What if we could spend gold on mailing our surveys to our hirelings?

NoticeMeArkay

1. Allowing this as an additional skill point sink to unlock the ability to mail your surveys to your hirelings.
Located in your skillbook under crafting > Crafting skill X > New passive "Name of passive".
One passive available for each crafting skill tree, requiring 6 skill points in total to unlock all 6 options.

2. An alternative way to pump gold out of the system if we could come to terms how many surveys one may send off at once and for what price. Or how the gold price increases in relation to the amount of surveys being send to the selected hireling.

3. Players with little time on hand would have an alternative option available to them that they can utilize whenever they just don't feel like it

4. Don't like surveys? Pay your hirelings and you'll never have to spend another 4 hours on collecting them all at once, you hoarder. (Me too)

5. Why should you ride back and forth to the same spot to retrigger a patch. Let your hirelings deal with it.

That's it. Thanks for reading - Aaaaand now you may throw your eggs.

tincanman

Given that zos are intending to nerf in-game mailing again I doubt very much that they'd be even remotely be interested in adding ANY extra loading to what already exists.

Incidentally, the lower mail retention times being introduced, especially for trading, will probably act as a bigger unintentional gold-sink than OP suggestion.

Necrotech_Master

i dont think its a bad idea, though i dont think they would need another skill or 6 skill pt investment per craft, as that seems excessive

there is already a passive for hirelings, just add an extra tier(s) for that to be able to send X number of maps to them (or 1 tier to mail maps, and your max is 6 as thats the normal max for mail attachments, and your cost would be some amount X number of maps)

the only thing that im not sure how would be implemented, is actually sending maps to them, as hireling mails are system generated, im not sure what you would put as the recipient, or how the current system would be able to handle this

tincanman

Also, there's other (arguable) 'solutions' to what many regard as a non-problem, mainly doing the surveys on or as close to generation time as practicable rather than hoarding until you have so many, the pile acts as an instant deterrant to doing any of them.

I'd probably prefer an optional right-click 'combine' menu option so players who wish to could retain 1-survey collection while others could combine 5,10,15 etc with maybe a bit of fun thrown in across a normal distribution with: 'tough luck you got hilariously MUCH less than possible' at the low end to 'jackpot: you got LOTS more' than numerical sum of surveys, with a bunch of options in the middle (eg: monsters & mats, some furniture mats & mats, motif & mats, or whatever the creative devs might come up with).

This stuff probably needs to be in the craft forum, though, where it can rest in peace.

ZoeliTintanie

Paying Gold of any kind to do the surveys kinda contradicts why you'd do the surveys anyway, (to get mats/gold)
"just go buy the materials" is something that might be heard in response.

Putting in skill points to send them to a hireling is on the right track, but, not using skill points since then, it would make surveys reliant on skill points, which is weird.

Hirelings aka Companions, when not in use, "Could" be capable of utilizing surveys as an ability they unlock at a certain level.

Example

Lvl 10 Sharp - Can Complete a Survey every X Minutes.
Process - Survey in your inventory can be right clicked with the option : Send Companion to Complete

Example :

Companion Equipment Slot : Surveys
Process : Summon Companion, Put survey into their "equipment area", click "work", unsummon.
5 minutes later
"Isobel has finished the Blacksmithing Survey, summon her to retrieve rewards (or check your mail)"

Example :

Or right click the Survey - Complete with X Companion (list shows up, Mirri, Isobel, Sharp, etc)
Pick one, Survey disapears.
5 minutes later
Companion pops up like a quest giver (here's what I found) and gives you the loot.

Necrotech_Master

ZoeliTintanie wrote: »

Paying Gold of any kind to do the surveys kinda contradicts why you'd do the surveys anyway, (to get mats/gold)
"just go buy the materials" is something that might be heard in response.

Putting in skill points to send them to a hireling is on the right track, but, not using skill points since then, it would make surveys reliant on skill points, which is weird.

Hirelings aka Companions, when not in use, "Could" be capable of utilizing surveys as an ability they unlock at a certain level.

