Crafter's Celebration Feedback Thread

ZOS_Kevin · February 20

Hi All,

Now that the Crafter's Celebration has wrapped up and many of you had a chance to participate, we'd like to get feedback from you. Let us know what you liked and what can be improved for next time. We'll leave this thread open for a few days and pass this thread of feedback to the dev team. If you need to reference the article for the Crafter's Celebration, it is available here. Thanks in advance for taking the time to provide feedback.

Estin · February 20

Copying and pasting this

I've already expressed my disappointment in how this event was handled and how there's next to no incentive to participate in this event now, but in the nature of honest feed back on how to improve this specific event in the future, here are some Ideas. All ideas are related to crafting and targeted towards players who aren't already maxed.

All reductions can be 25-50%
All increases can be 25-100%

Reduced Research Timers:
A reduction on any researchable trait. For any timer that was started before the event, those timers should be reduced by the same amount too. This would incentivize new players to research items, as well as give a helpful time reduction to players who already have 6-8 traits researched. This should stack with the passives that already reduce research timers. This can further be improved with the next idea.

Increased Research Slots:
Either an extra research slot, or double the amount of research slots based off of how many you currently based on the passive that increases the slots. The incentives and benefits remain the same as above.

Reduced Equipment Crafting Cost:
A reduction on the cost of materials for crafting equipment. This really only sees any benefit for CP160 equipment where it costs between 100-150 per item. Benefits new players and equipping yourself or alts with crafted gear.

Reduced Equipment Upgrade Cost:
A reduction on the cost of materials for upgrading equipment. Benefits all players since players are selective on what gear they want to gold out, either for themselves, or for an alt. This should stack with the passive that already reduces the cost of upgrade materials

Reduced Material Cost for Crafting Consumables and Furnishings:
A reduction on the cost of materials for crafting consumables and furnishings. An issue that I could leave open for suggestion is any item that only needs 1 material to craft, such as gold food or furnishings that need only 1 style material. For those use cases, they can either always produce 2 of the crafted item, or have a % chance to not use the material. Benefits players who are into housing and PvE'ers + PvP'ers who want to use the best possible food.

Increased Drop Rate of Furnishing Materials:
An increase in the drop rate of furnishing materials. While these are already affected by the green CP passive that doubles farmed materials (At least I believe it does), the drop rate is rather low. Benefits players who are into housing.

Increased Fishing Bite Rate or Perfect Roe from Filleting Fish:
Either one or the other, or both. Either choice would increase the amount of Perfect Roe obtained. Benefits the same players who want to use the best possible food.

These are all ideas that I can currently think of. Since this is meant to be an event for crafting, it would make sense to include some or all of these to provide more of an incentive to participate in the event.

For the reduced reconstruction cost, I would hope to see it brought back in the future in it's current form but with the exploit fixed. If that is not possible to do, then a floor of 25 crystals will be the second best solution.

thejadefalcon · February 20

Similarly copypasting mine.

"What a truly stagnant event. I'd ask if you want feedback, but it's all going to be the same as the Zenithar event that you ignored completely, so is there even a point? On the off chance that feedback is actually useful any more (my experience on both live and PTS the last few years casts serious doubt on that, but here's hoping), for crowing about making events for crafters, you've managed to make Zenithar's from a worthwhile use of our time into something completely pointless within the space of a single event and you've borked this one to the point it is a complete non-starter and I wonder how many people are getting banned simply because they didn't pay attention to how many transmute crystals they had. Remember how the motto used to be "play how you want"? Seems when the crafters decide to maximise returns, that's when you need to limit it.

While I'm aware it's an outlier, I have about 3,000 master writs sitting around doing nothing because I'm waiting for an Explorer's Celebration (remember those?) to mildly offset the cost of doing them. When I saw this pop up today, it was the most excitement I've felt for ESO in months (finally, something that benefits me!), only for the rug to be pulled out from under my feet within minutes. I had no expectations and you still managed to miss them.

Edit: Removed one point because I'm tired and misread the article. [snip]

[edited for minor bashing]

[Snip]

[Edited for discussing mod action]

JN_Slevin · February 20

While i really thought the idea was good, the execution and the bonuses felt really lacking.

The extra harvesting ressources are nice, but doesn't really do anything if you do not want to farm.
The inpiration earned is good for people which still miss experience in their crafting skills. For everyone else its a non-bonus.
The 100% writ vouchers earned is straight up misleading. In discussions with friends and guildmates we all thought it was the vouchers you get when doing any writ will give you double the amount which is written on the tooltip, while in reality it was only writs which drop while the event was ongoing have their vouchers doubled. Im not saying the first or the second is better but the communication lacked in that regard quite a bit.

The 50% trait transmute and 50% set recreation things seemed like a good idea got pushed out in 10 minutes without any thought. It is so painfully obvious that people will want to see what will happen if you make an item and decon it. Or make an item and decon it after the event.
The fact that it went live like this is.. I honestly don't know what to say. I expected better than this.

The improved chance to receive boosters from deconstruction was probably only items which you deconstruct instead of refining? I was a bit confused by that. A bit more clarity on that would have been nice.

