not that big of a deal, but it could have a noticable effect on certain fights)

Those 4 Slottable spots which we loose could be equally divided to the other trees. 2 for combat and 2 for fitness.
Altouh this might end up in a massive DPS and DMG mitigation boost

Jackey

Hurbster wrote: »

I pretty much ignore it now. Too much hassle. Got my treasure chest, disassembly, nodes. Got about 100 points or so that are not worth doing anything with.

Pretty much exactly the same for me.
I did try to micromanage the disassembly star but kept forgetting to slot it so I just left it in there.

anadandy

bmnoble wrote: »

At the bare minimum I think these 3 should be passives:

Treasure Hunter (improves chest loot quality)
Master Gatherer (harvest time)
Plentiful Harvest (harvest node yield)

I can live with the others being slottable but those 3 tend to be ones I have slotted most often by default.

Agreed, these were all passive in CP Original Recipe. (Maybe not Plentiful Harvest, but the other two definitely were.)

Odovacar

Nah, no hope in the near future, imo. Soon though!

Lerozain

Hurbster wrote: »

I pretty much ignore it now. Too much hassle. Got my treasure chest, disassembly, nodes. Got about 100 points or so that are not worth doing anything with.

I'd hate to find myself at this point, there's some useful things in that tree but managing it is growing very tiresome. The worst part is that it's probably one of the easiest positive changes they could possibly make.

Nova Sky

Being able to create "profiles" would be useful.

Instead of micromanaging everything, all a *customer* would have to do is swap profiles, depending on the type of activity/combat they were engaged in.

And, yes, i emphasize the word *customer* because that's what we all are, and ZoS would do well to keep us at least somewhat mollified, lest we take our time, money and recommendations to other sources of entertainment.

wenchmore420b14_ESO

redlink1979 wrote: »

The green tree micro management...

Hurbster wrote: »

I pretty much ignore it now. Too much hassle. Got my treasure chest, disassembly, nodes. Got about 100 points or so that are not worth doing anything with.

Totally agree.
Have not only points that not worth doing anything with, but all the points they MAKE you slot on things you dont need just to open up things you do.
IMO the new system as a whole is terrible. Might as well have brought back VET Level system! (jk).
They say it is to make new players more equal with long term players. PvP issue in my opinion.
So now, I feel my 11Khrs in game are no more beneficial as someone with 100hrs. Kinda also feel ZoS, again, has given the finger to long time and loyal players in leu of making new players happy. Cant we have both?

Well, the bright side is I have more free time as I play less and spend less now. I pretty much just do Guild stuff, dailies, crafting and done. My play time is limited enough to not have to spend more time micromanaging my CP slots also.
Please ZoS, fix this system!
My 2 drakes..... Huzzah!

Arunei

Sarannah wrote: »

On one hand I can see why ZOS made the green tree this way. So that players can only have 1 or 2 major sources of wealth-income per character. And have to choose which CP-stars they want to use.
On the other hand I would like this entire green tree to become passives, so getting high CP would actually be giving some small non-gameplay bonusses. As you could keep adding CP points to increase the passive bonusses you receive, while you level your CP. Right now leveling CP points feels like "Why bother".
And I can see why ZOS choose the first option, otherwise high CP players would be making too much gold.

Personally I'm not sure which solution I like better, but I'm fine with both to be honest.

CP has nothing to do with being able to earn gold (since you don't need to be 'high' CP to unlock the perks that increase gold earned), and the amount of additional gold the perks in the Crafting tree awareds is so inconsequential compared to making gold in other ways that it's hardly an argument for making the perks be slottable. There's literally no way these perks can let anyone make "too much" gold, regardless of level.

Most of the perks in the Crafting tree should be passives. There are a handful that make sense being slotted, such as Gifted Rider, but most of them really need to be reworked into being passives.

Edited because I keep forgetting words.

Hotdog_23

Pretty sure ZOS don’t care what we think about the green. Since according to Rich’s latest stream, he didn’t even bother using the new built in skill timers and used an add-on one instead.

Bet they use jack of all add-on as well as dressing room. Console players must be the whining group ever to actually expect a functional base game and not depend on the free work of other people to cover up their shortfalls.

Yes, I am being overly negative right now, but they have yet to stop the constant crashing on the PS5 nor address the green tree. Asking ZOS to address the green tree has pretty much been my tagline for months now. The only thing they have done is stop the jack of all add-on from being more effective by limiting changes to no more than once every 30 seconds. This tells me that micromanagement is their idea of a fun engaging and rewarding experience.

Stepping down off my soapbox now. Go back to fun engaging and rewarding experience micromanaging the green tree. Oh, wait I crashed again. Let me send in this super important crash report so it can be ignored with the other 100 I have sent in.

Stay safe everyone and ZOS please fix the green tree micromanaging

redspecter23

The first step would be to convince those with the power that the system is flawed. They currently don't see the same issues that players see with the system. They will not want to change anything that is working as they designed it to.

I'm using the Jack of all Trades addon to fix the issue (mostly) but it's a real shame that console users have to deal with a very poorly designed green tree micromanagement system.

I like the swappable nature of the blue and red trees as I'm generally swapping them much less frequently than I would with the green tree. Usually once per play session or per dungeon instance. Occasionally, I might swap for specific fights.

