Where is the ink?

TaSheen

Elvenheart wrote: »

I agree with all of this. Or, the ink could’ve been a recipe made with existing common ingredients. not some super rare gold, expensive ingredient. I would think introducing one new recipe to the game would be better than introducing an entirely new resource to strain the servers.

Oh, that would have been PRIMO! I would have LOVED that! *sigh* for the road not traveled (or even considered I guess....)

Nathrai

TaSheen wrote: »

Elvenheart wrote: »

I agree with all of this. Or, the ink could’ve been a recipe made with existing common ingredients. not some super rare gold, expensive ingredient. I would think introducing one new recipe to the game would be better than introducing an entirely new resource to strain the servers.

Oh, that would have been PRIMO! I would have LOVED that! *sigh* for the road not traveled (or even considered I guess....)

Seconded! That might have been fun. With an option to either earn the recipe, or bulk buy the inks from people who did so, just like with buff food.

TaSheen

Nathrai wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

Elvenheart wrote: »

I agree with all of this. Or, the ink could’ve been a recipe made with existing common ingredients. not some super rare gold, expensive ingredient. I would think introducing one new recipe to the game would be better than introducing an entirely new resource to strain the servers.

Oh, that would have been PRIMO! I would have LOVED that! *sigh* for the road not traveled (or even considered I guess....)

Seconded! That might have been fun. With an option to either earn the recipe, or bulk buy the inks from people who did so, just like with buff food.

Exactly! C'mon, ZOS, get WITH it!

Elvenheart

TaSheen wrote: »

Elvenheart wrote: »

I agree with all of this. Or, the ink could’ve been a recipe made with existing common ingredients. not some super rare gold, expensive ingredient. I would think introducing one new recipe to the game would be better than introducing an entirely new resource to strain the servers.

Oh, that would have been PRIMO! I would have LOVED that! *sigh* for the road not traveled (or even considered I guess....)

Yes, I would love being able to make my own ink. The recipe could have been a reward from one of the Scribing quests, or obtained some other way.

TaSheen

Elvenheart wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

Elvenheart wrote: »

I agree with all of this. Or, the ink could’ve been a recipe made with existing common ingredients. not some super rare gold, expensive ingredient. I would think introducing one new recipe to the game would be better than introducing an entirely new resource to strain the servers.

Oh, that would have been PRIMO! I would have LOVED that! *sigh* for the road not traveled (or even considered I guess....)

Yes, I would love being able to make my own ink. The recipe could have been a reward from one of the Scribing quests, or obtained some other way.

Absolutely! Would have been SO much more immersive!

majulook

I thought the anniversary fubar event was bad. But it pales in comparison with this scribing thing.

I am not sure why they did it like this.

I do not have the will or the want to grind away. I just want to enjoy a game. This everything is a grind is not fun or enjoyable.

kind_hero

I suggest some crafting writ repeatable quest to rebuild the scholarium, that awards ink instead of vouchers.

This way, you have a source of making ink.

As it is now, I doubt that most people will go through the trouble of figuring out scribing with a very limited amount of inks.

kringled_1

I got my first non-quest ink today.

jrfk2

fwiw, I was doing node harvesting runs and wasn't seeing the ink listed as being found in the nodes .. but when I went and checked my craft bag, I had more ink .. yes I could have over looked the notifications but I was doing my ADHD best to watch for them ...

Elsonso

TaSheen wrote: »

Elvenheart wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

Elvenheart wrote: »

I agree with all of this. Or, the ink could’ve been a recipe made with existing common ingredients. not some super rare gold, expensive ingredient. I would think introducing one new recipe to the game would be better than introducing an entirely new resource to strain the servers.

Oh, that would have been PRIMO! I would have LOVED that! *sigh* for the road not traveled (or even considered I guess....)

Yes, I would love being able to make my own ink. The recipe could have been a reward from one of the Scribing quests, or obtained some other way.

Absolutely! Would have been SO much more immersive!

I think that Scribing is a much much larger system than they had time to do. It just feels like they could have made a lot of different decisions instead of what they did. I find myself hoping that this was the vision they could do, not the vision they wanted to do.