Overall i think the ideas were really good but lacked foresight. Im looking forward to the next which hopefully has more people looking at potential issues which might arise instead of pushing it out in an unfinished and untested state.

Poss · February 20

After the reduction in transmute discount was removed, I had zero interest in this event and I’m currently levelling up two extra crafters. I didn’t do anything extra in my daily routine or grind anything more.

There’s so many builds I would love to test but the grind to get transmute crystals is too painstaking. I wish the devs would offer an alternative way to get them, even possibly buff the amount you get from dailies perhaps?

To be honest towards the end of the event, I’d completely forgotten it was even a thing

vulonsil · February 20

It was nice that it motivated me to run some surveys (I know if didn't affect them, but could pick other nodes between them, so it actually gave a little bit of reason to do them) but it would have been great if it had some random event box drops from e.g. nodes with some basic rewards like craft bag items and small amounts of different currency, i.e. no treasure or other inventory space eaters. Just a bit of extra fun without inventory management as punishment to go with it.

(I am really, really tired of the inventory management that goes along with most events. Especially since you can't put event boxes in bank and the bank is full of furnishing stacks anyway. I enjoy getting stuff from events, but I hate the time opening the boxes takes when there is simply not enough inventory space to do a lot at a time. And mail is always full. And character inventories are full of transmute orbs - why do transmutes even have a maximum limit? Just make it endless or something like 100k so it doesn't fill easily. Now I don't even want to do any content which gives transmutes since I still have 10s of the 50 transmute orbs in addition to smaller ones. For me personally, inventory management kills a lot of the enjoyment of the game. Even in housing, since if I want to start with a new house I first have to clean up the trash stashed there and then try to find the items I need from 20 other houses. Furnishing bag when? Also - Mayhem used to be my fave event, but now I just look at it with dread because of all the inventory management about to come. Would be nice to be able to enjoy the game again. Expecially because Necrom was actually good, so I have hope for the future. A lot of the "chores" just drain my interest. I play to relax and to have fun - that is something this event succeeded in, since it was just running surveys while watching Netflix to me.)

ShawnF · February 20

I agree with the general vibe of the first poster - give us more measurable, noticeable boosts if you want the event to feel different from any other where we get double drops from nodes. Either reward those who worked hard to max their crafting skills, or assist those who need help getting to max, or both - but make the rewards clear and measureable.

For example, the event said "Increased chance of receiving improvement materials such as Tempering Alloy or Mastic when deconstructing equipment of an appropriate rarity" but it feels like that chance probably went from 1% to 2% or something completely unnoticeable. I tried deconstructing things the first day, saw no change, and went back to ignoring this part of the event. Actually, ignoring all parts of the event. When my guild members talked about it, which was rare, they expressed only disappointment.

Get someone to proofread your event announcements and confirm they mean what you think they mean. For example

+100% Writ Vouchers earned from Master Writs created during the event

Should have said something like:

All master writs dropped during the event will be worth twice as many vouchers as usual

I imagine you'll hear that complaint a lot.

I don't think I need to say that the announcement of "cheap reconstruction!" then "whoops no we forgot about math!" was poorly done, but I'm saying it anyway. That's amateur hour, you can do better.

Edit to add: I do appreciate that you tried to surprise us with something fun! The intent was great. The execution was lacking. Maybe go simpler - don't give it a name, just hit us with "all pledges drop double keys for the next two days!" or something where people don't feel that they missed out due to timing, it's easy to take advantage of, it's not complicated to understand, and the rewards are noticeable.

Edited again because a poster down the chain is right: it wasn't a bait & switch, you didn't intend to offer one amazing thing and then yank it away. It did feel like a bait & switch, because you did offer an amazing thing and then yank it away. My guild members were actively excited about the possibilities, and then they weren't.

Arthtur · February 20

We dont need events around transmute crystals. We need more ways to farm them outside of random dungeons and PvP.
Currently some players sit on thousands of transmutes while others struggle to create 1 set. Events wont resolve those problems.
We need better rewards for pledges, weekly trials and arenas. Even some small amounts of transmutes for WB and world events would be nice.

Bonus to master writs was really nice and im happy it only applies to writs created during the event. Otherwise it would make a mess out of economy.
I think that bonus would be very nice during Zenithar as this is a big event about crafting and lasts longer.

Inspiration bonus was ok.
The same with harvesting bonus.

As for the deconstruction bonus, it was okay. I didnt even notice than one.

Overall it was okay. Could be better. The biggest problem was the start of the event and exploit.
In future i would prefer to know about suprise events day before. This way it would still be a suprise but there would be less chaos and ppl wouldnt miss on the first day because they did everything earlier.
As for exploit, well, i doubt anything i could say would help so i will just hope that it will be better in future.

Gormghlas · February 20

I was severely disappointed in your bait and switch of telling us reconstruction costs would be discounted and then pulling that almost immediately. Next time plan your events a little before launching them, so if something that is supposed to be a basic feature of the event is suddenly so objectionable you have to pull it, you might have given it a thought before the event starts.

