ZOS, Please Respond to the very low Style Page Drop Rates

spartaxoxo

Desiato wrote: »

[snip]

It is not entitlement to provide feedback about an event, during the event, on a forum specifically designed to collect feedback. That's especially the case when the feedback provided does not break the rules established for posting.

This word has basically become synonymous with "opinion I don't agree with," these days on gaming forums.

I personally don't expect the devs to respond to this thread. And I think some of the questions have been answered. But there's no harm in a community member asking a question just because I disagree with it.

They aren't entitled, spoiled, etc for wanting to provide feedback about how they want a game to work in a game developer provided forum specifically and explicitly designed to collect that information. The devs will respond to the threads they want to respond to, at the end of the day.

All of us have our own opinion about what's good for the game and what isn't. What we want and what we dislike. That's what we're here to share, at the end of the day.

[edited to remove quote]

AnduinTryggva

Skullstachio wrote: »

Desiato wrote: »

virtus753 wrote: »

If ZOS had never provided acknowledgment of player feedback for intended things, that would be one thing.

But they have most certainly done so on multiple occasions, and in the cases where it was too long delayed (e.g. the Maelstrom weapon situation), they apologized for not acknowledging it sooner.

They also acknowledged the strong feedback regarding the Murkmire event years ago, even though that was working as intended too. They said our feedback on the poor RNG there would be taken into consideration, but this event seems to have suggested the opposite.

They have also promised to do better on communication in general, and part of that is continuing (and improving) acknowledgment of strong player sentiment.

So they set the expectation here.

I didn't take what ZOS has said about other topics to mean that they're necessarily going to provide a response to every single topic that gains traction in the forums. A casual glance at the topics in General Discussion show that that's simply not realistic. There's complaints about everything! The endeavours post has 3 pages. Do you expect an official response for that too?

This is really a basic topic and all they could really do is state the obvious.

I actually look at it the other way. I think it's melodramatic topics like this that make them resistant to engage with the community because we come across as spoiled, entitled and unreasonable.

Care to explain how? How are players "spoiled, entitled and unreasonable" when they are the ones paying for:

• the base game. (Not counting free-to-play days.)
• Game Chapters on top of the base game.
• DLC Dungeons. (Optional)
• crowns needed for said game chapters when they move to the crown store a year or two later.

Because anyone who pays ZoS for these do have proper constructively written rights as they pay for these with their time and money. I can wait...

There are players out there that consider that they have bought a product and are customers because they payed and continue to pay for that product and that the status of a paying customer entitles them to demand a product that is perceived fair from their point of view.

Then there are players out there that somewhat think that ZOS is creating this somehow to cater us and that the money payed is just a sort of compensation. I literally had a zone chat where people said we should be gratefull that we get these style pages and the boxes and the mount and whatever the emphasize being on the word "grateful".

Aelorin

I get that you d like to have these pages, and yes grinding is not fun.

Are those styles really that mega uber super cool that you want to grind for it for hours?

I decided no, and just do what I feel like doing ingame.

Makes my playing experience a lot more enjoyable

msetten

I have given up on the Staff of the Worms. After 500+ dolmens, I've had enough of them.

May I make a suggestion to ZOS: add the style pages to the Event Vendor at the end of the year with the New Life Festival. That way, we can all acquire them eventually.

starkerealm

Araneae6537 wrote: »

I remember seeing posts about RNG being to some degree being set upon a login...

It's your account, not your login, and it's never been completely confirmed, as far as I know.

But, yeah, ESO's RNG is streaky. That's not news. So, most of the people (myself included) who've been grinding away at the game like a full time job trying to get the pages, are just doomed. We never had a chance at getting the pages we were grinding for, because the RNG sided against us from the beginning.

sleepy_worm

I got all the style pages after an estimated 40 hours of focusing only on this task. I would happily delete these pages from my account if I could spare my friends and guildmates their stress and negativity in getting them.

I understand that wanting something and not getting it is okay. However, low drop rates with long tails and no limiting factors (like a pity system, or a way to make intermittent progress) is pretty commonly recognized as bad game design these days. The game could be better about this. Getting style pages could be long and grindy for some but feel okay, not awful. This is possible.

Daoin

well theres the feedback, if you play pts you get those free and 16 k seals for the problems over there if not you still got 5 days left to get them !

NoTimeToWait

starkerealm wrote: »

Araneae6537 wrote: »

I remember seeing posts about RNG being to some degree being set upon a login...

It's your account, not your login, and it's never been completely confirmed, as far as I know.