The green tree asks us to swap potentially every minute or less depending on your activities. Perhaps that's the disconnect that ZOS doesn't understand. There is a very frequent swap cycle preference for the green tree that just doesn't exist for the blue and red.

EF321

Good list.
Some perks are useful for PvP, so they can be left as slotted. Like, mount speed/stamina, out of combat move speed, sneak cost, free potions can be invaluable when you don't have on demand access to bank.

richo262

Some people have added, and it is worth discussing that 1 passives might be considered slottable while the rest have no reason not to be passives.

I'd just add, if all perks that should be passive were made passive, any only 1 perk (or maybe 2) perks were left as slottable, that would somewhat defeat the purpose of slottable perks when you only have 1 perk to slot.

All should be passive.

colossalvoids

Hotdog_23 wrote: »

Pretty sure ZOS don’t care what we think about the green. Since according to Rich’s latest stream, he didn’t even bother using the new built in skill timers and used an add-on one instead.

At least after some of his streams I can see logical explanations of why we didn't get in-game ADR, or don't and never will have built-in CMX, that's at least something. But dressing-room like ones should most definitely be on a to do list, he himself expressed the need in such tools like for example swapping from one spec / role to the other or going into pvp with one click without reallocating cp, attributes etc. which already is a turn off for half the people I know, easier just to stay away.

Didn't watched last one, there was specific questions about green tree this time?

Hotdog_23

colossalvoids wrote: »

Hotdog_23 wrote: »

Pretty sure ZOS don’t care what we think about the green. Since according to Rich’s latest stream, he didn’t even bother using the new built in skill timers and used an add-on one instead.

At least after some of his streams I can see logical explanations of why we didn't get in-game ADR, or don't and never will have built-in CMX, that's at least something. But dressing-room like ones should most definitely be on a to do list, he himself expressed the need in such tools like for example swapping from one spec / role to the other or going into pvp with one click without reallocating cp, attributes etc. which already is a turn off for half the people I know, easier just to stay away.

Didn't watched last one, there was specific questions about green tree this time?

From another post, it's not even on the radar nor is fixing the crashing on consoles.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/583330/the-day-hope-died/p2

zvavi wrote: »

BohnT2 wrote: »

zvavi wrote: »

Can you post the full vid anyway? So we can get all q/a answers.

The whole stream can be found here the questions are spread across the whole stream. Some interesting questions (and painful answers) can be found in the last ~40 minutes.

Ok, so I watched some of it, highlights:
1. During indrik boss in vMoS, everyone ported up "well that wasn't fair" - rich. Also evaded the question about fixing it.
2. Using action duration reminder instead of the in-game timers, I mean, if that doesn't mean they need to get fixed, idk what does.
3. No plan on fixing dungeon "exploits" (vSCP and vMoS 3rd bosses cheese) because other priorities
4. On the question of "will you make warden and necro different gameplays" (it something along those lines) he answered that this is a strong opinion and that he doesn't think they play the same
5. They are working on fixing the insta zone chat voice join on console.
6. Don't remember why stone giant has cast time (but there is a reason for that). And no plan on a instant cast melee stam dk spammable.
7. Cast times on ultimates are here to stay.
8. No plans on updating vMA weapons to perfected (nothing new here, we already knew that).
9. On the question of "if perfected sticker book unlock non perfected one" evasive answer of "maybe". He did say it will be "a nice improvement of life". So there is hope for that. I mean. One day. I give it 2 years.

colossalvoids

Hotdog_23 wrote: »

colossalvoids wrote: »

Hotdog_23 wrote: »

Pretty sure ZOS don’t care what we think about the green. Since according to Rich’s latest stream, he didn’t even bother using the new built in skill timers and used an add-on one instead.

At least after some of his streams I can see logical explanations of why we didn't get in-game ADR, or don't and never will have built-in CMX, that's at least something. But dressing-room like ones should most definitely be on a to do list, he himself expressed the need in such tools like for example swapping from one spec / role to the other or going into pvp with one click without reallocating cp, attributes etc. which already is a turn off for half the people I know, easier just to stay away.

Didn't watched last one, there was specific questions about green tree this time?

From another post, it's not even on the radar nor is fixing the crashing on consoles.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/583330/the-day-hope-died/p2

zvavi wrote: »

BohnT2 wrote: »

zvavi wrote: »

Can you post the full vid anyway? So we can get all q/a answers.

The whole stream can be found here the questions are spread across the whole stream. Some interesting questions (and painful answers) can be found in the last ~40 minutes.

7. Cast times on ultimates are here to stay.

The day hope died indeed.

tomfant

#StopGreenTreeMicromanagement

Elvenheart

I’ve agreed all along that most of the green tree should be passive. However, I’d like to add that it wouldn’t hurt to have up to 4 slottable perks, such as the one that makes you go faster on your horse. That way when soloing you can go as fast as you want with the perk slotted but if you are grouping with people who don’t have that perk and don’t want to ride faster you can unslot it and ride at the same speed as them. They should just pick the four perks that make the most sense as slottable perks, like the riding one and the fall damage reduction one, and make everything else passive.