just let us buy the ink

CoronHR · June 27

i have little desire to play around with scribing, mainly because the ink is hard to come by, but also because scribing's a bit meh in general. i might be tempted to play around a little if i could just buy the ink from a vendor for whatever, 1,000 gold a piece. i think playing around with scribing should be a lot more accessible. i think we should have the ability to easily switch a dot to a hot if we like. tip the inkwell over and let the ink flow...

xylena_lazarow · June 27

More and more players across games are choosing disengagement over grinding. Here's hoping game studios adapt.

sarahthes · June 27

CoronHR wrote: »

i have little desire to play around with scribing, mainly because the ink is hard to come by, but also because scribing's a bit meh in general. i might be tempted to play around a little if i could just buy the ink from a vendor for whatever, 1,000 gold a piece. i think playing around with scribing should be a lot more accessible. i think we should have the ability to easily switch a dot to a hot if we like. tip the inkwell over and let the ink flow...

It'll be 1000 gold a piece in guild traders in a week or two I'd estimate.

Erickson9610 · June 27

Luminous Ink is going to see a sharp spike in value every time new Grimoires are introduced, which I think is good for the player economy. I think 1000 Gold a piece is too small of a price ceiling for Luminous Ink; maybe 10000 Tel Var or 10000 Archival Fortunes per Luminous Ink, to give PvP/PvE players alternate methods of acquiring Luminous Ink besides killing mobs and harvesting resources.

Necrotech_Master · June 27

sarahthes wrote: »

CoronHR wrote: »

i have little desire to play around with scribing, mainly because the ink is hard to come by, but also because scribing's a bit meh in general. i might be tempted to play around a little if i could just buy the ink from a vendor for whatever, 1,000 gold a piece. i think playing around with scribing should be a lot more accessible. i think we should have the ability to easily switch a dot to a hot if we like. tip the inkwell over and let the ink flow...

It'll be 1000 gold a piece in guild traders in a week or two I'd estimate.

while that would make it more reasonable to buy from traders

doesnt help increment the achievement for earning ink when you buy/trade for it

what we need is some form of a repeatable quest that can guarantee even 1 unit of ink to supplement those of us where the ink is refusing to drop in any useable quantity

sarahthes · June 27

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

CoronHR wrote: »

i have little desire to play around with scribing, mainly because the ink is hard to come by, but also because scribing's a bit meh in general. i might be tempted to play around a little if i could just buy the ink from a vendor for whatever, 1,000 gold a piece. i think playing around with scribing should be a lot more accessible. i think we should have the ability to easily switch a dot to a hot if we like. tip the inkwell over and let the ink flow...

It'll be 1000 gold a piece in guild traders in a week or two I'd estimate.

while that would make it more reasonable to buy from traders

doesnt help increment the achievement for earning ink when you buy/trade for it

what we need is some form of a repeatable quest that can guarantee even 1 unit of ink to supplement those of us where the ink is refusing to drop in any useable quantity

Having tracked my ink drop rates more closely recently, I don't think ink only drops for some people and not others.

I think some people just dedicate more time to it, realizing that it evens out over time and there's no reason to stop farming even if you only get 3 one day - because you might get 20-something the next.

MidniteOwl1913 · June 27

The lack of ink is really off-putting. I have scribed a couple of skills tried them decided I didn't like them and felt like I had wasted a precious resource. Now I'm hesitant to try anything else. (And I'm stuck with skills that I won't use forever cluttering up my display.)

I feel that I could find something I liked if ink were easier to get.

It would be nice to have a deconstruct skill ability. It's crafted, I should be able to deconstruct it and get back at least one ink.

Necrotech_Master · June 27

sarahthes wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

CoronHR wrote: »

i have little desire to play around with scribing, mainly because the ink is hard to come by, but also because scribing's a bit meh in general. i might be tempted to play around a little if i could just buy the ink from a vendor for whatever, 1,000 gold a piece. i think playing around with scribing should be a lot more accessible. i think we should have the ability to easily switch a dot to a hot if we like. tip the inkwell over and let the ink flow...

It'll be 1000 gold a piece in guild traders in a week or two I'd estimate.

while that would make it more reasonable to buy from traders

doesnt help increment the achievement for earning ink when you buy/trade for it

what we need is some form of a repeatable quest that can guarantee even 1 unit of ink to supplement those of us where the ink is refusing to drop in any useable quantity

Having tracked my ink drop rates more closely recently, I don't think ink only drops for some people and not others.