And yes, you kept repeating this was supposed to be a surprise, but if I had known cheap transmuting was even a possibility I wouldn't have deconstructed trial gear I had in my bank literally just days before the event. I barely got any use out of the event at all because of this "surprise" factor.

The extra vouchers for the small handful of writs that dropped during the event were nice, but it would have been nice if you'd actually communicated that was what you meant by that bonus, considering what was in the announcement was something entirely different. Is it really impossible to make event descriptions that describe the event accurately?

The extra resources were at least useful, though it would be better and just genuinely make more sense if the bonus applied to more crafting related things, like crafting materials dropped from kills or found in containers and fishing, instead of just random nodes.

But as a previous commenter stated, perhaps there is some way you can make this event useful for newer players, even if it lacks much incentive for more established players. Increased research rates, slots etc as mentioned would help newer players get into crafting.

msetten · February 20

I love the basic idea of an event that focuses on crafters. But I also agree with the post above that there is a lot more possible as bonuses during this event. I'd even like to add one:

Increased chance to receive master writs
The double writ vouchers for master writs received during the event is great, but you should also increase the chance of receiving them. On six characters that are mostly full crafters, I only received about 4 of 5 of the increased master writs during the event, which is not really much of an increase in actual writ vouchers received.

And of course, the start of the event should have been better given the whole situation with the transmute crystal exploit. But I think you are already aware of that.

UrQuan · February 20

Copying and pasting from myself in this thread:

I'm going to summarize my experience with this surprise event.

After logging in and seeing the announcement about the event and what it gives:
"Oh cool, double writ vouchers from master writs, I'll go ahead and do those master writs I've been slowly earning!"
"Oh even cooler, half price gear reconstruction, I'll go ahead and gear up some of my characters I've been meaning to set up with new builds!"
"Oh, and double node yields and it doesn't say survey nodes are excluded, I'll go and do the surveys that have been building up in my bank!"

After an hour or so:
"Wait, the double writ vouchers are only for master writs earned during the event. Which will be hardly any. Well, that's pretty useless."
"Oh, and they took away the half price gear reconstruction, so there's no point in rushing to gear those characters up now."
"And, of course despite it not saying so, survey nodes don't get double yields, so no point in doing those surveys now."

Way to get me excited about a mini event and then immediately take away everything I was excited about.

And:

For the record, while I prefer to have events announced in advance, I'm also totally fine with surprise mini events. My frustration with this particular one comes from the fact that everything I was initially excited about for it turned out to not be exactly as advertised, and in the end nothing I care about at all. Initial excitement followed by a letdown. The biggest letdown for me is taking away the half price reconstruction. I understand it was removed to avoid an exploit with reconstructing followed by deconning to gain extra transmutes, but it really feels like that's something that should have been anticipated and planned for.

And finally I'd like to say that sh4d0wh4z3 had some really excellent suggestions here that would have been much better than what was done.

Ingenon · February 20

I think ZOS should do the Crafter's Celebration again someday. The poll "Should ZOS do another event like the Crafter's Celebration" on the forums got 138 votes, with 112 votes Yes and 26 votes No.

I benefited from the reduced cost to change an item trait (25 crystals), as well as others I talked with in game.

I would like to see the reduced cost to recreate an item fixed by limiting the minimum cost to the same as what you get back by deconstruction, which is 25 crystals. I think this would benefit players who have not collected all the weapons/armor/jewelry in a set, while hopefully preventing the exploit which caused the removal of this feature in this event.

Several folks told me that their drop rate for master writs was low, but I did not experience that while doing daily crafting writs during the event.

I benefited from the +100% inspiration bonus, and used it to level crafting on several alts. I realize there are folks who have 20 alts per account, and each alt has fully leveled crafting. However, many of the folks I talk with in game do not have that, so several of them also benefited from the 100+ inspiration bonus.

Finally, the double drops from nodes was welcome. Several folks I talked with were commenting about all the characters they saw collecting nodes, so I believe this feature was well used. I noticed more people out and about while I was collecting materials, both from nodes, and from doing surveys I got during the event.

kumenit_taeynav · February 20

i wouldve appreciated a heads up on the event before it went live, like a week before you couldve said that youre doing a crafting event. personally i do major farming runs once a week and last week i finished my run only to find out *literally* 2 minutes later that i wasted my time and surveys when the event went live to everyones surprise...
other than that i agree with some of the other people in this thread talking about how some boons from the event were retracted bc they werent well thought out to begin with or were worded in a misleading way. this and zeal of zenithar 2023 makes me feel like you especially hate crafters and want to see us suffer by getting our hopes up and letting us down

Keen · February 20

This event was only useful for trying to level my crafters who arent master yet. That's all.

Points of Feels-Bad-Man:
-The event wasn't announced beforehand, so I had done my transmuting the day before it started.
-You "fixed" an oversight by completely removing the recon cost reduction.
-The double harvest didn't apply to surveys.
-The double writs didn't apply to pre-existing writs, and honestly was really poorly explained/worded. I got two whole writs from 8 crafters doing writs every day, and one of them only gave 4 vouchers.

