Why Remove Bank/Merchant Access from Intro?

ADarklore

I just created a new character and went to summon the banker as I have always done so I can access my training gear, XP boosters, meals, etc... before starting the intro so I can start gaining boosted XP from the start. But suddenly, they have blocked access to summoning your banker or merchant until AFTER you leave the intro zone. I don't understand their rationale for doing this... it wasn't hurting the game and tells me they are spending resources in places that don't need to be spent.

And yes, I am sure this was a recent change because I just created a new character about a month ago and was able to summon the banker then, so this change occurred recently.

Sylvermynx

Hmm. Weird. Doesn't bother me, I take my newbies out to Elsweyr, Summerset then Vivec first anyway.

matterandstuff

ADarklore wrote: »

I just created a new character and went to summon the banker as I have always done so I can access my training gear, XP boosters, meals, etc... before starting the intro so I can start gaining boosted XP from the start. But suddenly, they have blocked access to summoning your banker or merchant until AFTER you leave the intro zone. I don't understand their rationale for doing this... it wasn't hurting the game and tells me they are spending resources in places that don't need to be spent.

And yes, I am sure this was a recent change because I just created a new character about a month ago and was able to summon the banker then, so this change occurred recently.

This was a confirmed change in the last patch notes. There wasn't an explanation why.

ADarklore

matterandstuff wrote: »

ADarklore wrote: »

I just created a new character and went to summon the banker as I have always done so I can access my training gear, XP boosters, meals, etc... before starting the intro so I can start gaining boosted XP from the start. But suddenly, they have blocked access to summoning your banker or merchant until AFTER you leave the intro zone. I don't understand their rationale for doing this... it wasn't hurting the game and tells me they are spending resources in places that don't need to be spent.

And yes, I am sure this was a recent change because I just created a new character about a month ago and was able to summon the banker then, so this change occurred recently.

This was a confirmed change in the last patch notes. There wasn't an explanation why.

I definitely missed that one. Not a biggie... I would have just skipped the intro if I had known, although... do they still give you the option of choosing your starting location if you skip???

FluffWit

ADarklore wrote: »

matterandstuff wrote: »

ADarklore wrote: »

I just created a new character and went to summon the banker as I have always done so I can access my training gear, XP boosters, meals, etc... before starting the intro so I can start gaining boosted XP from the start. But suddenly, they have blocked access to summoning your banker or merchant until AFTER you leave the intro zone. I don't understand their rationale for doing this... it wasn't hurting the game and tells me they are spending resources in places that don't need to be spent.

And yes, I am sure this was a recent change because I just created a new character about a month ago and was able to summon the banker then, so this change occurred recently.

This was a confirmed change in the last patch notes. There wasn't an explanation why.

I definitely missed that one. Not a biggie... I would have just skipped the intro if I had known, although... do they still give you the option of choosing your starting location if you skip???

I believe you don't get a choice and get dumped in Blackwood if you have the dlc.

I don't have Blackwood so it dumps me in my alliance capital- Mournhold, Elden Root, or Wayrest. If you hang out around those wayshrines you'll no doubt see some level 3 toons in the starting outfit who just got dropped there.

Ulvich

FluffWit wrote: »

ADarklore wrote: »

matterandstuff wrote: »

ADarklore wrote: »

I just created a new character and went to summon the banker as I have always done so I can access my training gear, XP boosters, meals, etc... before starting the intro so I can start gaining boosted XP from the start. But suddenly, they have blocked access to summoning your banker or merchant until AFTER you leave the intro zone. I don't understand their rationale for doing this... it wasn't hurting the game and tells me they are spending resources in places that don't need to be spent.

And yes, I am sure this was a recent change because I just created a new character about a month ago and was able to summon the banker then, so this change occurred recently.

This was a confirmed change in the last patch notes. There wasn't an explanation why.

I definitely missed that one. Not a biggie... I would have just skipped the intro if I had known, although... do they still give you the option of choosing your starting location if you skip???