I think some people just dedicate more time to it, realizing that it evens out over time and there's no reason to stop farming even if you only get 3 one day - because you might get 20-something the next.

the most ive ever gotten in 1 day is 3 (1 random drop from enemy + 1 double drop in craglorn)

generally speaking ive been lucky to even get 1 a day

in the first 3 weeks the patch was out, my avg drop rate was 0.8 inks per day (18 inks in 21 days), a good portion of those were probably from the 2nd week when i did dedicate more time to actually farming nodes, but that is an extremely unfun way to spend my time in game, so im not going to do that

"casual" drops while actually doing content i do enjoy are few and far between, but if its that ridiculously rare, its not worth it to bother with, especially being RNG heavy it doesnt feel like my time was well spent farming nodes when the only real item i wanted was the ink and consistently got nothing

if i round up and use an avg of 1 ink per day, its going to take me another 1.5 years to finish accumulating 500 inks

if im doing hard node or enemy grinding, i should have been at 500 inks already if it had a proper drop rate

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

More and more players across games are choosing disengagement over grinding. Here's hoping game studios adapt.

this here is basically why ink is going down in price, majority of players are just not using the system, or unwilling to pay the high prices for the ink, so the demand is not there and the market is correcting itself with the average price dropping due to less and less demand

for me personally, i prefer relying on my own resources so i hate buying mats. with the drop rate of ink being so ridiculously low for me, farming is not an option as it feels im wasting my time if my end goal is ink. i did not enjoy the questline enough to want to run it again on my other 10 characters (but this is still an option if i needed an influx of 120 ink, say if that was enough to max out the achievement for the 500 ink)

so my only real current option is to not use the system at all until i can accumulate enough ink that i can feel like i can use the system, which at the current rate all of my characters will have ended up learning all of the scripts before that happens

CoronHR · June 27

my ink achievement clocks in at 85. that includes 24 inks from doing the full scribing quest line on 2 character (man was the 2nd character ever hard to do). so i've farmed about 60. i have dedicated some time to farming it, thinking well at least i'll get a ton of mats. it's kind of ok to farm it, given that i'll get a lot of mats. but tbh i'd prefer to just be able to get it easily so i can play around with scribing. the daily quest idea, where it'll guarantee a drop ... that's a good idea. i suppose 1,000 gold is too cheap, but hmm, i don't know. if zos made it easy to acquire, i'd appreciate it

DenverRalphy · June 27

Erickson9610 wrote: »

Luminous Ink is going to see a sharp spike in value every time new Grimoires are introduced, which I think is good for the player economy. I think 1000 Gold a piece is too small of a price ceiling for Luminous Ink; maybe 10000 Tel Var or 10000 Archival Fortunes per Luminous Ink, to give PvP/PvE players alternate methods of acquiring Luminous Ink besides killing mobs and harvesting resources.

I doubt that the introduction of new grimoires will even blip the radar. By the time new grimoires are introduced, everybody will have amassed a healthy supply over that time and not even realize it. Outside of experimentation, Ink is a one time need for the skills you build, and will then just stockpile over time until needed again.

Once Scribing becomes "Yesterday's news", most people will probably forget that Ink was even a hot commodity at one time. I'd even venture to guess that if anything, players will have to shop around just to find a guild trader that has any listed because few players will want to waste a trader slot on the stuff.

Necrotech_Master · June 27

CoronHR wrote: »

my ink achievement clocks in at 85. that includes 24 inks from doing the full scribing quest line on 2 character (man was the 2nd character ever hard to do). so i've farmed about 60. i have dedicated some time to farming it, thinking well at least i'll get a ton of mats. it's kind of ok to farm it, given that i'll get a lot of mats. but tbh i'd prefer to just be able to get it easily so i can play around with scribing. the daily quest idea, where it'll guarantee a drop ... that's a good idea. i suppose 1,000 gold is too cheap, but hmm, i don't know. if zos made it easy to acquire, i'd appreciate it

the 1000g price given was their estimate as to what it will be on guild traders in a few months, which is as direct buy as you can get right now

Tommy_The_Gun · June 27

Erickson9610 wrote: »

Luminous Ink is going to see a sharp spike in value every time new Grimoires are introduced, which I think is good for the player economy.

...Unless some one will make just 1x skills they use (or don't use since they are kinda bad aside from troll-level pvp) and then you will end up with like 100+ Luminous Ink after 1 year of randomly accumulating those, since you will not be "using them".

I think it will be similar to jewellery crafting. I am seeing same pattern here. Very rare & expensive crafting material that require new DLC (paywalled) to use. Almost every one wants it (especially end game PvE/PvP) but regular, normal players will just make 1 or 2 sets at best and then bubble bursts and it becomes regular crafting material (just like jewellery crafting is now).

sarahthes · June 27

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

CoronHR wrote: »

i have little desire to play around with scribing, mainly because the ink is hard to come by, but also because scribing's a bit meh in general. i might be tempted to play around a little if i could just buy the ink from a vendor for whatever, 1,000 gold a piece. i think playing around with scribing should be a lot more accessible. i think we should have the ability to easily switch a dot to a hot if we like. tip the inkwell over and let the ink flow...