Ways I would Adjust this:
-Give as much advance notice as normal for events. Let people plan/prepare so we actually get a benefit.
-Instead of removing the cost reduction to recon, make it so it never goes below 25. This will still benefit people who haven't been able to fill their stickerbook.
-Make the double harvest apply to surveys. Gives people incentive to use those dozens and hundreds of surveys.
-Make the double vouchers apply to ALL writs, OR greatly increase the drop rate of writs during the event. Or both :P

Making the event longer OR more potent would also be great. Most of the events are centered around dungeons or PvP, neither of which interest me. Was sad to see that an event that seemed to be my cup of tea was not only underwhelming, but also very short.

WhiteCoatSyndrome · February 20

The worst part IMO was the perceived bait-and-switch with the bonuses. Yes, I know some of that was unintentional and happened due to the Transmute exploit. But when the in-game announcement is so far off from the reality of the event there really wasn’t going to be any avoiding the resulting sense of frustration. And not everyone in game is on the forums to get the communication about the issues.

That said:

I don’t have any issue with boosting inspiration for the event but as others have noted it’s only useful for characters who haven’t already maxed everything out.
I wouldn’t mind seeing trait research sped up either although it runs into the same problem as the above - maybe have research scrolls drop, so we can bank them for future characters or sell them to other players?
Increasing resources is fine, the only thing I can really say against it is that it isn’t enough of a boost to carry the event on its own…which it more or less had to, this time.
The Master Writ voucher increase really needed to be clearer on what it was actually doing. It’s also only a boost if your RNG is good. Maybe guarantee Master Writs drop during the event, as long as you’re completing the top level Writs?
Maybe boost the drop rate of Motif pages (EX: maybe normal DLC dungeons will guarantee a page instead of just a small chance).

I was fine with the event being a surprise.

ob1ken0bi · February 20

msetten wrote: »

I love the basic idea of an event that focuses on crafters. But I also agree with the post above that there is a lot more possible as bonuses during this event. I'd even like to add one:

Increased chance to receive master writs
The double writ vouchers for master writs received during the event is great, but you should also increase the chance of receiving them. On six characters that are mostly full crafters, I only received about 4 of 5 of the increased master writs during the event, which is not really much of an increase in actual writ vouchers received.

I agree with this. I was disappointed on the amount of master writs I received during the event. All my characters are maxed out in all crafting. Each received between 0-3 from the event.
Considering I got one this morning after the event was completed yet on 2 characters I didn't get any during the event seems like a huge miss. The double vouchers is awesome but if you get zero in 5 days, what's the point.

Aashiana · February 20

I thought the idea was great - it included bonuses that were different from other events, and I especially loved that NONE of the bonuses involved tickets and things to buy that you'll miss out on otherwise. I do like an event that's friendly to new players and encourages them to get up their crafting or even learn about the system. Please have more events that are less ticket-based. That system requires grinding and that makes the events less fun, especially since there are so many more events now than there used to be.

I am disappointed that I missed the opportunity to make a bunch of new sets at reduced cost. For closer to end game players, that would have been the one big benefit. We do end up making a lot of sets every time the meta changes and it would have been great for theorycrafting and testing also. The obvious fix for the exploit would have been to make any of those items only deconnable for the original transmute cost. I am also disappointed in the gamers who instantly figured this out and instead of reporting it and refraining from the exploit, made thousands of crystals, ruining it for everyone else. For newer players who have less transmutes this would have been also very helpful.

The wording did need to be more clear about which surveys and which writs would get the bonus. Unlike others I did get a lot of master writs, but that may be because all my chars have done their research, have a lot of motifs, know as many recipes as possible, e.g., all the things that get you more writs in the first place. I now have over 3000 more writ vouchers than I did before. But I do agree the drop rate could be increased a lot so that more beginning players would also benefit and get excited about the crafting system.

We argued for while on the forums about whether surveys during the event were actually providing more resources. It would easier to tell if it was just a straight up doubling and not the "chance to provide". Since most other resource doubling events don't work on surveys it was confusing. I saw some higher drops (e.g., as high as 50 in one node) but others seemed normal so I assume it was a "chance to double" and with the addition of the passive that does the same thing you could get between 1x and 4x the mats for any given node. But I'm still not sure!

fizl101 · February 20

I like that it was a surprise event just like explorers event

As has been mentioned consider rewording the master writ item so people understand it is only from those picked up during the event

The transmutation situation - I honestly thought it was deliberate as it was so obvious, with my product managers hat on I can see how it will be complex to resolve in a different way. I would however suggest that the team look at being able to dynamically change the text for the event in game rather than having to hotfix it

As well as reducing costs of transmutation, maybe consider reducing the costs of crafting items during the event to encourage people to craft for people who can't/don't

Increase chance of getting style pages/motifs and also the style materials would be really nice!

TaSheen · February 20

I very much enjoyed it. Got enough of the larger writs to get the JC master craft station on my second NA account and really close to the same on my second EU account.

The inspiration bonus was (LOL) an inspired addition! Got my two EU upcoming secondary crafters just about to 50 in each craft, very helpful!