But, yeah, ESO's RNG is streaky. That's not news. So, most of the people (myself included) who've been grinding away at the game like a full time job trying to get the pages, are just doomed. We never had a chance at getting the pages we were grinding for, because the RNG sided against us from the beginning.

It's one of the proper ways to implement RNG on massively loaded systems where RNG is not a security concern. If you randomly generate a sequence beforehand or make it pre-seeded, it doesn't make RNG any less random than if it was generated real time. And well, contrary to occultic believes, RNG doesn't side with anyone (or against for that matter)

spartaxoxo

I don't mind some items being locked behind low RNG grind. I don't mind some items being bound. I don't mind when something has limited time availability. It's the combination of the 3.

In the future, please ZOS, hear me out.

LTO, Bound, Rare...pick 2.

SilverBride

Anything that causes this much anguish for such a large portion of the playerbase needs to be looked at and reevaluated. Especially when we are dealing with items that are part of a momentous milestone celebration such as this.

It's been pointed out that these pages are just cosmetic, which to me is another reason why they should not be locked behind a brutal grind. It's not like the player will be getting advantage over others if they can use these styles. So why not increase the drop rate and try to mend the bad feelings so many of us are experiencing?

Vonkarolinas

SilverBride wrote: »

There are multiple threads with multiple posts from players that have spent days trying to get these style pages, and many still not getting them. These style pages are unique and are only available during the anniversary event, and are important to many.

The extremely low drop rates are creating a lot of stress and bad feelings among the player base, and are not what we should be dealing with during a milestone anniversary celebration.

PLEASE communicate with us about this issue and consider greatly increasing the drop rates.

I agree, but it might help get their eyes on this if you tagged some of them.

NoTimeToWait

SilverBride wrote: »

Anything that causes this much anguish for such a large portion of the playerbase needs to be looked at and reevaluated. Especially when we are dealing with items that are part of a momentous milestone celebration such as this.

It's been pointed out that these pages are just cosmetic, which to me is another reason why they should not be locked behind a brutal grind. It's not like the player will be getting advantage over others if they can use these styles. So why not increase the drop rate and try to mend the bad feelings so many of us are experiencing?

As for me, can't wait to be among those unlucky ones still running geysers in the night hours before the server reset on the last day of the event. I expect it to be a pretty nice tea party

SilverBride

Vonkarolinas wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

There are multiple threads with multiple posts from players that have spent days trying to get these style pages, and many still not getting them. These style pages are unique and are only available during the anniversary event, and are important to many.

The extremely low drop rates are creating a lot of stress and bad feelings among the player base, and are not what we should be dealing with during a milestone anniversary celebration.

PLEASE communicate with us about this issue and consider greatly increasing the drop rates.

I agree, but it might help get their eyes on this if you tagged some of them.

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin Please consider the feedback in this thread and the others that have been discussing this issue. Thank you.

SilverBride

NoTimeToWait wrote: »

As for me, can't wait to be among those unlucky ones still running geysers in the night hours before the server reset on the last day of the event. I expect it to be a pretty nice tea party

Today will be day 7 of my grind for Sunna'rah.

The atmosphere at the world bosses has gone from players joking around and lamenting their bad RNG in a more playful way to mostly just silence now. There is an air of desperation now and each passing day it sinks lower.

Peppo_Lives

same on EU and i haven't found the barbas helm yet -.-'

Alp

9 days of geyser grinding. I would have been better off getting banned ha..

Elvenheart

Imagine this - instead of the style pages being locked behind a grind, an npc historian could be at the Impressario tents with five consecutive quests that send the player to various locations to discover lore about the items the styles represent. The reward for bringing back the information about each item could be the style page.

Now, I know there are probably some people who would rather grind than do these types of quests, so for those people, the style pages could also be locked behind the grind for them to do. It wouldn’t have hurt anybody to have the style pages in the game in both ways.

There have been lots of other creative suggestions for ways the style pages could be made available to players. I just hope they take the ideas into account the next time something like this comes around.

PapaJester

I really hope that after the event, they slip these style pages into the quest rewards for the quests they were originally seen in.

(inb4 complaining about how that would be unfair to those who did the grind for them. I did the grind for them, too. I don't want everyone who didn't to have to)

SilverBride

Elvenheart wrote: »

Imagine this - instead of the style pages being locked behind a grind, an npc historian could be at the Impressario tents with five consecutive quests that send the player to various locations to discover lore about the items the styles represent. The reward for bringing back the information about each item could be the style page.

