ZOS not respecting players' time

ClowdyAllDay

TheDarkRuler wrote: »

10th year jubilee has started and of course the majority of the players wants to get the 5 new styles.
The drop rates were already announced by ZOS as "extremely rare" and I was terrified since even "good" drop rates are usually really bad.

Right now I have spent like 4 hours into Vvardenfell to get Barbas and Sunna'rah and I am currently 7h deep in Summerset without any results.
The fishing and dolmen one I have not even started yet.

What is fun about grinding to hours upon hours the same spots for a single item?
The drop rates are probably even less than 1% but since ZOS does not release those, we can only speculate.

I dare every ZOS member to grind all 5 of them themselves and ask themselves, if they think their drop rates are fair.

hey look if i have to do shipwreck shoals delve boss 8 times over 3 days to get credit for that achievement, what can you hope to achieve grinding for a motif?

Pelanora

Shagreth wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin consider this please and how you give us cosmetics..

Poor old @ZOS_Kevin. I do feel sorry for him sometimes. He's like the Charon of the forums, ferrying our tears to indifferent shores.

Shagreth

Pelanora wrote: »

Poor old @ZOS_Kevin. I do feel sorry for him sometimes. He's like the Charon of the forums, ferrying our tears to indifferent shores.

Kevin is my favorite person around these parts, he is the most hard working and overall professional. I can't express how highly I think of him enough.

moderatelyfatman

Shagreth wrote: »

Pelanora wrote: »

Poor old @ZOS_Kevin. I do feel sorry for him sometimes. He's like the Charon of the forums, ferrying our tears to indifferent shores.

Kevin is my favorite person around these parts, he is the most hard working and overall professional. I can't express how highly I think of him enough.

We need a 'We Love Kevin' thread every now and again just to remind him that we're salty at the devs and not Kevin.

huntgod_ESO

I did WB's in Vvardenfell for about 2 hours before I got the style page.

Spent 6+ hours running dolmens in Alik'r and moved on because it was so frustrating (I also rotated to different characters ever 2 hours)...so 6+ hours on dolmens and nothing.

I spent 4 hours running geysers and got nothing...

I've spent a little time fishing in between...nothing.

So 12+ hours of grinding and 1 style page. Very frustrating when coupled with almost 2hrs to do writs on 20 characters and running Archive on at least two characters.

huntgod_ESO

Also, can we mention that these are BoP, they could at least have made these tradeable then we'd at least have the option of throwing gold at it, of which I have plenty compared to free time.

FluffyBird

huntgod_ESO wrote: »

Also, can we mention that these are BoP, they could at least have made these tradeable then we'd at least have the option of throwing gold at it, of which I have plenty compared to free time.

That would defeat the purpose of bloating "playtime" and inflating numbers for players' activity

Blood_again

FluffyBird wrote: »

You are missing the point. The point being: an in-game celebration should not feel like a second job.

Imagine it's your birthday. You get some really good socks.

Every time I see the "birthday" parallels, I see people confuse the roles.
We are guests on this birthday. Participating in these birthday activities is pure optional.
I don't think it is ZOS' mood, but as a birthday boy I would've giggle watching all my guests keeping crawl through the bushes for some valuable prise

I understand FOMO frustration. Honestly, I'd rather see those pages tradeable. That way stubborns would get their fortune, collectors would get their pages. Win-win.

Meanwhile I'm confused with players entitlement against the random. Why spend hours and hours on grind in first days of the event? Just to burn out and shout on forum after that?
The event is weeks long. Save your energy. You won't enter the game for your last gold boxes and tickets, if you burn that way.

derkaiserliche

The event is nearly 3 weeks long, so of course the rare drops might not be obtainable within the first 2 days.

Eso tried to give everyone a good motivation to keep playing during the event, since otherwise people here would complain, that there isnt anything to do i bet.

Same goes for the horse. They wanted you to spend your tickets on it, because you get tons of them. Otherwise 3tickets per day are just too much for this long event.

And one more thing: If you dont have much freetime, maybe you should just focus on the rare drops, you really want to use.

Its not easy to find a balance between people asking for everything after 1 hour of playing and people who really spend their days grinding. One will be unhappy either way.

Just be happy there are actually nice new rewards for playing and not throwing money at the game.

FluffyBird

Blood_again wrote: »

Meanwhile I'm confused with players entitlement against the random. Why spend hours and hours on grind in first days of the event? Just to burn out and shout on forum after that?
The event is weeks long. Save your energy. You won't enter the game for your last gold boxes and tickets, if you burn that way.