I would love to see this event again soon.

Araneae6537 · February 20

While I enjoy surprise events, in retrospect I have to agree with those saying that a crafting type of event would be offer greater benefit with advance notice.

I did participate in doing a bit of extra material farming on the weekend and transmuted some perfected trial gear (I have only a few items from the sets so it was a savings).

I was disappointed not to be able to recon some sets at reduced cost, but understand it needed to be disabled — maybe recon should have been reduced by half but never below the 25 minimum do that it would not generate transmutes? I realize that wouldn’t benefit those who have collected all of a set. Perhaps a discounted cost to upgrade, including when reconning gear would be a nice addition?

I appreciated the 200 extra writs I got primarily from two gold writs earned during the event. As detailed in another thread, the specificity of this bonus was not clear in the announcement.

Destai · February 20

Overall
I like the idea of a bonus event, but only when its bonus has a small scope. What we eventually wound up with - the bonus to nodes and inspiration - seemed appropriate for a bonus event. The larger scope like changes to reconstruction costs, while attractive, should've been relegated to a bigger and well-announced event. The event's communication could have been handled much, much better.

Good
1. Bonus writ vouchers for endeavors.
2. Bonus writ vouchers for Master Writs earned during the event.
3. Double inspiration bonuses.
4. Double node drops.

Bad
1. Removing scope (transmutation costs) once the event was live.
2. In-game announcement screen not matching scope changes.
3. Players finding an issue within minutes of the event going live, resulting in the scope being changed.
4. No clarification from the CMs whether this was an exploit that would result in a ban.
5. Little rewards/incentives for long-term dedicated crafters. Existing Master Writs did not have any bonuses, nor did surveys.

Going forward
1. Approach anything crafting related more delicately.
2. Test any new event on PTS before launching.
3. Limit the scope of surprise events to small bonuses like double XP or inspiration.
4. Wordsmith Event wording on PTS or forum posts.
5. Commit to event scope once launched.
6. Ensure that in-game announcements are accurate to actually delivered scope.
7. Have a dedicated crafter's event where Master Writs earned during the event and existing Writs receive bonuses.
8. Implement these suggested changes.

Closing thoughts
The surprise part of the event was nice, appreciated the final scope of the event wasn't incredibly FOMO driven. This otherwise nice-to-have-but-not-must-have event was compounded by some pretty big communication issues. It's a bit disheartening to see that nearly 10 years into this game's life, communication still hasn't been ironed out. Some of the official communication deepened my concerns whether the CMs are truly understanding the feedback. This was the 2nd event in a row with some major issues, which makes me concerned for the bigger launches this year. Similar issues with subsequent patches and events will impact my spending on the game.

Existing feedback
My comments
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8046529#Comment_8046529
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8046594#Comment_8046594
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8046958#Comment_8046958
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8046675#Comment_8046675
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8046968#Comment_8046968
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8047637#Comment_8047637

Related Threads
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/652722/crafters-event-im-really-enjoying-this#latest
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/652610/should-zos-do-another-event-like-the-crafter-s-celebration#latest
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/652506/the-crafters-event-makes-it-so-you-can-make-4k-plus-transmute-crystals-an-hour#latest
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/652507/nice-event-but-poorly-timed#latest
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/652529/official-discussion-thread-make-the-most-out-of-making-things-during-the-crafter-s-celebration#latest

gabbo1928 · February 20

I'm a crafter, so a crafting focused event seems great on paper. The execution was lacking, as many have said. Lots of good points above, so I'll try not to rehash them too much.

Make event writs more easily distinguished from past writs. I had hundreds of writs stored prior to the event, because I only do them during double-xp events with a 150% scroll, to maximize returns. Now I have all of the event writs mixed in, and they look exactly the same unless you view the value on the tooltip. Giving them a slightly different name and/or icon would have been nice.

Some notice would be nice. I'm not saying it needs to be announced on the schedule months in advance, but at least let us know that it is on the horizon. I have two characters I'm still leveling crafting on. I periodically send all of my intricate gear to them to break down. I had just done this and cleared out my inventory the weekend prior to this surprise event. If I had some warning, I could have waited four days, and both of those characters would now be fully maxed in all crafting trees. Hell, even a day's notice would have been nice, because instead of doing my crafting at 7am on the event start day, I could have delayed a few hours and maybe gotten some more double-reward master writs. I would imagine there are some players out there who just transmuted some gear a week or two before the event, who are now bitter because they could have done so for half the cost if they had known this was coming.

ZOS is terrible when it comes to communicating events. I recall times where we had dates -- actual dates -- for events months ahead of time. Now it is vague quarterly updates. There was a time where an event announcement article would go up a week or two before an event begins. Now Whitestrake's is starting in less than 48 hours, and the announcement just went live yesterday. But zero notice on a brand new event type that never even saw PTS testing? That's ridiculous.