I believe you don't get a choice and get dumped in Blackwood if you have the dlc.

I don't have Blackwood so it dumps me in my alliance capital- Mournhold, Elden Root, or Wayrest. If you hang out around those wayshrines you'll no doubt see some level 3 toons in the starting outfit who just got dropped there.

You are correct. I have Blackwood and have created several toons all of which started there.

WhiteCoatSyndrome

ADarklore wrote: »

I don't understand their rationale for doing this... it wasn't hurting the game and tells me they are spending resources in places that don't need to be spent.

I have to concur with this. It’s just…puzzling.

Lauranae

as soon as my character is created, i log off. And go prepare everything, and mail to her what is needed.

And if they drop me in blackwood, i just ignore the npc, recall to one of the houses i own, and then beam me up to another area:)

ADarklore

Lauranae wrote: »

as soon as my character is created, i log off. And go prepare everything, and mail to her what is needed.

And if they drop me in blackwood, i just ignore the npc, recall to one of the houses i own, and then beam me up to another area:)

That was how I USED TO do it back before we had summonable bankers.

fizl101

I believe it was to do with the new decon assistant, so that the intro space wasnt farmed for mats. I assume there is alot of gear in there to decon, I cant really remember the intro

Maitsukas

fizl101 wrote: »

I believe it was to do with the new decon assistant, so that the intro space wasnt farmed for mats. I assume there is alot of gear in there to decon, I cant really remember the intro

There is an armory you can access after doing the combat training, it has lots of weapons and armor pieces to take.

Coatmagic

first off, i don't care that they did this because i like to get dressed in the tutorial and loot all the urns etc.
always have always will it's a sickness xD
BUT
wow. just. wow. so many broken / messed up things and this is what they decide to do?
the percentage rate of getting anything out of the gear from the tutorial (or any other -0- cost item)
is so negligible as to barely be a blip even with max cp /skills.

Arunei

fizl101 wrote: »

I believe it was to do with the new decon assistant, so that the intro space wasnt farmed for mats. I assume there is alot of gear in there to decon, I cant really remember the intro

That doesn't make sense though. It's not like that stuff respawns; what difference is it to decon the gear there or decon it after you finish the tutorial? Also, brand new characters aren't going to be getting many returns on deconning, even with the Meticulous Deconstruction CP; a crafter with the passives for that with Meticulous would be better, and I don't think any gear you can find in the tutorial is anything above White quality, so there's really no point in "farming" them because you'll just be getting basic White mats that would be much easier to obtain by buying them.

the1andonlyskwex

Arunei wrote: »

fizl101 wrote: »

I believe it was to do with the new decon assistant, so that the intro space wasnt farmed for mats. I assume there is alot of gear in there to decon, I cant really remember the intro

That doesn't make sense though. It's not like that stuff respawns; what difference is it to decon the gear there or decon it after you finish the tutorial? Also, brand new characters aren't going to be getting many returns on deconning, even with the Meticulous Deconstruction CP; a crafter with the passives for that with Meticulous would be better, and I don't think any gear you can find in the tutorial is anything above White quality, so there's really no point in "farming" them because you'll just be getting basic White mats that would be much easier to obtain by buying them.

The restriction probably isn't aimed at human players. It's probably aimed at bots, where creating a new character, looting the armory, deconning everything, and dumping the results in a bank could all be automated and repeated indefinitely.

Grizzbeorn

They've removed access to Banker/Merchant assistants in multiple areas.
I used to be able to summon them while inside the werewolf Hunting Grounds portal, but the last character I brought there, just a couple of weeks ago, suddenly couldn't summon them.

Until I hear their reasoning for this change, I'm gonna call it a dumb move.
(they've attributed many recent changes to the attempt to improve performance, but I ain't seen any improvement. all I have is less functionality.)