The drop rate so far was reported to be bad so players are reasonably worried that if they don't go all in on grind they may miss out on unique items. This is not entitlement against random, this is entitlement for fun and event rewards which makes perfect sense to me. Also there's no way to just put X hours into farming some "Dagoth Ur's butt hair bundles" with which you could just buy what you want, otherwise going "oh, even if it doesn't drop, in X days I'll have enough bundles to buy it, so I'll just make sure to farm enough per day" would be an option. But it is not an option.
This is the core problem of low drop rates and no pity on time-limited items: it doesn't spark joy, it sparks anxiety and frustration therefore it's a *** approach for a celebration.

dragonlord500

The funny part about it is. it was all talked about on the PTS and everyone who "tested" it clearly pointed out that this method of obtaining these collectables was a very bad idea and not a kind of thing that makes it a celebration. Zos was TOLD THIS and THEY ignored it completely.

alpha_synuclein

FluffyBird wrote: »

Imagine it's your birthday. You get some really good socks. Then you get a whole warehouse of boxes and are told there's a pair of really good socks in each and a chance for a new gaming PC to be in one of those. Opening a box is a bit boring and a tad time-consuming and it's not an activity you enjoy. But since the PC is a sidenote, it's ok, and you aren't going to feel frustrated and disappointed when you are at 1000th box and PC is not there, right?

This analogy is just like populists, sounds just right when you're angry, but bit off when you actually think about what's being said...
You're comparing socks vs pc, two things that tremendously (and objectively) differ in value, as an analogy to a random style page vs specific style page situation.
It should be more like any socks vs pink socks, when pink ones were the ones you wanted

ShadowPaladin

After doing Dolmens and Geysers - mostly Geysers - for the last 3 days, I do think there should be some sort of *Reward-Mechanic* added to the RNG for EVENT SPECIFIC loot.

What I am thinking about is, that after you have done an amount of X (for example 300 Geysers) you will get a guaranteed (100% chance) drop for the Event Item. With that players at least would know that the grind will be limited to a certain extend and won't be going beyond that.

Another option would be an improved drop chance (eg. by 50% or 100% of the original chance) from geysers and dolmens IF the player does have completed the associated achievements.

Bethgael

kiwi_tea wrote: »

Personally, the grind for this stuff is so totally awful, that it killed any sense of FOMO.

I just pick up what I can by chance. Not worth the time to try to collect most stuff, and not worth farming boxes in most events. The odds are just so low.

Yeah, I'm pretty much the same. I don't really need those style pages at all, it turns out; I have no enthusiasm for them because of the way it was implemented (and that's even taking into account the community/players in ESO are comparatively non-toxic as a whole. I could not imagine the same situation in current WoW, for example). I did the 4 geysers I still needed for the achievement to pop and headed over to Western Skyrim to finally finish the same achieve in the Harrowstorms, since people are actually doing them this month. And my Southern Elsweyr dragon count. If I run past a dolmen, I'll join in, and I'm also working on some fishing achieves, so if that drops, it drops, but otherwise? Yeah, I'll continue to make my own fun and eat my cake to get my furnishing objects and finish a few indriks.

I understand the reasoning: have these things drop in older areas = older players actually doing these areas so that newer players can complete them. This is actually A Good Thing. Keeping the drop rate low keeps older players in these areas for the entire month so new players, lower levels etc don't "miss out". Okay. Yet, the lower players still "miss out" because they will never see a box drop from those bosses/dolmens/geysers. There needs to be a balance between making things better/more populated for newer players and increasing the grind to stupid.

FluffyBird

alpha_synuclein wrote: »

FluffyBird wrote: »

Imagine it's your birthday. You get some really good socks. Then you get a whole warehouse of boxes and are told there's a pair of really good socks in each and a chance for a new gaming PC to be in one of those. Opening a box is a bit boring and a tad time-consuming and it's not an activity you enjoy. But since the PC is a sidenote, it's ok, and you aren't going to feel frustrated and disappointed when you are at 1000th box and PC is not there, right?

This analogy is just like populists, sounds just right when you're angry, but bit off when you actually think about what's being said...
You're comparing socks vs pc, two things that tremendously (and objectively) differ in value, as an analogy to a random style page vs specific style page situation.
It should be more like any socks vs pink socks, when pink ones were the ones you wanted

I'm going to argue that those special rare styles are more valuable than the rest of loot you can get from where they drop. Maybe not socks vs PC level of difference, but the difference is there.

ProudMary

ShadowPaladin wrote: »

After doing Dolmens and Geysers - mostly Geysers - for the last 3 days, I do think there should be some sort of *Reward-Mechanic* added to the RNG for EVENT SPECIFIC loot.

What I am thinking about is, that after you have done an amount of X (for example 300 Geysers) you will get a guaranteed (100% chance) drop for the Event Item. With that players at least would know that the grind will be limited to a certain extend and won't be going beyond that.