Necrotech_Master

Elvenheart wrote: »

Aurielle wrote: »

Elvenheart wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

whatever the actual drop rate of ink is, it needs to be increased like 5-10x of what it currently is to make the system useable

the drop rate from enemy mobs probably doesnt need to be increased as much (since farming 1000 mobs is easier than farming 1000 material nodes)

Honestly, they should have added Ink nodes to the world rather than taking the easy way out and bundling it with whatever.

Agreed…I know it’s a fantasy world, but after ten years of harvesting, “suddenly” we are rarely finding tiny bottles of ink in the ground under plants, under runestones, in tree limbs, in ore… at least finding it on enemies makes sense because they could’ve found it before we did and been carrying it in their pockets, or in the case of creatures, they could’ve eaten someone with the ink or just swallowed a bottle they found on the ground. Where was all this ink for the last 10 years? I guess we just have to suspend belief.

Yes, I've argued as well that having random drops from existing crafting nodes makes ZERO sense. How did that bottle of ink get inside the rubedite ore node in the first place? Yes, yes, I know, this is the same universe where mudcrabs apparently carry around destruction staves in their pockets, but come on...

Ink should be a new type of harvestable crafting node with predictable spawn locations that are no rarer to find than any of the other types of crafting nodes. It just makes sense. ZOS wants us to actually use and play around with scribing, right? Then ink should not be a limiting factor. Ink should be readily available so we can actually try out different skills with different builds on different characters.

I agree with all of this. Or, the ink could’ve been a recipe made with existing common ingredients. not some super rare gold, expensive ingredient. I would think introducing one new recipe to the game would be better than introducing an entirely new resource to strain the servers.

i highly doubt adding 1 new resource is server straining lol

but i do agree that there needs to be some alternate, more guaranteed way to get the ink outside of rerunning the quest (be it through a craft, or just awarded doing some type of daily), and/or they need to significantly increase the ink drop rate

davelbier

Aurielle wrote: »

Elvenheart wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

whatever the actual drop rate of ink is, it needs to be increased like 5-10x of what it currently is to make the system useable

the drop rate from enemy mobs probably doesnt need to be increased as much (since farming 1000 mobs is easier than farming 1000 material nodes)

Honestly, they should have added Ink nodes to the world rather than taking the easy way out and bundling it with whatever.

Agreed…I know it’s a fantasy world, but after ten years of harvesting, “suddenly” we are rarely finding tiny bottles of ink in the ground under plants, under runestones, in tree limbs, in ore… at least finding it on enemies makes sense because they could’ve found it before we did and been carrying it in their pockets, or in the case of creatures, they could’ve eaten someone with the ink or just swallowed a bottle they found on the ground. Where was all this ink for the last 10 years? I guess we just have to suspend belief.

Yes, I've argued as well that having random drops from existing crafting nodes makes ZERO sense. How did that bottle of ink get inside the rubedite ore node in the first place? Yes, yes, I know, this is the same universe where mudcrabs apparently carry around destruction staves in their pockets, but come on...

Ink should be a new type of harvestable crafting node with predictable spawn locations that are no rarer to find than any of the other types of crafting nodes. It just makes sense. ZOS wants us to actually use and play around with scribing, right? Then ink should not be a limiting factor. Ink should be readily available so we can actually try out different skills with different builds on different characters.

i expect the concern with a new type of node is having to go back and add new nodes all over the place. but they do store ink in the craft bag so its a material....They could drop it from mobs [some-inky-organ idk] and have you refine it into 'bottles of ink' if it has to stay a craft material.

i say reclassify it as a currency and provide a drop rate like a sort-of-rare-ish item that drops with currency. It feels more like undaunted keys or transmute stones or something since its is treated as a 'cost' of scripting. treat them like those so we farm them from rewards.

And im a little surprised that - either way - im surprised theres not a scribing station for housing, or in the craft areas or as a standalone a-la outfit stations [or maybe add it to the enchanter table idk].