Arunei

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

fizl101 wrote: »

I believe it was to do with the new decon assistant, so that the intro space wasnt farmed for mats. I assume there is alot of gear in there to decon, I cant really remember the intro

That doesn't make sense though. It's not like that stuff respawns; what difference is it to decon the gear there or decon it after you finish the tutorial? Also, brand new characters aren't going to be getting many returns on deconning, even with the Meticulous Deconstruction CP; a crafter with the passives for that with Meticulous would be better, and I don't think any gear you can find in the tutorial is anything above White quality, so there's really no point in "farming" them because you'll just be getting basic White mats that would be much easier to obtain by buying them.

The restriction probably isn't aimed at human players. It's probably aimed at bots, where creating a new character, looting the armory, deconning everything, and dumping the results in a bank could all be automated and repeated indefinitely.

You can only delete up to 3 characters in one day and then get one deletion back every day. Going through the tutorial to get gear to decon would be a waste of time as opposed to just running bot trains to farm mats to sell. There's no need to delete and then remake characters with the latter. Plus I'm not sure if bots could even be programmed to open all the menus required to get to the Assistant, which you have to spend 5k Crowns on too. I don't think anyone who's botting is going to drop 50 bucks to get an Assistant that would bring them very limited mat gains and would take a lot of time setting up characters then deleting and recreating, setting up and deleting, over and over, instead of just running a bot train that would take less time to set up and not cost them any money while also bringing in a lot more mats.

PeacefulAnarchy

Arunei wrote: »

fizl101 wrote: »

I believe it was to do with the new decon assistant, so that the intro space wasnt farmed for mats. I assume there is alot of gear in there to decon, I cant really remember the intro

That doesn't make sense though. It's not like that stuff respawns;

It does respawn, though, that's the issue. And it's not about mats, it's about the inspiration. It's a ridiculously tedious exploit for something that can be done much more quickly in other ways after the tutorial, but it is technically an exploit.

Here's where someone reported it on PTS: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/596976/pts-update-33-bug-reports-for-deconstruction-assistant

Giraffon

That decon assistant is going to extend my farming runs out in the wild to a whole new level. The only thing this year they are releasing that I'm actually looking forward to.

_Zathras_

There is literally nothing in there worth farming. If they really wanted to curtail farm bots, there are much better places.

Also, if bot farmers are buying $50 Cash Shop merchants, I think they would allow that.

Ultimately, the speculation here is part and parcel of what happens when an undocumented change? bug? isn't communicated to their customers.

"Hey folks! We read these comments about lack of functionality of your Crown bought items in certain areas. We apologize for it not being included in the patch notes. The reason for this is (blah blah blah)."

or,

"Hey folks! Thank you for bringing this to our attention. It was never our intention to limit the usage of these Crown Store merchants in the areas described. We are currently looking into this."

Hopefully it is the latter.

PeacefulAnarchy

_Zathras_ wrote: »

Ultimately, the speculation here is part and parcel of what happens when an undocumented change? bug? isn't communicated to their customers.

it is not undocumented, it is in the patch notes
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/599843/pc-mac-patch-notes-v7-3-5-ascending-tide-dlc-update-33#latest

Isle of Balfiera (new Tutorial)
Assistants can no longer be summoned in the Isle of Balfiera tutorial.

There's no rationale given, but it's clearly intentional and documented.

Cadbury

I would have guessed maybe it was a means to help with server load, but the "bot" theory is intriguing.

Though I'd wish they were more transparent about why it was changed, they of course are under no obligation to tell us.

But yeah, this is all speculation and we'll probably never know.

Arunei

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

fizl101 wrote: »

I believe it was to do with the new decon assistant, so that the intro space wasnt farmed for mats. I assume there is alot of gear in there to decon, I cant really remember the intro

That doesn't make sense though. It's not like that stuff respawns;

It does respawn, though, that's the issue. And it's not about mats, it's about the inspiration. It's a ridiculously tedious exploit for something that can be done much more quickly in other ways after the tutorial, but it is technically an exploit.