Boost all crafting mat sources. I love me some extra mats, but there are some sources that never get any love. Specifically, fishing nodes, and drops from kills. I was low on Mudcrab Chitin and specifically farmed for it for an hour or two on the shores of Khenarthi's Roost. I didn't notice any increased drop rate. I would imagine the same goes for leather, poison bases, and other resources that drop from enemy kills. Also, these events always ignore fishing. It would be nice to see boosts to fish yield, or Perfect Roe yield, rare fish chance, or something for the anglers out there.

EDITED to add: Make chance for more improvement mats include refining, not just deconstructing. The increase to "boosts" from deconstructing was lackluster, because I just didn't have that much dropped gear to break down during the event. On the other hand, just from picking harvesting nodes while I was running around doing other stuff, I looted probably 4-5000 refinable mats. It would have been nice to get more improvement mats for refining those. Or it may have motivated me to run the surveys I've been sitting on, since I'd get something extra for refining those mats.

Complaints aside, I would like to see more mini events like this. I do like these kinds of events where there are passive bonuses to regular game activities, instead of the usual event where you are grinding missions for reward boxes. The constant pressure to collect all of the pages of the latest outfit style or whatever just gets tiresome. Something like this event boosting crafting, an Explorer's event (especially to fill the longer gaps between the established double-xp events), or the various battlegrounds weekends, are nice. I am not a PvPer. I have never participated in a battleground weekend, and that is precisely what I like about it. It boosts a game activity I don't engage with, but there are no special drops I am missing out on, so I don't feel the pressure to endure toxic PvP gankers like I do for something like the upcoming Whitestrake's.

So, yes, there were certainly some missteps here, and room for improvement. But I'm glad to see that ZOS is trying new things instead of rehashing the exact same event styles we've had for years. If they actually consider our feedback and improve things next time, I'm all for it.

Prophet_of_Malacath · February 20

LIKED:
Simplicity. I did this event on multiple crafting alts & can at least say it was smooth in that respect.

I also enjoyed the very idea of bonus writs - I even cleared out a few old junkie writs (a ton of low reward alchemy) while turning in newer ones (for woodworking, clothier, etc).

DISLIKED:
I do wish we had more of the double-voucher writs too - I crafted on 10ish toons daily & still felt like I got maybe a handful.

The briefness of the transmute cost redux. I usually have to sit down & check all my inventory, plan a new loadout, before I actually transmute anything nice - so in effect, the bonus was gone before I could do this.

IDEAS:
We have "Collections" for gear - why not for recipes? It would be really nice if the recipes that dropped had a chance to fill-in existing gaps.

Bonuses to crafting GEAR is nice but incidental - no one crafts gear constantly, most might not be looking for a new loadout, especially since Outfits replace the visuals (I remember when crafters did good business JUST for fashionistas).
Inspiration bonuses are kind of a sunk cost - they're welcome, but irrelevant once we cap out. No one FEELS like a better crafter for a little intangible xp.
But Recipe Logs..... its not PVE, its not PVP, its pure "I'm crafting a thing because its aesthetically pleasing to me to craft this thing and show my work". I think filling-out our Recipe logs would be rewarding to those of us who give away hundreds of greens & blues we've long ago collected but dread the rat-race of chasing every stool, shelf & similar furnishing. If Writs give us recipes, it'd be nice for them to gravitate toward missing ones - or let us "trade" recipes we know & get a token so we can acquire a recipe we need later.

How about Master Crafter recipe drops during the event?
If some obscure recipe HAS to drop from a mob or region, maybe a boost to Master Crafter's chances of uncovering one; or maybe if we wield the hammer-skin or Title? Surely a Master Crafter could figure out how (obscure object) was built more than some careless adventurer. If the event is about CRAFTING, help those of us who devote ourselves to really stand out for our grind. I don't want to do a ruin for gear I'll just deconstruct, I want to do a ruin to plunder it's recipes & reverse engineer its wonders!

I wish Surveys & Maps went into the Craft bag.

After each toon, I dump my earnings into the bank - so I can, at the end, collectively mail all the Intricate to new crafters, sell all the Ornate, etc. Maps take sooooo long to do, it's best to save them up & do them en masse - but they each take so much space as well.

Just some ideas!

All in all, I appreciate the very idea of events helping crafters! I think the bonus-writ reward is worthwhile & wish all the recipes that drop were better curated so we could get useful things from them.

dkblight · February 20

I've maxed most of my 20 toons in crafting, so the 100% didn't apply to me.
100% on writs, I still have like 4k writs from the writ crafting event where we got a box per master writ (first event not the 2nd time around event)

I of course love double drops in all zones, although have been salty for years now on the no double fish or more so scraps. (I have more than 25k raw silk vs 5k rubidiete scraps)

My prime interests are these:
*50% reduction in Transmute Crystal costs for changing item traits (requires a Transmute Station, found in the Clockwork City DLC game pack or available for player homes)*
I would have been far happier if this applied to the sticker book system as transmute stones are touch to collect, but cost is super high least you spend days grinding dungeons and trials...but the average workforce player has an hour to maybe 3 hours to do anything in game on the weekdays.