Nathrai

davelbier wrote: »

And im a little surprised that - either way - im surprised theres not a scribing station for housing, or in the craft areas or as a standalone a-la outfit stations [or maybe add it to the enchanter table idk].

There's a chance they'll add that later to the crown store, like they added the vampire-related housing items well after the actual feature.

Would make sense, since you still have incentives to go to the Scholarium for the vendors.

Necrotech_Master

Nathrai wrote: »

davelbier wrote: »

And im a little surprised that - either way - im surprised theres not a scribing station for housing, or in the craft areas or as a standalone a-la outfit stations [or maybe add it to the enchanter table idk].

There's a chance they'll add that later to the crown store, like they added the vampire-related housing items well after the actual feature.

Would make sense, since you still have incentives to go to the Scholarium for the vendors.

i think thats how it was for the transmute station too

i dont think that was immediately available for player housing either

Nathrai

Yes, I think I remember a time when you had to pay Seht a visit for that. Then again, I'm an old man and my brain looks like something Uncle Sheo would favour.

The armoury was immediately available, though, I think.

kringled_1

Player housing transmute station was available when clockwork city dropped. It's written in the patch notes as such. But the high voucher cost may have meant it was pretty rare until significantly later.

virtus753

kringled_1 wrote: »

Player housing transmute station was available when clockwork city dropped. It's written in the patch notes as such. But the high voucher cost may have meant it was pretty rare until significantly later.

Yep. Debuted on the PTS like that too:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/372057/transmutation-crafting-station-writ-cost

Necrotech_Master

kringled_1 wrote: »

Player housing transmute station was available when clockwork city dropped. It's written in the patch notes as such. But the high voucher cost may have meant it was pretty rare until significantly later.

that was probably it, might have been mixing the 2 up since that happened so long ago lol

i still expect to see a scribing station available for our houses at some point though

Mathius_Mordred

Maybe I didn't do enough but, 20 world bosses in Bangkorai, 40 in a public dungeon and 5 in a random normal dungeon, total inks = 0

Is that not enough because it took in total 2 hours.
In 2 hours of node farming, about 800 nodes, I got 17 inks. So I know what I'll be doing for inks from now on. So the question is, did that actually fix it, did anyone yet get an ink from a world boss?

Jaraal

Mathius_Mordred wrote: »

So the question is, did that actually fix it, did anyone yet get an ink from a world boss?

I got an ink from an incursion mirrorplasm, but I don't know if boss trash is considered boss loot.

SeaGtGruff

Nathrai wrote: »

It seems that they are still using account IDs in their RNG. If you're lucky, you have an account that always scores well on RNG. If you're me unlucky, you always have bad results.

I don't know how the RNG works in this game, but lately I've been wondering if the RNG is somehow tied to our characters, as that could explain why grinding for a given lead can produce no results, but then as soon as you switch to an alt you seem to find the lead very quickly. It actually makes sense to me that storing some sort of RNG seed value for each character could be a good thing, as it would allow each character to have their own sequence of "random" results.

An account-based or character-based RNG seed value or formula might also explain why some ToT players seem to get some incredibly strange results (according to what they've posted) as far as things like the shuffling of the deck and who gets to go first in the match. /shrug

SpiritofESO

Nathrai

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

I don't know how the RNG works in this game, but lately I've been wondering if the RNG is somehow tied to our characters, as that could explain why grinding for a given lead can produce no results, but then as soon as you switch to an alt you seem to find the lead very quickly. It actually makes sense to me that storing some sort of RNG seed value for each character could be a good thing, as it would allow each character to have their own sequence of "random" results.

I have no reliable data on character RNG, but a lot of people are reporting similar experiences.

In itself, using account and character IDs in RNG does no harm, and it keeps results from being the same for different people at the same time.

But when there's a bug (and it's clear there is one with account IDs and highly problable one with character IDs), it leads to certain accounts/characters having a wastly higher/lower chance at RNG.

(Constantly. For life. Not just short bouts of being lucky or unlucky that usually come with RNG... )

LukosCreyden

Would love to experiment with Scribing some more. A shame I cannot do that because ink doesn't drop from anywhere despite hours of farming nodes and mobs.
I got one.
I need three to make a spell.
Yeah, think I will wait until it is fixed.