Here's where someone reported it on PTS: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/596976/pts-update-33-bug-reports-for-deconstruction-assistant

How long does the stuff take to respawn? I've never hung around in any tutorial long enough to realize it does after a set amount of time.

Inspiration doesn't matter on a character that you're going to end up deleting, it only matters for characters you intend to level as crafters. Inspiration ONLY goes towards leveling your crafting lines, it doesn't give you anything else. Why would botters worry about increasing the crafting level on bots? They wouldn't really benefit from it at all unless they intended to use those characters for farming, but then...why bother? They can set up trains to farm without putting any effort in, it seems VERY unlikely that they're going to actually put time towards leveling crafting characters for any reason.

And again, I also really doubt that a) botters are going to spend 50 bucks to get an Assistant, and b) that bots can be programmed to navigate through all the menus required to summon one, interact with it, and properly select which items need to be deconned.

Ridiculously tedious indeed, if not impossible. They wouldn't ban Assistants from tutorials over such an exploit. It's more than likely there was some other reason, maybe something to do with other bugs or some other exploit the devs discovered that no one on PTS found (or reported if they did notice it). All we can do is speculate since they didn't give us a reason for the change, but I highly doubt it was to counter bots/botters.

Kirawolfe

Folks who say there is nothing worth farming in the tutorial are incorrect. It was an excellent source of Decorative Wax from urns. Every character I ran through there (quickly) earned the expert wax harvester achievement (and over) by the end of the trip.

I do believe they've curtailed that though. I ran another toon through there today and got perhaps 1 piece.

Sheezabeast

Is it because they got lumped in with Companions, and they didn't want you accessing Companions there?

If so, they need to separate them....

PeacefulAnarchy

Sheezabeast wrote: »

Is it because they got lumped in with Companions, and they didn't want you accessing Companions there?

If so, they need to separate them....

You can't access a companion on a character that hasn't done the companion unlock quest, so there was never a way to summon a companion in the tutorial.

Arunei wrote: »

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

fizl101 wrote: »

I believe it was to do with the new decon assistant, so that the intro space wasnt farmed for mats. I assume there is alot of gear in there to decon, I cant really remember the intro

That doesn't make sense though. It's not like that stuff respawns;

It does respawn, though, that's the issue. And it's not about mats, it's about the inspiration. It's a ridiculously tedious exploit for something that can be done much more quickly in other ways after the tutorial, but it is technically an exploit.

Here's where someone reported it on PTS: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/596976/pts-update-33-bug-reports-for-deconstruction-assistant

How long does the stuff take to respawn? I've never hung around in any tutorial long enough to realize it does after a set amount of time.

It respawns immediately upon decon. I never said it was about bots, not all exploits are about bots. I also agree that the possible exploit isn't a big deal. On the other hand I don't see not being able to use the banker or merchant as a big deal, either. It's a minor change at the margins of the game.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

I am just impressed people still do the intro quest TBH.

Necrotech_Master

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

I am just impressed people still do the intro quest TBH.

this lol, the only full tutorial i ever did was the one on my main toon, when the wailing prison was the tutorial lol (instead of now just being the "intro" for the harborage main questline)

in regards to the OP, from the PTS it was because of the deconstruction assistant, you can basically infinitely decon the starter gear and come out of tutorial with maxed crafts (its only 1 xp per decon, but from my understanding the tutorial weapons would respawn instantly upon decon, they gave no mats because it was a 0 value item, but still 1 xp towards the craft line)

it was noted it made no sense doing this in the tutorial either because you would have to do this step of loot, decon about 5000+ times (dont remember exact amount, but was a large number lol) to max out the craft line or something absurd and it would take less time just deconning regular drops from the world lol

Wolf_Eye

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

fizl101 wrote: »

I believe it was to do with the new decon assistant, so that the intro space wasnt farmed for mats. I assume there is alot of gear in there to decon, I cant really remember the intro

That doesn't make sense though. It's not like that stuff respawns;

It does respawn, though, that's the issue. And it's not about mats, it's about the inspiration. It's a ridiculously tedious exploit for something that can be done much more quickly in other ways after the tutorial, but it is technically an exploit.

