Why the 10th anniversary has been a disaster even without the PTS fiasco

starkerealm

BlueRaven wrote: »

If the want them exclusive to the event, fine. But they could have awarded them with a “get 7 jubilee gold boxes” type achievement.

Earning a gold box once a day for seven days seems reasonable. Then “tada!” Style pages get unlocked on the account.

The way they did it… Everyone is agitated by the event. It was not a good experience.

They could have been tied to limited time quests. "Clear 20 Dolmens during the event." And once you do, there's the style as a direct unlock. "Fish 100 times." "Kill 20 World Bosses." "Kill 20 Delve Bosses."

Worse, the tweaking of the endeavors suggests they could have hijacked that system, and added a new "event Endeavor," tracker to reward people for finishing those tasks during the event.

It would have been fine if we were grinding towards a specific goal, instead of just mindlessly rolling the dice for all time.

jle30303

I had no clue there was an event extension.

I have been getting my confettis once per day, and using them as I get them, and I picked up the five that I would need to purchase *in advance*. It's now Monday, I'm waiting for the end of maintenance to log in, and I'm on 23 out of 25 confetti, so I need today's and tomorrow's.

Which means that if the event is extended to Thursday I get 6 more event tickets (yay! I'm still collecting indriks, though nearly done with them), but also 2 confettis that I can't use (boo, I would have not spent event tickets on them if I'd known).

Is confetti tradable so that I can sell it to people who have missed enough days that they can't catch up?

And if not, WHY NOT?

Alastrine

MreeBiPolar wrote: »

Let's take a look at the event rewards, most of them special for this anniversary, how it all was communicated.

5. Blink-and-you-miss-it elevated endeavor rewards. Again, these have not been announced in any clear way in-game, and lots of people have missed the elevated endeavor rewards by accidentally completing other endeavors first, or even before noticing the rewards differ this time around. And not even just on the first day.

I don't know why anyone wouldn't actually look at the options, I've always checked them out.
I don't feel this is ZoS's fault at all, it's on the player. Just a quick scan even tells you there are different values at play. I think it's neat that they are offering different values for different completions, hope they keep it up.

Khrogo

code65536 wrote: »

Soraka wrote: »

And it's just pure RNG. Which is never a good thing. ZOS (deservedly) received a lot of criticism about this with vMA back in the day. There were people who got their sharpened Maelstrom inferno on the first drop, and people who never got it after 500 runs. Seriously. Half a thousand runs of vMA. There are players who quit the game over that.

I had completely forgotten about the original vMA drops. No transmutation, no sticker book, just pure grind. If you got any vMA destro other than a sharpened flame staff, it would be a DPS loss compared to a sharpened non-set inferno staff. The chance of getting one was roughly 1 in 150. Brutal. I hit the lottery on my second and third runs. I got a lot of hate from my friends, especially as I was exclusively a healer. For a while, to annoy them, I used one on my front bar and one on my back bar. After that joke wore thin, I recorded myself deconstructing one and sent them all a video. I know, I'm a bad person.

Come to think of it, I've just remembered that monster sets were not even a guaranteed drop back then. When Imperial City came out in 2015, I had to run vet White Gold 72 times to get a Molag Kena head to drop for a friend. Back then, the difficulty was like nothing I had ever experienced. Good times!

I guess it all goes to show that there have been some real quality-of-life changes to the game. If it weren't for the current Anniversary style-page fiasco, I would even say that ZOS respected our time, kinda.

WhiteCoatSyndrome

MasterSpatula wrote: »

I may end up being alone on this one, but I think a major problem with this event is that the rewards for the boxes should have been weighted ever so slightly towards newer furniture plans and motifs. It certainly seems like, if anything, the rewards are instead weighted towards older stuff.

I've been vendoring purple Provisioning recipes that I already know on ten characters--often multiples of several recipes per day. Motifs from nine, eight, seven years ago are dropping like candy. Meanwhile, motifs and furniture plans from the last three years or so seem to be exceedingly rare. I think I've received two motif pages so far that I could actually use, while I have multiple mules filled with motifs I don't need and can't currently sell.

Nope, not alone. My main - who for context is also my main crafter, with every Motif page and recipe I’ve acquired - has only gotten a couple handfuls of new pages despite me doing a lot more grinding for boxes this year than I usually do. My alts are getting filled up on purple Provisioning recipes and it’s to the point that I’m dumping some of those into a Guild Bank because even the newest and least used of my alts know them. If the pages were weighted more towards the new stuff I’d mind the event page grind less because at least then I’d be learning more new furnishings and filling out Motif knowledge, but that isn’t really happening now.

James-Wayne

So many complaints yet everyone is forgetting this is ESO where low drop rates and terrible RnG is king because of the huge loot tables, if you want to celebrate 10 years of ESO go play Skyrim again, that game is amazing for drops!!