I really like this idea because it teaches the player about the lore behind the styles and gives a sense of actually earning them.

spartaxoxo

SilverBride wrote: »

The atmosphere at the world bosses has gone from players joking around and lamenting their bad RNG in a more playful way to mostly just silence now.

That's me right now. At first I didn't say much but was content. Then I started cracking jokes about my bad RNG. When someone would link their page in chat I'd be like "Congrats! I'm totally not jealous or anything." And dumb jokes like that. I also did a couple of giveaways in chat of non-event items like spare furnishings and even gold mats a few times. I would ask people to solve riddles and they would joke around with me. Now, when I grind, I'm quiet again for the most part. The atmosphere has shifted from a pleasant silence, to jokes about bad RNG, to Stony silence only broken up by angry rants or the occasional person seeking commiseration at how awful the event feels.

I can't say I feel the event's near end with worry it all have been for nothing quite yet, but I'm getting there.

SilverBride

PapaJester wrote: »

I really hope that after the event, they slip these style pages into the quest rewards for the quests they were originally seen in.

That's another good idea, just as long as those that already did the quests will get the styles retroactively.

redlink1979

SilverBride wrote: »

(...) PLEASE communicate with us about this issue and consider greatly increasing the drop rates.

Not really an issue for them if it's working as they intented...

SilverBride

redlink1979 wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

(...) PLEASE communicate with us about this issue and consider greatly increasing the drop rates.

Not really an issue for them if it's working as they intented...

Anything that causes this much grief and bad feelings for so many players is an issue. Working as intended or not, it is not in anyone's best interest to have this much distress among the playerbase and is something that deserves attention and a possible tweak to alleviate the situation.

These aren't just any rare style pages. They are part of a milestone anniversary celebration that should be fun and rewarding but for many it's only daily frustration and disappointment.

Joshferatu

Typically, I don't mind a grind because it can be nice to just throw on some music and run the mindless loop for a few hours, but I've been doing that for what, 15 days now? And I have zero style pages to show for it. This is the least fun I've ever had in ESO, and that's taken into account all the miserable GH progs I've been part of. It feels like these drop rates are just there for the metrics, the post event "ESO players destroyed x dolmens/geysers/world bosses" graphic. Most of my friends have left the game over the past few patches and I've kept hanging on, but this grind really ground out whatever enjoyment I was still getting from the game. I don't think an anniversary event is supposed to leave players questioning if they're going to reup ESO plus.

WhiteCoatSyndrome

spartaxoxo wrote: »

I can't say I feel the event's near end with worry it all have been for nothing quite yet, but I'm getting there.

Yeah. I’ve been trying to tell myself it’s not a complete waste because I’m getting lots of mats and Motif pages…

…but if I wanted the mats that badly I’d be grinding for those instead, and for the few Motifs my main doesn’t have already I was just going to surf the guild traders for.

I also realized I’m actually losing out on most of the XP bonus for the event too, because I could mow through mobs in a Public Dungeon of my choice and get XP faster than killing World Bosses, and I was hoping to level up some of my newer Companions who don’t get the XP from Master Writs and quests. But they’ll still be there after the event so they’re on the back burner. It would have been nice to have the pages drop after a day or two of grinding at most, so I didn’t have to choose (and get increasingly frustrated at having to choose).

Ingel_Riday

Desiato wrote: »

[snip]

Players in the community enjoy different things. Obviously some players like free, zero effort common items, but others like rare items. For items to be rare, they need to be difficult to obtain, one way or another. I'd prefer challenging combat events, but I'll take what we were given.

[snip]
[edited for baiting]

I'm going to chime in on this part, in particular.

These aren't consistently difficult to obtain. If your argument is that games should have some rare items that are difficult to obtain as brag-worthy flare... fine. No disagreement here. I want that blue bug mount thing, but I can't find a PUG willing to do the side-bosses in Coral Aerie and Graven Deep for the antiquity leads. I'm building a tank suit on my dragonknight to queue as a bona-fide, real tank and get what's mine. I want that rare, lovely mount. I'm willing to work towards it, and I'll be using it on a character.

The leads have healthy drop-rates, by the way. The difficulty is fairly uniform for everyone who wants the blue bug mount. Just taking me longer because I don't have a dedicated group / guild group and have to build up a tank to PUG it down. Fine. That's my issue, and I could socialize more to resolve it. That's all on me.

By comparison, this event is a slot machine. I've seen people get the Staff of Worms replica on dolmen 3. I've seen people get the Ul'vor staff on geyser 10. Where was their DIFFICULTY? There was none. Just pure slot machine chance.