Another option would be an improved drop chance (eg. by 50% or 100% of the original chance) from geysers and dolmens IF the player does have completed the associated achievements.

It shouldn't take more than 100 dolmens or geysers to guarantee a style page drop. IMO 100 would still be too many for an anniversary event that is supposed to be fun and rewarding.

Blood_again

FluffyBird wrote: »

The drop rate so far was reported to be bad so players are reasonably worried that if they don't go all in on grind they may miss out on unique items. This is not entitlement against random, this is entitlement for fun and event rewards which makes perfect sense to me. Also there's no way to just put X hours into farming some "Dagoth Ur's butt hair bundles" with which you could just buy what you want, otherwise going "oh, even if it doesn't drop, in X days I'll have enough bundles to buy it, so I'll just make sure to farm enough per day" would be an option. But it is not an option.
This is the core problem of low drop rates and no pity on time-limited items: it doesn't spark joy, it sparks anxiety and frustration therefore it's a *** approach for a celebration.

As I mentioned, I understand FOMO.
Making these pages BoP and not available at Impressario was a strange solution, if you ask me.

As for fun and event rewards, they are coming along with the special outfit hunt. That's why WBs and dolmens drop the boxes this year, if I got their plan right. I think this change is a good idea.
It is a bit sad that experienced players an mass devalue any reward but one they hunt for. I see it in every topic about new pages.
It is also understandable. I know that feeling when overland collection is full and you're fed of jewellery mats. But that's the point where players escalate their own frustration themselves, watching they "got nothing"

The only area where the grinding reward is really small at the moment is fishing. You got no boxes along with the page hunt. The chances of roe is higher with crafting writs than with fishing during the event
Anyway I'm glad ZOS took a look towards the fishing. May be it is the first step of many that's coming. I hope.

(edited for typos)

alpha_synuclein

FluffyBird wrote: »

I'm going to argue that those special rare styles are more valuable than the rest of loot you can get from where they drop. Maybe not socks vs PC level of difference, but the difference is there.

Fair point, but since the special pages are non-tradeable (imo they should be) their value is mostly in our heads.

VoodooPlatypus

Easily the most disappointing and frustrating event they’ve put out in the last 9 years I’ve spent playing this game, and about as far from any reasonable semblance of a “celebration” as I can imagine.

It’s almost as if they don’t realize that celebrations should be celebratory rather than tedious and frustrating.

MafiaCat115

dragonlord500 wrote: »

The funny part about it is. it was all talked about on the PTS and everyone who "tested" it clearly pointed out that this method of obtaining these collectables was a very bad idea and not a kind of thing that makes it a celebration. Zos was TOLD THIS and THEY ignored it completely.

Definitely agree with this sentiment. I was one of those testers who first found out about the terrible RNG, the pages being bound, and that they are apparently going to be gone when the event ends. Seemingly a majority of the feedback was that how they have things set up is suboptimal, but the pages were still pushed out as is (if not made rarer).

Even if they just choose two of those three (terrible RNG, bound, or event only), then the pages would be fine. Having all three of those is not good design except to show high engagement during a big event.

FluffyBird

alpha_synuclein wrote: »

FluffyBird wrote: »

I'm going to argue that those special rare styles are more valuable than the rest of loot you can get from where they drop. Maybe not socks vs PC level of difference, but the difference is there.

Fair point, but since the special pages are non-tradeable (imo they should be) their value is mostly in our heads.

Isn't value of everything in a video game in our heads?
To think of it: isn't value of everything in our (sometimes collective) heads at the end of the day? (This looks like a proper off-topic rabbit hole though)

Elsonso

BetweenMidgets wrote: »

They started this with a jesters event, and now this - so I’m assuming saving up boxes is now a thing of the past.

What is the point of saving up boxes. The only reason I save them is if they have Leads that I already have and need to find.

SilverBride wrote: »

I didn't even know there were new styles or grinds to get them.

Without that stuff, the whole event is just cake and event tickets. People can be done with the Anniversary event on Day 1, unless they need a 30 second diversion to get Event Tickets on later days.

I did the grind for the sword style (fishing) which is a lot easier and faster than doing world bosses or incursion events.

They also designed the Anniversary drops at incursions so that only the top players get the special boxes, which is sort of an insult. That is an old game design that they need to fix, but probably never will.

derkaiserliche wrote: »

Eso tried to give everyone a good motivation to keep playing during the event, since otherwise people here would complain, that there isnt anything to do i bet.

Running from geyser to geyser to join 50 other people to stand in a mess of chaos with unfavorable odds at getting reward boxes is not exactly motivation.