MreeBiPolar

Alastrine wrote: »

MreeBiPolar wrote: »

Let's take a look at the event rewards, most of them special for this anniversary, how it all was communicated.

5. Blink-and-you-miss-it elevated endeavor rewards. Again, these have not been announced in any clear way in-game, and lots of people have missed the elevated endeavor rewards by accidentally completing other endeavors first, or even before noticing the rewards differ this time around. And not even just on the first day.

I don't know why anyone wouldn't actually look at the options, I've always checked them out.
I don't feel this is ZoS's fault at all, it's on the player. Just a quick scan even tells you there are different values at play. I think it's neat that they are offering different values for different completions, hope they keep it up.

Check the detailed white-up I posted a couple messages before yours. To summarize, it's being conditioned and specifically previously stated that all endeavors cost the same (so people might look at what, not how much), and people not looking at endeavors the first thing upon login (or reset), and completing other ones.

the1andonlyskwex

While the insanely low drop rates on the rare styles and the need to buy confetti are annoying, the thing that bugs me the most is the way the worm cult style pages are handled.

Not only do they clutter up the bags of jubilee yesteryear while still being available from coffers, but they're also character specific and available from guild traders. I got a whole bunch of pages that I already had because I did this year's event on a different character from last year. It made a lot of the bags I bought feel like a huge waste of tickets.

I eventually wound up buying a few pages from the guild trader to clear them out of the yesteryear bag drop list, but even that felt like a waste when 2 of the 3 that I bought dropped from coffers the very next day.

KlauthWarthog

Locking time-gated rewards to a pure RNG reward structure with very poor drop rates is a very good way of creating resentment.

johnjetau

jle30303 wrote: »

I had no clue there was an event extension.

I have been getting my confettis once per day, and using them as I get them, and I picked up the five that I would need to purchase *in advance*. It's now Monday, I'm waiting for the end of maintenance to log in, and I'm on 23 out of 25 confetti, so I need today's and tomorrow's.

Which means that if the event is extended to Thursday I get 6 more event tickets (yay! I'm still collecting indriks, though nearly done with them), but also 2 confettis that I can't use (boo, I would have not spent event tickets on them if I'd known).

Is confetti tradable so that I can sell it to people who have missed enough days that they can't catch up?

And if not, WHY NOT?

Once you get all the required Confetti, you dont get anymore.

They will no longer drop in the first day yellow box and the Event lady will not sell you anymore.

MreeBiPolar

johnjetau wrote: »

Once you get all the required Confetti, you dont get anymore.

They will no longer drop in the first day yellow box and the Event lady will not sell you anymore.

Once you get, or once you use?

E.g., I have 24/25, and one "lost" in some character's inventory, or even a box. Would they still drop?

Destai

I wouldn't say it's a disaster, but I certainly wouldn't declare it a success either. I'm just not clear what we're celebrating here anymore, I'm really not.

I think this whole anniversary season has had some serious ups and downs. It's been nice to see whole DLCs as rewards, along with cosmetics. The first ever Orsinium event was nice. And the anniversary event has been quite engaging; can't beat getting all of those mats and motifs. But for all that, it still feels like we're dealing with the issues every event now. For all of the confidence portrayed by ZOS leadership during the global reveal, I don't see that translated to the product level.

Client crashing is back on consoles, we had the transmutes drama, PC's having the PTS fiasco, and many rewards for this anniversary event have required too much grinding. Each event is increasingly micromanaging how I spend my tickets. I really didn't appreciate that I had to spend tickets to get the anniversary mount. Moves like this from ZOS just feel cynical. ZOS really needs to see how moves like this create negativity for them. It worsens when combined with the frequent technical issues. Would be nice to have smoother sailing. @ZOS_Kevin hope you're seeing this feedback.

I am still greatly looking forward to Gold Road. There's some exciting content and it seems like they're finally amping up the rewards. Looking forward to buying that vineyard with some gold! I just hope the release is smooth. The year so far has given me some concerns.

SirLeeMinion

I wouldn't call it a disaster, if you exclude the PTS fiasco as you did in the title. Somewhat unrewarding and a bit insulting, yes; I'd call it that.

tl;dr - As usual, not much for veteran players. The style page grind was a negative experience, not a celebration. The extra endeavors have been great.

***

Special rare style drops? Watching guild chat and my own early experience, I gave up on farming those by the third day. So, not much reward there. I found the way this was handled was disrespectful towards our time as players and opted out.

Free DLC from the most heavily discounted pack was nice for new players. I'd already bought the "Guts & Glory" pack on my accounts. So, like most vets, I pointed new guild members towards it but wasn't personally rewarded.

Loads of purple boxes have been good for crashing materials prices; however, I suspect they are mostly an attempt to encourage craft-bag subs. I unsubbed my main account a week or so ago, and thus stopped grinding purple boxes.