Example

Lvl 10 Sharp - Can Complete a Survey every X Minutes.
Process - Survey in your inventory can be right clicked with the option : Send Companion to Complete

Example :

Companion Equipment Slot : Surveys
Process : Summon Companion, Put survey into their "equipment area", click "work", unsummon.
5 minutes later
"Isobel has finished the Blacksmithing Survey, summon her to retrieve rewards (or check your mail)"

Example :

Or right click the Survey - Complete with X Companion (list shows up, Mirri, Isobel, Sharp, etc)
Pick one, Survey disapears.
5 minutes later
Companion pops up like a quest giver (here's what I found) and gives you the loot.

the OP is referring to hirelings, like the ones you get the mail from, which you do need skill pts invested into use and not referring to companions

i dont think companions will ever be used to do surveys for you

technically speaking you dont ever get gold from doing surveys anyway, you only get mats, if you sell those mats you can convert them to gold, but your literally only getting the raw mats from the surveys and thats it

ZoeliTintanie

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

ZoeliTintanie wrote: »

Paying Gold of any kind to do the surveys kinda contradicts why you'd do the surveys anyway, (to get mats/gold)
"just go buy the materials" is something that might be heard in response.

Putting in skill points to send them to a hireling is on the right track, but, not using skill points since then, it would make surveys reliant on skill points, which is weird.

Hirelings aka Companions, when not in use, "Could" be capable of utilizing surveys as an ability they unlock at a certain level.

Example

Lvl 10 Sharp - Can Complete a Survey every X Minutes.
Process - Survey in your inventory can be right clicked with the option : Send Companion to Complete

Example :

Companion Equipment Slot : Surveys
Process : Summon Companion, Put survey into their "equipment area", click "work", unsummon.
5 minutes later
"Isobel has finished the Blacksmithing Survey, summon her to retrieve rewards (or check your mail)"

Example :

Or right click the Survey - Complete with X Companion (list shows up, Mirri, Isobel, Sharp, etc)
Pick one, Survey disapears.
5 minutes later
Companion pops up like a quest giver (here's what I found) and gives you the loot.

the OP is referring to hirelings, like the ones you get the mail from, which you do need skill pts invested into use and not referring to companions

Ohhhhhhhhhhh no wonder my brain was like

AzuraFan

I'd agree to this if I can pay gold to skip activities I don't like or don't feel like doing, but still get the rewards. Like dungeons, trials, pledges, etc. Otherwise, no.

(I'm kidding. Sort of.)

StarOfElyon

NoticeMeArkay wrote: »

1. Allowing this as an additional skill point sink to unlock the ability to mail your surveys to your hirelings.
Located in your skillbook under crafting > Crafting skill X > New passive "Name of passive".
One passive available for each crafting skill tree, requiring 6 skill points in total to unlock all 6 options.

2. An alternative way to pump gold out of the system if we could come to terms how many surveys one may send off at once and for what price. Or how the gold price increases in relation to the amount of surveys being send to the selected hireling.

3. Players with little time on hand would have an alternative option available to them that they can utilize whenever they just don't feel like it

4. Don't like surveys? Pay your hirelings and you'll never have to spend another 4 hours on collecting them all at once, you hoarder. (Me too)

5. Why should you ride back and forth to the same spot to retrigger a patch. Let your hirelings deal with it.

That's it. Thanks for reading - Aaaaand now you may throw your eggs.

I had an idea to be able to give one survey to a hireling a day but people didn't like that idea.

virtus753

ZoeliTintanie wrote: »

Putting in skill points to send them to a hireling is on the right track, but, not using skill points since then, it would make surveys reliant on skill points, which is weird.

Most types of surveys are already dependent on skill points in terms of what tier(s) of materials they give, so tying them to skill points in other ways wouldn't be strange at all imo.

For blacksmithing, clothing, jewelrycrafting, and woodworking, half of the nodes in a survey will be based on your character level and the other half will be based on your skill points invested in the first passive (Metalworking, Tailoring, etc.). I believe enchanting should be the same way for the potency runestones you get from them, while aspect and essence runestones should be independent of both level and rank.

Non-survey nodes will likewise be either level based or rank based and will be that way for everyone, but they can roll the other way when they respawn. Survey nodes seem fixed as far as I can tell, so it wouldn't be possible to change the distribution of level-based vs. rank-based nodes in a survey. At least I tried resetting the clothing survey in Blackwood with a CP 160+ character who has no points invested in Tailoring (so the passive was 1/10), and each individual node always spawned as the same material every time.

kargen27

I oppose this idea because we need more players out and about doing activities in zones not less. The zones need to feel populated.