Here's where someone reported it on PTS: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/596976/pts-update-33-bug-reports-for-deconstruction-assistant

I agree that it is a ridiculously tedious exploit. I believe those items are worth 0 gold, and that only ever gives a tiny tiny amount of inspiration (especially at the higher levels). Personally, I don't think anyone would ever bother.

But I think another reason is that they would want to encourage players to not spend too much time in the tutorials gathering every little thing. Kind of give them a push and stuff; removing the banker/merchant/etc ensures they don't camp out for too long and have a place to store things.

zaria

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

I am just impressed people still do the intro quest TBH.

this lol, the only full tutorial i ever did was the one on my main toon, when the wailing prison was the tutorial lol (instead of now just being the "intro" for the harborage main questline)

in regards to the OP, from the PTS it was because of the deconstruction assistant, you can basically infinitely decon the starter gear and come out of tutorial with maxed crafts (its only 1 xp per decon, but from my understanding the tutorial weapons would respawn instantly upon decon, they gave no mats because it was a 0 value item, but still 1 xp towards the craft line)

it was noted it made no sense doing this in the tutorial either because you would have to do this step of loot, decon about 5000+ times (dont remember exact amount, but was a large number lol) to max out the craft line or something absurd and it would take less time just deconning regular drops from the world lol

Yes, it makes no sense I just put intricate gear in the bank and let leveling alts decon it, fast and easy.
Exception is the jewelry ones here they only got intricate then it does help

Dragonlord573

I get the feeling it's cause I leveled a character to level 31 in the tutorial as a joke lol.

Arunei

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

Sheezabeast wrote: »

Is it because they got lumped in with Companions, and they didn't want you accessing Companions there?

If so, they need to separate them....

You can't access a companion on a character that hasn't done the companion unlock quest, so there was never a way to summon a companion in the tutorial.

Arunei wrote: »

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

fizl101 wrote: »

I believe it was to do with the new decon assistant, so that the intro space wasnt farmed for mats. I assume there is alot of gear in there to decon, I cant really remember the intro

That doesn't make sense though. It's not like that stuff respawns;

It does respawn, though, that's the issue. And it's not about mats, it's about the inspiration. It's a ridiculously tedious exploit for something that can be done much more quickly in other ways after the tutorial, but it is technically an exploit.

Here's where someone reported it on PTS: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/596976/pts-update-33-bug-reports-for-deconstruction-assistant

How long does the stuff take to respawn? I've never hung around in any tutorial long enough to realize it does after a set amount of time.

It respawns immediately upon decon. I never said it was about bots, not all exploits are about bots. I also agree that the possible exploit isn't a big deal. On the other hand I don't see not being able to use the banker or merchant as a big deal, either. It's a minor change at the margins of the game.

That's true, not all exploits revolve around bots. I was mostly stuck on that point since others seemed to think it was bots and botters that would have caused the change.

I also had no idea things immediately respawned on decon. I'd say you would think they would just add a flag that would prevent deconning tutorial gear, so people could still summon bankers to grab stuff on new characters, but I suppose it's not too much of a hassle to make whatever you want them to have and then mail it to them. Or just grab what you want them to have from the bank and mail it to them. That is still definitely a super ultra tedious way to level a crafter, though. You'd spend less time on it by actually playing the game and picking up all the gear you find while playing, plus doing crafting writs for the inspiration, plus asking friends and guildmates to make you stuff.

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

I am just impressed people still do the intro quest TBH.

I like to play the tutorial for the story, which I think honestly is why most people play them (not counting new players who actually need the tutorial obviously). The only bad thing is I have 18 characters now, so if I want to do any tutorials in the future I need to do them on the PTS.