The free mounts and costumes have been nice. I'd count them as actual anniversary rewards even though I don't use any of them.

Event tix? I've stopped eating the cake on my accounts unless there's an endeavor for it. Another horse that will pause as it completes the jump animation; yay.

Extending the event as compensation? The shutdown barely impacted me, so perhaps it's fair that I care nothing for the compensation either.

Extra daily endeavors do count as a real reward for me, I like the option to pick something I want.

katanagirl1

MasterSpatula wrote: »

I may end up being alone on this one, but I think a major problem with this event is that the rewards for the boxes should have been weighted ever so slightly towards newer furniture plans and motifs. It certainly seems like, if anything, the rewards are instead weighted towards older stuff.

I've been vendoring purple Provisioning recipes that I already know on ten characters--often multiples of several recipes per day. Motifs from nine, eight, seven years ago are dropping like candy. Meanwhile, motifs and furniture plans from the last three years or so seem to be exceedingly rare. I think I've received two motif pages so far that I could actually use, while I have multiple mules filled with motifs I don't need and can't currently sell.

This means the stuff that most players actually need is largely holding its value, because most of the more recent stuff that actually does drop gets immediately eaten by the player who looted it. Meanwhile, the bulk of what drops is stuff the market is already saturated with, which means it doesn't move on traders even at half its TTC prices, which in turn makes selling it to help pay for stuff we actually need not that effective.

Just the tiniest little nudge to make newer stuff slightly more common than older stuff would have been a smart move, better for a satisfying celebration, and would have helped with the important task of curbing inflation--particularly since they completely failed to add anything at all to the boxes last year.

I totally agree, way more provisioning recipes than motif pages and furnishing plans. I believe yet again there were only blue furnishing plans and no purple ones. The market has enough blue plans to keep prices really super low but never enough purple plans to make them more affordable.

Hapexamendios

I got a lot of materials and motifs from the purple boxes so from that point the event was fine.

No comment on the incessant grinding.

MreeBiPolar

katanagirl1 wrote: »

I totally agree, way more provisioning recipes than motif pages and furnishing plans. I believe yet again there were only blue furnishing plans and no purple ones. The market has enough blue plans to keep prices really super low but never enough purple plans to make them more affordable.

There have been purple, just the probability was much lower. I got a few, including at least two I didn't know before, Diagram: Clockwork Furnace, Socketed and Blueprint: Vampiric Table, Grand. That, compared to 45 blue plans I didn't know.

SilverBride

10 days, almost 600 boss kills, still no Sunna'rah.

WHY?

Jaraal

SilverBride wrote: »

10 days, almost 600 boss kills, still no Sunna'rah.

WHY?

Not to be simplistic, but have you checked your inventory carefully? Maybe put it in the bank by accident, or looted unaware with another toon? Maybe learned it thinking it was something else? Check your style page tab and event achievement pages. I've made that mistake before.

0 for 600 seems really extreme.

MreeBiPolar

Jaraal wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

10 days, almost 600 boss kills, still no Sunna'rah.

WHY?

Not to be simplistic, but have you checked your inventory carefully? Maybe put it in the bank by accident, or looted unaware with another toon? Maybe learned it thinking it was something else? Check your style page tab and event achievement pages. I've made that mistake before.

0 for 600 seems really extreme.

Just look at the amount of people still trying to grind them, some of them, from the day one.

Carcamongus

SilverBride wrote: »

10 days, almost 600 boss kills, still no Sunna'rah.

WHY?

600 WBs, no staff. "Working as intended".

Rowjoh

MasterSpatula wrote: »

I may end up being alone on this one, but I think a major problem with this event is that the rewards for the boxes should have been weighted ever so slightly towards newer furniture plans and motifs. It certainly seems like, if anything, the rewards are instead weighted towards older stuff

except not everyone is in to housing and cosmetics, and 'ever so slightly' wouldn't have made any difference whatsoever.

the loot box contents are deeply disappointing - apart from the odd decent drop/reward they're mostly filled with trash and base mats most people have stacks of anyway.

for a landmark celebration there could and should have been much better items for example like those commonly found on the daily log-in rewards such as horse training scrolls, research scrolls, Tel-Var stones, Alliance tokens, crates etc. befitting of a 10th anniversary.

Jaraal

MreeBiPolar wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

10 days, almost 600 boss kills, still no Sunna'rah.

WHY?

Not to be simplistic, but have you checked your inventory carefully? Maybe put it in the bank by accident, or looted unaware with another toon? Maybe learned it thinking it was something else? Check your style page tab and event achievement pages. I've made that mistake before.

0 for 600 seems really extreme.

Just look at the amount of people still trying to grind them, some of them, from the day one.

Of course. Some may not even get one after 20 days. But some of us actually do loot things unawarely, or unknowingly misplace them in our banks or inventories.