Your argument doesn't work here, and doesn't apply here. This is not a difficult event for people who get a lucky slot machine pull, and it's an impossible event for others who don't beat the odds. Total RNG inconsistency.

As to a previous argument I think you made before it got snipped (if not, my apologies), a person getting the worm staff on try 8 didn't work 50 times harder than me to EARN it. Just RNG. I met a bloke who had to do 500 dolmens to get his style page. I did 400. Did I work harder than him? Did I earn it more than he did? No. Just pure RNG. On the dolmen I got it from, I was so burned out that I just light attacked a few things. Barely did any damage. Didn't even get the purple box from the boss. tap tap tap, yawn, tap tap tap... OH!

Guess I worked harder than everyone else to earn it that time? "Earning" as a concept has no place here. Concepts of overcoming difficulty are misplaced. It's just bad game design, pure and simple.

I'm annoyed enough to ramble just a bit more (sorry). Let's say your boss does a special event. Each time you get a report done, you have a small chance of getting a nice bonus... but you only have the next two weeks to try for them! You do 100 extra reports. Really pitch in. You want that bonus. Nothing. You get nothing. Your work colleague gets 3 extra reports done, and gets the bonus. Turns out that for each report you all did, the boss used a random number generator. 1 to 300, and a person who got 267 as a value got a bonus. In your boss's mind, 1/300 = small chance. I'd hate to see what he considers a miniscule chance.

Would you use concepts such as "difficulty" and "earning it" to assess the above scenario? Did your colleague overcome more difficulties than you and earn his bonus more than you did? Would you view this system favorably? Merit based?

"Well, I didn't HAVE to do all those resports. It's really my fault. Cant' blame the boss if he played to my OCD and FOMO. Besides, some things should be rare and difficult to obtain... I guess." Your colleague did 3 extra reports over 2 weeks. It took him less than 2 hours. Does that sound like he faced even the slightest difficulty? "Eh."

TLDR: I don't view your stance as having much merit in this particular instance. Not saying your argument is utterly invalid, but it doesn't apply here.

Edit addition: fixed a few spellling errors. I'm very burned out and tired. The Ul'vor staff is perfect for my Altmer sorcerer, who I have had using a daedric staff forever because I couldn't find anything I liked for her. I'm picky. I lost exact count of geysers, truth be told, but I think I'm around 170. I've probably spent 14 hours on this thus far, not counting the 33.33 hours I spent on the dolmen. When this event is over, I'm taking a break until Gold Road. Get the daily reward and log off. This has been miserable.

Ceridith

Making these styles both a low drop rate and time limited is a pretty awful decision. The low drop rate would be reasonable if there was no ticking clock and the grind could be approached more casually. But with it limited to the event puts significant pressure to spend hours upon hours grinding, for many players this still hasn't resulted in getting the styles they want, leading to burnout.

jaws343

Honestly, I really didn't mind the drop rates for these.

I think I had 3/5 by Sunday the 7th I believe. Saved the two world boss ones for last.

Got the Barbas drop on Monday of this week. Got the Sunn drop this morning.

So, about two weeks of killing world bosses. Generally, an average of around 75-100 kills per day. So effectively, I earned 825-1100 or so boxes from world boss kills in that time.

In previous years, I would do the crafting writs on all my characters and then call it a day. If I wanted to earn more boxes, I had to do a bunch of repeatable quests for the umpteenth time, running back and forth over and over again every day. This event I was able to farm for a goal that was event related, and get a ton of extra boxes while doing so.

Sitting in a spot and killing a boss every 5 mins, all while watching netflix, and making a ton of gold in doing so, was a fair enough experience for me. And now that I have all 5 pages, back to 20 sets of writs and logging off or doing non event related stuff.

Thorncrypt

Why is there no hard pity system that guarantees the drops after X number of attempts? New World has hard pity to ensure that people don't waste their time just because RNG isn't on their side. ZoS should consider that many of us have other things to do like spend time with family or work at a job so having a hard pity would allow us to work towards the goal without being at the mercy of randomness.

SilverBride

jaws343 wrote: »

Sitting in a spot and killing a boss every 5 mins, all while watching netflix, and making a ton of gold in doing so, was a fair enough experience for me.

It certainly isn't for me. I don't watch TV when I am playing. I don't even have a TV in this room. If I am playing ESO that is where my attention is. If I want to watch TV I log off and go in the other room and give that my attention.

But sitting watching Netflix for 5 minutes, killing a boss, going back to Netflix isn't really playing ESO or participating and enjoying the anniversary event.