If they wanted motivation, then the reward boxes would be available every time, to everyone participating in the geyser. Instead of a random chance, each player would get a guaranteed item. If the developers wanted to increase the engagement to get the reward, then they could require N guaranteed items that combine to get the final reward. No RNG. Every player knows how many attempts it will take. I have to think that anyone who can see an ending will be more motivated than someone who cannot because of RNG.

Grega

Welp it’s been 5 days now (25% of the event time), and I have yet to receive any of the style pages. I’m starting to think I won’t get any.

BetweenMidgets

dragonlord500 wrote: »

The funny part about it is. it was all talked about on the PTS and everyone who "tested" it clearly pointed out that this method of obtaining these collectables was a very bad idea and not a kind of thing that makes it a celebration. Zos was TOLD THIS and THEY ignored it completely.

Per the bolded portion - as is tradition.

sharquez

I'm sure they are having a blast watching us run in circles clamoring over the loot grind.

"Look what we made them do this time!"
"These guys have been doing dolmens for days! and only 3 of them got their rewards hahah!"
"Look at them all down there they look like ants"
"They are ants."

I kid but it is a funny mental picture.

Wolf_Eye

Shagreth wrote: »

Look, I'm all for earning things and difficult grinds, but we have to remember that this is done in a FOMO manner. If the styles were available always, it wouldn't be a problem. I wouldn't have a problem with a ~1% drop rate, I would dedicate a couple of hours per weekend and eventually get X or Y item, much like I did in WoW for mounts etc.

The design philosophy of ESO is often toxic. @ZOS_Kevin consider this please and how you give us cosmetics. I DON'T want for things to be the other extreme (too easy) I like to work for stuff, but we're already getting cosmetics with the pipette, drop by drop. This is bad.

I really think it should have either been:

A. Drops that can drop year round (so the low drop rate and bind on pickup are acceptable)

B. If it must only drop for this Anniv event, then remove the bind on pickup. So those who have time to farm can farm as much as they like, and those who don't have time to farm can buy from other players. Win-win.

The way it's currently implemented is not good.

Elsonso

Grega wrote: »

Welp it’s been 5 days now (25% of the event time), and I have yet to receive any of the style pages. I’m starting to think I won’t get any.

The sword style from fishing is the most boring, but also the easiest, to get. I got one in 50 casts and a second one in 100 casts, which took just a couple hours each time. I almost fell asleep, though.

I spent way more time than that on geysers before giving up.

Elvenheart

I had so hoped today that the drop rate for these items would have been increased in this morning's patch

WanderingMuse001

I have to concur with others here that this year's Anniversary Event is the worst to date. First, you need to spend tickets to buy the slices of Jubilee cake if you want to get all of this event's listed Achievements. Second, you will need to use tickets to buy additional Jubilee Parts for the Jubilee mount because you can only earn 1 part per day. So even if you log in and get 1 event box per day, you will not have enough parts to make the mount.

Then there's the bound, rare, time limited gold style pages that have a hideously low RNG drop chance. It actually seems like the sword replica is the easiest to get because it's from a fishing node in any zone. Too many players in your area? No worries, just hop to another place and toss your line in. At least you can sell the fish or fillet them when you're done. As for the other 4 pages, I have stopped. It took me well over 30 dolmens to the Worms staff and I have yet to see any of the others. I can barely see enemies on the geysers since they drop so fast. It's nice that the style page drops from the Shell Trove, but my fps tank immediately and it's nearly as sleep inducing as running dolmens. I actually earned the Abyssal Devastator achievement for completing 50 geysers and haven't seen the staff style page from one.

So I went to Vvardenfell and started waiting for bosses to spawn on whichever one had the fewest people waiting for it. I've spent 5 hours today alone waiting every 5 mins for a boss to spawn and hoping that I've done enough damage to be in the top 12 to loot it. And there are 2 style pages that drop from these bosses. Out of all the content that is available, why couldn't ZOS spread these drops out over multiple types of events. That would give newer players a better chance at getting the drops if they have lower damage than long term players. It also would have reduced the bottleneck effect that's happened with the geysers and WBs.

Yes, this event runs for 20 days or so, but why would I want to spend each of those days waiting for RNG to drop me a style page? Why weren't these pages put in the Impresario's listings? They already monetized the mount, why not these pages if they still wanted to make them bound? I'd be ok with these style pages being so rare if they were available all year, but they're not.

So happy anniversary, ZOS! You've officially made me not want to play ESO because I am frustrated and disappointed with this event. It's sad that a celebratory event has actively encouraged it's players to play other games, or do other activities, than play ESO due to such low drop rates.

Sidenote: It's been great to read zone chat where players are turning against each other because only the top 12 dps parsers get to loot an enemy. I so enjoy being berated when so many of us are farming the same item drops.

Pelanora

Glad to see not playing the event has given me basically the same chance to get the drops, as if I were playing it. Haven't missed out yet.