Necrotech_Master

kargen27 wrote: »

I oppose this idea because we need more players out and about doing activities in zones not less. The zones need to feel populated.

never noticed a difference, either because people are already indifferent about surveys, or because the surveys only occur at very very specific locations in the zones

zones are big enough 10 people doing surveys wont see anything but each other most likely unless they are near a quest hub

Desiato

Sure, let's also pay hirelings to do trials and grind dungeons for players too busy to do that!

The change the OP is proposing would just take us down the road of Legendary being the default for all gear because the ultimate result would be MUCH more materials coming into the game.

The OP isn't the only survey hoarder. If players could convert them to mats without any effort, the impact would be astounding. The actual problem is they are so easy to obtain because addons completely trivialize the writ process. I likely wouldn't do writs every day if I had to do it the old fashioned way by manually completing each request. I definitely wouldn't do them on multiple characters.

I like the mat economy in the game. I don't think it should be disrupted by a change like this. It's not difficult to upgrade items to Legendary, but it's difficult enough that we have to think about it. I don't think it should be made easier.

It's actually possible to pay for others to collect mats for you! Lots of people offer this service through guild traders. No, they won't complete your surveys for you, but if you're too busy to harvest yourself, you already have another option.

Necrotech_Master

Desiato wrote: »

Sure, let's also pay hirelings to do trials and grind dungeons for players too busy to do that!

The change the OP is proposing would just take us down the road of Legendary being the default for all gear because the ultimate result would be MUCH more materials coming into the game.

The OP isn't the only survey hoarder. If players could convert them to mats without any effort, the impact would be astounding. The actual problem is they are so easy to obtain because addons completely trivialize the writ process. I likely wouldn't do writs every day if I had to do it the old fashioned way by manually completing each request. I definitely wouldn't do them on multiple characters.

I like the mat economy in the game. I don't think it should be disrupted by a change like this. It's not difficult to upgrade items to Legendary, but it's difficult enough that we have to think about it. I don't think it should be made easier.

It's actually possible to pay for others to collect mats for you! Lots of people offer this service through guild traders. No, they won't complete your surveys for you, but if you're too busy to harvest yourself, you already have another option.

i dont think thats the intent, or how it would end up

doing a survey is as much work as treasure map, but a lot of people dont enjoy doing that and sell or give away maps, you cant sell or give away surveys because they are bound

i personally dislike daily writs and basically never do them, so as a side effect i get very very few surveys (ive gotten more surveys from tribute games than writs in the past year lol)

would i care if people could more easily do the surveys? not really, especially if they dont have an option to sell them

Desiato

Why wouldn't it end up like that? Completing a survey is usually a lot more work than the activity used to get them if one uses an addon.

If players could harvest surveys with zero effort, not only would everyone clear out their backlog of surveys, but players would be incentivized to complete more writs -- something that is already considered extremely profitable for the effort expended.

So of course more mats would enter the game which would make them more common.

Really, the question that needs to be asked here is why should crafting writs be made even more rewarding? They are already a popular activity with excellent rewards for the time invested -- including a method to greatly reduce time spent harvesting.

Necrotech_Master

Desiato wrote: »

Why wouldn't it end up like that? Completing a survey is usually a lot more work than the activity used to get them if one uses an addon.

If players could harvest surveys with zero effort, not only would everyone clear out their backlog of surveys, but players would be incentivized to complete more writs -- something that is already considered extremely profitable for the effort expended.

So of course more mats would enter the game which would make them more common.

it could introduce more mats, though i dont necessarily agree with the premise

the people who already do writs will continue to do writs, they might not do the writs on every character all the time outside of the anniversary jubilee, but they are still going to do writs regardless if they can do the surveys or not

it would not incentivize me to do writs for sure, i hate the writs so much, i only did 1 daily writ per day during the anniversary jubiless because i was lazy and wanted to quickly get the gold box

another part of the equation is more mats in the game does not equal more mats on the market, said players would have to be willing to sell the mats still

StarOfElyon

People who just wanna get rich always oppose making other people's lives better.