Increased chance of receiving improvement materials such as Tempering Alloy or Mastic when deconstructing equipment of an appropriate rarity
I would have preferred an increase in style mats, I'm not breaking down legendary gear that much, but Fine and superior gear with style mats like stendarr stamp or glass eye of mora or Ivory brigade are far more likely to be deconstructed.

NettleCarrier · February 20

Eh, it might as well have just been a harvesting event. There's never a bad event that doubles harvesting so I was content enough with it. I did get falsely excited at first and bought up about 100 master writs to combine with my large backlog of them and was pretty disappointed that there was no reward for doing so. I'm enjoying shopping around now for some higher ones but it mostly feels pointless. I didn't have the transmutes saved up to do anything else, but from what I heard those bonuses weren't so great either.

EF321 · February 20

It was overall good, but cheaper reconstruction would have been best part of it, if it worked. Best logical solution is probably to save with item how many transmutes were used for it's reconstruction, so in case it was less than 25, give that amount instead of 25. I guess this might be much more difficult technically than how it sounds, so next best solution is just to cap cost reduction at 25, so at least those with not full collection could take advantage of it.

The rest of the event is fine, cheaper transmutation was nice to retrait some older golded gear that I don't want to throw away still, extra booster chance was good to get mats out of gear I definitely can throw away, double resource nodes are always welcome.

A good little thing added to this event I think might be significantly increased XP reward from daily writs (only daily, not master writs, no need of yet another even that promotes hoarding writs). Daily writs award minimal possible amount of XP, amount that barely even matters, so it can be much more than double.

This kind of event should definitely be announced in advance, transmutes are slow to get normally and using them just before surprise event sure would feel bad.

ClowdyAllDay · February 20

So, transmutes aside, the next best thing was the crafting writs doubled which i like. i got a gold jewls one for almost 700 writ vouchers. you def got some kinks to iron out for the next time but lets def do it again!

Erissime · February 20

There is already enough feedback which also echoes mine. I will therefore only say this: Explorer's Celebration for a surprise event was better than this. The only positive side was the voucher's increased possibility of earning. So better unite the two, leave nodes drop double all over the world ( explorers again) - and give some vouchers as you did this time - and definitely organize it better.

Hamfast · February 20

I want to say first, that I agree with almost everything said except for the bashing because I would not want to be known as a basher... except on my tank... that said... (thank you for explaining what the bashing was, minor or not)

This event was at best lackluster, for all the points made by others...

Would I like to see more events like this, perhaps, if in fact I find some benefit from the event (no, it need not be a lot)

My main crafter has maxed out everything, learned every trait and knows every motif... I did the daily crafting writs on him every day and got 1 master writ... (1 character)

My normal crafters (50 in each skill, 8 or 9 traits, know a few extra motifs) did daily writs on a few each day... few if any master writs (16 Characters)

My lowest crafters (less than 50 in skills, a few traits, 9 base motifs) broke down everything as they normally do, they are still below 50 in skills and are still learning traits (3 Characters)

If this type of event is done in the future, here are some ideas...
1) Higher Drop rate for master writs, higher payouts for master writs (no need to change the master writs, just they pay out more)
2) All resource nodes pay out more
3) Transmute costs lowered to 25 crystals (making it cheaper to recreate or re-trait an item, but not able to be exploited)
4) Tasks/Quests that reward transmute crystals (this could be event crafting tasks like the imperial or winter writs from the new life festival or a myriad of other things)
5) Research timers lowered during the event (

Feel free to add more.

Oh, and an official explanation of what criteria are used to generate a master writ so we all can be informed... because I obviously have no clue. (This is not bashing as it's from me and about me)

TaigaStrider · February 20

I don't post on the forums super often, but seeing so many negative (and in my opinion, far too aggressive) reviews motivated me to write something here.

Before I begin, a bit of context - I primarily play ESO for roleplay, housing, and zone questing. Dungeons, PvP, and min-maxing builds aren't -bad- activities, but they just aren't something I usually focus on. It was nice to get an event that could be useful for collecting housing mats, and show more casual players some love.

Like Prophet_of_Malacath, I appreciate the simplicity of the event. As a graduate school student, my free time can be limited, and having "super special and involved" events back to back can be overwhelming to keep up with. In some cases, it can even cause players to give up on keeping up with the game altogether. In addition, as a roleplayer, roleplaying is my central focus. I don't mind taking time away from roleplay to take part in game events, which can be quite fun (especially zone celebration events - the perfect time to knock out some relevant questing), but getting too involved in too many events takes away from the entire point of my playing the game.

You don't need super special bells and whistles to make an event good. In my opinion, trying to pursue that can actually cause events to backfire. There is never such a thing as "good enough" when it comes to satisfaction. It simply results in ever-increasing expectations, and ever-increasing hostility when those expectations aren't met. Bells and whistles are like money; we always want more and we get increasingly vicious when we don't get it. To put it simply, it creates the problem of greed. To put things in perspective, I would recommend players reading this go back and play older TES games like Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim. While such games were never "perfect," and might be over a decade (or more) old, they were and are truly great games still worth playing today - old graphics and all. ESO similarly is reaching the ten-year mark, and while again, it isn't perfect, consider what it brought and continues to bring to MMO gaming and the Elder Scrolls franchise. It's impressive - and I think we should find at least some contentment there. What the developers do with these events - which are free, by the way - is the giving of a gift. I am thankful. Money is tight for most people these days, but I'm happy to continue to purchase ESO+ so that the developers can keep supporting this very good game. ZOS and the roleplaying guilds have provided far more opportunities for entertainment (and even emotional therapy, through RP) for me than Netflix or Disney+ ever would, and I don't want that to end anytime soon.