The only thing worse than not getting a drop after 600 kills would be making 600 kills while already having what you're trying to get.

code65536

Jaraal wrote: »

0 for 600 seems really extreme.

Unlikely, sure, but not impossible.

Let's say something has a 1% drop rate. That means, on average, you'll get it in 100 tries.

But that doesn't mean that you'll get it in 100 tries. There's a 0.24% chance that you still won't have it after 600 tries.

If there are 10000 people farming, then you'd expect that there will be 24 people who, after 600 tries, will still be empty-handed. Sucks to be them, I guess? This has always been the problem with pure-RNG drop systems, because there WILL BE people who get screwed like this. For something with a 1% drop rate, you will expect 24 people out of 10K to be royally screwed to the tune of 600-and-no-drops.

By the way, if the drop rate is 1%, then almost 5% of the people will still be empty-handed after 300 tries. So every 10K players, there will be 490 who still have nothing after 300.

Here's a reddit post that I saw earlier:


900, they say? If something has a 1% drop rate, then out of 10K people, you'd expect 1 person to still have nothing after 900, so I guess they are the "lucky winner" of that particular lottery draw, eh?

WhiteCoatSyndrome

SilverBride wrote: »

10 days, almost 600 boss kills, still no Sunna'rah.

WHY?

Same boat for Barbas. 😫

Rowjoh wrote: »

for a landmark celebration there could and should have been much better items for example like those commonly found on the daily log-in rewards such as horse training scrolls, research scrolls, Tel-Var stones, Alliance tokens, crates etc. befitting of a 10th anniversary.

Horse training and research scrolls are just inventory clutter for those of us not training up a new alt.

SilverBride

Jaraal wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

10 days, almost 600 boss kills, still no Sunna'rah.

WHY?

Not to be simplistic, but have you checked your inventory carefully? Maybe put it in the bank by accident, or looted unaware with another toon? Maybe learned it thinking it was something else? Check your style page tab and event achievement pages. I've made that mistake before.

0 for 600 seems really extreme.

The only things I ever put in my bank are furnishings and alchemy and provisioning mats for my daily writs. I also don't autoloot because I like to see what's there before I loot it. And I have checked my collection tab a few times just for good measure.

I realize that 600 is extreme. That's the whole point.

Jaraal

SilverBride wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

10 days, almost 600 boss kills, still no Sunna'rah.

WHY?

Not to be simplistic, but have you checked your inventory carefully? Maybe put it in the bank by accident, or looted unaware with another toon? Maybe learned it thinking it was something else? Check your style page tab and event achievement pages. I've made that mistake before.

0 for 600 seems really extreme.

The only things I ever put in my bank are furnishings and alchemy and provisioning mats for my daily writs. I also don't autoloot because I like to see what's there before I loot it. And I have checked my collection tab a few times just for good measure.

I realize that 600 is extreme. That's the whole point.

You've covered all the bases and eliminated all other possibilities. It's definitely an exceptional streak of bad luck, then.

Hope you are able to get it soon today!

SilverBride

Jaraal wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

10 days, almost 600 boss kills, still no Sunna'rah.

WHY?

Not to be simplistic, but have you checked your inventory carefully? Maybe put it in the bank by accident, or looted unaware with another toon? Maybe learned it thinking it was something else? Check your style page tab and event achievement pages. I've made that mistake before.

0 for 600 seems really extreme.

The only things I ever put in my bank are furnishings and alchemy and provisioning mats for my daily writs. I also don't autoloot because I like to see what's there before I loot it. And I have checked my collection tab a few times just for good measure.

I realize that 600 is extreme. That's the whole point.

You've covered all the bases and eliminated all other possibilities. It's definitely an exceptional streak of bad luck, then.

Hope you are able to get it soon today!

Thank you!

majulook

.

Icy_Waffles

On day one I got the staff of worms on my 4th dolmen. I went and got Trueflame on my 2nd cast. Wow cool event drop ratios. Made sense to me for a celebration event. These were the two items I wanted out of the 5 anyways- but then it all changed when I spent many hours farming bosses to get the helm and spent many more unsuccessfully getting either of the other two staves. I spent way less time than many who really wanted these other drops, or those that wanted all of them.

So I gave up and just felt freedom again to just play and do my writs get boxes and items etc. I do not personally have FOMO, I really have wanted the staff of worms since the game’s launch, and trueflame looked interesting to me as well (it has really cool dye options).

It was strange to me that a celebration felt like a grind. I chose to just not grind. I got my tickets, got my backup pet and both parts for the personality, made sure I got all of the new style pages, and then just played normally. I have 15 characters and did writs on all of them so the event was pretty good supply-wise for me.

GooGa592

The grind for the limited availability style pages was clearly created to artificially inflate the hours and players participating in the event for some internal report, not to make the event more fun for the players.