twev

I seriously doubt they'd spend manpower to code any kind of way for the hirelings to take surveys and gold and give you mats instead, but on the off chance they did, expect the gold fee would make it about break even in value just to gold sink and discourage players from 'taking the easy way out'.

kargen27

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

I oppose this idea because we need more players out and about doing activities in zones not less. The zones need to feel populated.

never noticed a difference, either because people are already indifferent about surveys, or because the surveys only occur at very very specific locations in the zones

zones are big enough 10 people doing surveys wont see anything but each other most likely unless they are near a quest hub

This supports my position that we don't need anything else put in the game that takes away from players being in zones doing stuff.

katanagirl1

kargen27 wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

I oppose this idea because we need more players out and about doing activities in zones not less. The zones need to feel populated.

never noticed a difference, either because people are already indifferent about surveys, or because the surveys only occur at very very specific locations in the zones

zones are big enough 10 people doing surveys wont see anything but each other most likely unless they are near a quest hub

This supports my position that we don't need anything else put in the game that takes away from players being in zones doing stuff.

I actually see other players quite often when doing surveys. I get annoyed that their companions are standing on the nodes I am trying to harvest.

Hapexamendios

I've got so many surveys piled up it would break the mail system.

Kiyakotari

tincanman wrote: »

[...] the lower mail retention times being introduced, especially for trading, will probably act as a bigger unintentional gold-sink than OP suggestion.

And then you have players like myself, whose health issues mean that we can't plan our absences from the game in advance (like ZOS suggests) and have instead left or are now leaving our trading guilds.

derkaiserliche

Kiyakotari wrote: »

tincanman wrote: »

[...] the lower mail retention times being introduced, especially for trading, will probably act as a bigger unintentional gold-sink than OP suggestion.

And then you have players like myself, whose health issues mean that we can't plan our absences from the game in advance (like ZOS suggests) and have instead left or are now leaving our trading guilds.

then you give a bigger donation to the guildbank and inform the leader about it, they cant know why you are gone otherwise

DenverRalphy

Step by step, bit by bit, ESO has lost a lot of immersion in the game. All in the name of QoL changes. Now the immersion is so minimal, the game suffers for it. Whatever happened to the days when that was the essential point of an MMORPG? Perhaps todays crop of gamers don't get it.

I guess the lesson learned from Everquest and StarWars Galaxies has been forgotten. Whats the quickest way to destroy an online game? Give the players everything they ask for.

I get it. Players often tend to lean towards efficiency to make things easier. Who wouldn't? But sometimes you've gotta step back and see the forest for trees.

For that reason, I'd be against it. I'd vote no on this.

heaven13

derkaiserliche wrote: »

Kiyakotari wrote: »

tincanman wrote: »

[...] the lower mail retention times being introduced, especially for trading, will probably act as a bigger unintentional gold-sink than OP suggestion.

And then you have players like myself, whose health issues mean that we can't plan our absences from the game in advance (like ZOS suggests) and have instead left or are now leaving our trading guilds.

then you give a bigger donation to the guildbank and inform the leader about it, they cant know why you are gone otherwise

I think you missed the part where it was an unplanned absence, meaning you don't have the foresight to be able to donate/inform guild leaders, unless maybe you have discord on your phone and the guild has a discord and your situation allows you access to the phone.

furiouslog

The problem with the surveys is that they are boring, and an isolated and time-consuming activity. Also some of the survey locations are so painful to reach that I just destroy them (but there are only a couple of those - I'm looking at you in particular, Shadowfen).

I really hate Lost Ark, but they did a handful of things well, and one of them was this: instead of giving players access to special nodes, they got keys to enter a resource rich instance where 1-4 players could team up and harvest all at once. If the teams were able to coordinate well, they'd unlock other areas which gave them more resources, etc etc. It had a 15 minute timer, so once it was up, you were done.

ZOS could make a few harvesting maps for instancing, and design a cooperative harvesting game type that could be played like any other menu daily (e.g. normal dungeons) - except you need a key to enter it, and the keys would drop just like the surveys drop now. It would take what is a lonely and boring activity and turn it into another opportunity for social events and so forth. All of the guilds who do farming parties to fund guild activities could use this as their central means of gathering items. Meta item sets for farming would become an important element of the game. And we'd just get rid of the surveys, and receive harvesting keys as a currency that gets stored until you want to go do some harvesting with your friends.