I disagree with gabbo1928 on bringing fishing and kill drops into this event. These things don't seem to "fit" this event to me - though it could be nice to perhaps have some simple annual events revolving around them in the future. An "Angling" event would be nice, as well as some kind of "Monster Hunter" event where we had increased drops of certain valuable loot and monster trophies. Both rare fish and monster trophy collecting can be very time-consuming and frustrating due to tough RNG, after all. Such new events would be entirely up to ZOS' discretion, of course.

In my opinion, this event was fine as it was. ZOS doesn't -need- to change anything. That said, I suppose I have a few opinions on potential improvements (from my perspective) if ZOS would be interested in pursuing them.

Having more notification of the event beforehand would be more convenient for many people, but angling it as a surprise is fine too.
It would be nice to include crafting survey nodes in increased drops. However, as a crafter, I have so many normal armor and weapon materials (stacks of thousands) that I didn't have as much motivation to collect nodes since I didn't need the mats. Rubedite and ancestor silk are like cobblestone, coal, sand, and dirt in Minecraft to me now. I have too much. While this is more of a problem than an opinion for improvement, see my continued thoughts below:
Housing continues to become increasingly important to roleplayers. Setting up homes, scenes, and custom delves requires furnishings, and a constant new supply of them. Roleplay is the mouth that devours furnishings and is never satisfied. Furnishing mats can be very frustrating or expensive to collect (looking at you, heartwood). If furnishing materials were included in crafting survey nodes, it would make much more incentive for roleplayers to generate and complete them. Furthermore, if the drops of furnishing mats were increased in survey nodes during this event, that would be a great (nay, amazing) incentive for roleplayers to get involved and go on collection sprees. Alternatively, if you are seeking to limit the availability of furnishing mats for balancing reasons, you could make survey node furnishing mats exclusive to this event.
The event did feel a bit short, and I do wish I could have had a bit more time, but given that it's a simple event, it also makes sense to only last a weekend.
A part of me does wish that the voucher bonus could have applied to all master writs, not just the ones generated during the event (such a short time doesn't allow for many relevant writs, if any at all, if you have not-great RNG). But I also know that ZOS has balancing to keep under consideration, so the limitation made sense. Alternatively, a longer event time could solve this issue.
I am aware of some beginning-of-event issues where some changes had to be made. There are no hard feelings here, especially considering that (according to others) this event wasn't tested on the PTS beforehand. Without player testing, there's simply no way to predict what issues might happen. That said, perhaps some PTS work for events wouldn't be a bad idea. However, if this event was also meant to be a surprise, I can also see and understand the inherent conflict there. I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other, so long as issues are quickly addressed, which I believe they were.
Edited Addition: Hamfast had a good idea with reduced research timers (or timers progressing faster) during the event. While I wouldn't need it personally, as my crafting character has researched everything already, it could help a lot of other players.

Specifically to the other players here:
Making the accusation of baiting-and-switching isn't really fair to ZOS. It's valid to feel upset and describe your emotional experience, but your feelings are not necessarily someone else's motivations or intents. It's entirely possible the folks at ZOS made mistakes - which were promptly corrected - but I don't see a reason to suspect maliciousness. Furthermore, I do believe ZOS does care about our feedback - I would not have posted here otherwise, and why would ZOS have started this thread to begin with? ZOS is here to listen to us, not to cater to every single one of our (often conflicting) demands. If ZOS decides there are valuable ideas to implement here, great. If they don't make many implementations from this thread, that's fine too, so long as they take the time to read and listen. If they don't make implementations from my or your posts specifically, it's not a personal insult.

At the end of the day, let's please all use common decency. There's no need for rudeness, taunting, making fun, accusations, or demands.

Finally, to ZOS:
Thank you for making these events. I look forward to having more. I also realize that there are many posts to read in this thread, and that some of them might not be the most heartwarming. Thank you, to those of you who take the time to read and relay feedback to the rest of the ZOS team.

Legioner995 · February 20

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi All,

Now that the Crafter's Celebration has wrapped up and many of you had a chance to participate, we'd like to get feedback from you. Let us know what you liked and what can be improved for next time. We'll leave this thread open for a few days and pass this thread of feedback to the dev team. If you need to reference the article for the Crafter's Celebration, it is available here. Thanks in advance for taking the time to provide feedback.

Overall the Crafter's Celebration was just fine, the only thing that I thought a bit disappointing was the quality of Master's writs drops from daily crafting quests (high reward writs, the gold one for Blacksmith, Woodwork, Clothing and Jewelry). I would suggest increasing the the drop rate for the golden ones in these kind of celebrations).