Mathius_Mordred

LukosCreyden wrote: »

Would love to experiment with Scribing some more. A shame I cannot do that because ink doesn't drop from anywhere despite hours of farming nodes and mobs.
I got one.
I need three to make a spell.
Yeah, think I will wait until it is fixed.

You should be getting about 8 an hour from nodes, try a starter zone.

Elvenheart

Mathius_Mordred wrote: »

LukosCreyden wrote: »

Would love to experiment with Scribing some more. A shame I cannot do that because ink doesn't drop from anywhere despite hours of farming nodes and mobs.
I got one.
I need three to make a spell.
Yeah, think I will wait until it is fixed.

You should be getting about 8 an hour from nodes, try a starter zone.

That’s not been my good luck, but I’m going to test this right now in a starter zone and just grind for an hour instead of actually doing something fun in the game.

CrashTest

Elvenheart wrote: »

... just grind for an hour instead of actually doing something fun in the game.

ESO in a nutshell. Pretty sad.

Elsonso

Elvenheart wrote: »

Mathius_Mordred wrote: »

You should be getting about 8 an hour from nodes, try a starter zone.

That’s not been my good luck, but I’m going to test this right now in a starter zone and just grind for an hour instead of actually doing something fun in the game.

There is where ZOS missed the boat.

No one should be grinding for Ink. This is wrong on at least two levels. Ink should be crafted, not a drop. Ink crafting skill should be what determines what spells players can scribe, like everything else in crafting. It is normal, easy to understand, does not have to be an ubergrind, and it fits into the game. Trying to hold back players with drop rarity just means that the rest of the system doesn't have a suitable final design and needs more work.

Elvenheart

Ok, back from my hour plus ten minute for good measure grind in Bleakrock. Nodes were so plentiful that you couldn’t move from one node without seeing one or two others pretty close by to go to. I have both Plentiful Harvest and Master Gatherer. And the very first node I harvested, a runestone, gave me an ink! I thought, “Wow, maybe this will really work!” I was really hoping for somewhere close to eight inks. Alas, by the end of the grind, I only got one more, for a total of two.

I’ve been playing a couple of hours every day since Gold Road came out, more on the weekends, and always gathering nodes on the way from activity to activity. I’ve not passed up a single node that I know about. I’ve finished the main quest in Gold Road and all the side quests because I like seeing as many people as possible at the end celebration, and it goes without saying, I finished all the scribing quests and got my 12 inks from that. For all of that, plus tonight’s activity, I now have a whopping total of 27 inks. I would have had 30 but I’ve had the audacity to create one skill.

Now, some people might say that getting 18 inks in three weeks with all of this playing is a good drop rate, I disagree when we’re talking about a system with 4000 possible combinations that was advertised as something we would really enjoy experimenting with.

Edited to add: Let’s say in the normal course of gameplay I get two more inks by the time Gold Road has been out one month. So, at that rate, I’ll have 240 more inks to play with by next June. Maybe by then I’ll finally feel like trying to experiment with some of those 4,000 combinations.

Elvenheart

Elsonso wrote: »

Elvenheart wrote: »

Mathius_Mordred wrote: »

You should be getting about 8 an hour from nodes, try a starter zone.

That’s not been my good luck, but I’m going to test this right now in a starter zone and just grind for an hour instead of actually doing something fun in the game.

There is where ZOS missed the boat.

No one should be grinding for Ink. This is wrong on at least two levels. Ink should be crafted, not a drop. Ink crafting skill should be what determines what spells players can scribe, like everything else in crafting. It is normal, easy to understand, does not have to be an ubergrind, and it fits into the game. Trying to hold back players with drop rarity just means that the rest of the system doesn't have a suitable final design and needs more work.

I would give you an insightful, an agree, and an awesome for this post if I could, because it is definitely worthy of all three. The situation with the ink has turned Scribing from my biggest hope for ESO to my biggest disappointment.