Again, I hate Lost Ark, but that bit of design was pretty smart.

Necrotech_Master

kargen27 wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

I oppose this idea because we need more players out and about doing activities in zones not less. The zones need to feel populated.

never noticed a difference, either because people are already indifferent about surveys, or because the surveys only occur at very very specific locations in the zones

zones are big enough 10 people doing surveys wont see anything but each other most likely unless they are near a quest hub

This supports my position that we don't need anything else put in the game that takes away from players being in zones doing stuff.

theres quite a lot of quests out there which take place in instances, not in the open, if anything that takes more people out of zone than a few people going to very specific spots for 2 minutes to harvest the survey nodes

85% of the time im doing a treasure map or survey, the only time i see any players is when i port to the wayshrine nearest to the dig/harvest site, and then only occasionally see other players at the dig/harvest site

there is also the percentage of players who dislike doing these things, and "trying to get them out in the zone" is not a valid reason for them to bother or care and still continue to not do the maps and surveys

at least they have an option to give maps to players who do enjoy that, while they dont for surveys, which is why people let them pile up, they cant sell them and dont want to do them themselves

katanagirl1

furiouslog wrote: »

The problem with the surveys is that they are boring, and an isolated and time-consuming activity. Also some of the survey locations are so painful to reach that I just destroy them (but there are only a couple of those - I'm looking at you in particular, Shadowfen).

I really hate Lost Ark, but they did a handful of things well, and one of them was this: instead of giving players access to special nodes, they got keys to enter a resource rich instance where 1-4 players could team up and harvest all at once. If the teams were able to coordinate well, they'd unlock other areas which gave them more resources, etc etc. It had a 15 minute timer, so once it was up, you were done.

ZOS could make a few harvesting maps for instancing, and design a cooperative harvesting game type that could be played like any other menu daily (e.g. normal dungeons) - except you need a key to enter it, and the keys would drop just like the surveys drop now. It would take what is a lonely and boring activity and turn it into another opportunity for social events and so forth. All of the guilds who do farming parties to fund guild activities could use this as their central means of gathering items. Meta item sets for farming would become an important element of the game. And we'd just get rid of the surveys, and receive harvesting keys as a currency that gets stored until you want to go do some harvesting with your friends.

Again, I hate Lost Ark, but that bit of design was pretty smart.

Sorry but this doesn’t seem like fun to me. I wouldn’t want to have to group up for farming mats. I prefer to do it alone and whenever is convenient for me,

TaSheen

katanagirl1 wrote: »

furiouslog wrote: »

The problem with the surveys is that they are boring, and an isolated and time-consuming activity. Also some of the survey locations are so painful to reach that I just destroy them (but there are only a couple of those - I'm looking at you in particular, Shadowfen).

I really hate Lost Ark, but they did a handful of things well, and one of them was this: instead of giving players access to special nodes, they got keys to enter a resource rich instance where 1-4 players could team up and harvest all at once. If the teams were able to coordinate well, they'd unlock other areas which gave them more resources, etc etc. It had a 15 minute timer, so once it was up, you were done.

ZOS could make a few harvesting maps for instancing, and design a cooperative harvesting game type that could be played like any other menu daily (e.g. normal dungeons) - except you need a key to enter it, and the keys would drop just like the surveys drop now. It would take what is a lonely and boring activity and turn it into another opportunity for social events and so forth. All of the guilds who do farming parties to fund guild activities could use this as their central means of gathering items. Meta item sets for farming would become an important element of the game. And we'd just get rid of the surveys, and receive harvesting keys as a currency that gets stored until you want to go do some harvesting with your friends.

Again, I hate Lost Ark, but that bit of design was pretty smart.

Sorry but this doesn’t seem like fun to me. I wouldn’t want to have to group up for farming mats. I prefer to do it alone and whenever is convenient for me,

Doesn't appeal to me either.

Araneae6537

I think OP’s proposal is better than others I’ve seen to make collecting surveys faster/easier.

1) It is optional.
2) It costs gold to get items faster than can be sold for gold — that seems fair and not pay-to-win like some suggestions of paying Crowns for a hireling to gather surveys.

TaSheen

I *think* the disconnect for me here is that I find running surveys fun, and apparently most others don't....