It'll be 1000 gold a piece in guild traders in a week or two I'd estimate.

while that would make it more reasonable to buy from traders

doesnt help increment the achievement for earning ink when you buy/trade for it

what we need is some form of a repeatable quest that can guarantee even 1 unit of ink to supplement those of us where the ink is refusing to drop in any useable quantity

Having tracked my ink drop rates more closely recently, I don't think ink only drops for some people and not others.

I think some people just dedicate more time to it, realizing that it evens out over time and there's no reason to stop farming even if you only get 3 one day - because you might get 20-something the next.

the most ive ever gotten in 1 day is 3 (1 random drop from enemy + 1 double drop in craglorn)

generally speaking ive been lucky to even get 1 a day

in the first 3 weeks the patch was out, my avg drop rate was 0.8 inks per day (18 inks in 21 days), a good portion of those were probably from the 2nd week when i did dedicate more time to actually farming nodes, but that is an extremely unfun way to spend my time in game, so im not going to do that

"casual" drops while actually doing content i do enjoy are few and far between, but if its that ridiculously rare, its not worth it to bother with, especially being RNG heavy it doesnt feel like my time was well spent farming nodes when the only real item i wanted was the ink and consistently got nothing

if i round up and use an avg of 1 ink per day, its going to take me another 1.5 years to finish accumulating 500 inks

if im doing hard node or enemy grinding, i should have been at 500 inks already if it had a proper drop rate

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

More and more players across games are choosing disengagement over grinding. Here's hoping game studios adapt.

this here is basically why ink is going down in price, majority of players are just not using the system, or unwilling to pay the high prices for the ink, so the demand is not there and the market is correcting itself with the average price dropping due to less and less demand

for me personally, i prefer relying on my own resources so i hate buying mats. with the drop rate of ink being so ridiculously low for me, farming is not an option as it feels im wasting my time if my end goal is ink. i did not enjoy the questline enough to want to run it again on my other 10 characters (but this is still an option if i needed an influx of 120 ink, say if that was enough to max out the achievement for the 500 ink)

so my only real current option is to not use the system at all until i can accumulate enough ink that i can feel like i can use the system, which at the current rate all of my characters will have ended up learning all of the scripts before that happens

The price is now dropping because there's over 10,000 ink for sale (10K listed on TTC alone) on PC NA. There's probably 2-3x that many in reality since not everyone uses that particular addon.

umagon · June 27

The one who knows should be supplying our characters with all the ink they could ever need after their assistance. Apocryoha has plenty to spare.

Erickson9610 · June 27

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Erickson9610 wrote: »

Luminous Ink is going to see a sharp spike in value every time new Grimoires are introduced, which I think is good for the player economy.

...Unless some one will make just 1x skills they use (or don't use since they are kinda bad aside from troll-level pvp) and then you will end up with like 100+ Luminous Ink after 1 year of randomly accumulating those, since you will not be "using them".

I think it will be similar to jewellery crafting. I am seeing same pattern here. Very rare & expensive crafting material that require new DLC (paywalled) to use. Almost every one wants it (especially end game PvE/PvP) but regular, normal players will just make 1 or 2 sets at best and then bubble bursts and it becomes regular crafting material (just like jewellery crafting is now).

If that's the case, then we really don't need the ability to outright buy the currency from NPCs. Players may opt to spend some of their Luminous Ink when new Grimoires are added, or if the meta changes and makes certain Scribing skill combinations suddenly useful, but there's really no rush to acquire everything.

As for the concerns about the 500 ink achievement — you get the Skill Style at only 50 ink, so the last 450 ink should be a long-term goal that is done passively. It doesn't take long to get the 50 ink achievement, so I don't think it's an immediate issue. I'm sure by next year, people who unlocked Scribing this year will have enough Luminous Ink to scribe next year's Grimoires.

LaintalAy · June 27

Yes, but if you could buy the ink from vendors, three major problems would occur:

there would be no 3600cp players farming every available node in every available zone
Players would go back to cyrodiil and start complaining about that again.
I'd have something to do again.

Necrotech_Master · June 27

sarahthes wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

CoronHR wrote: »

i have little desire to play around with scribing, mainly because the ink is hard to come by, but also because scribing's a bit meh in general. i might be tempted to play around a little if i could just buy the ink from a vendor for whatever, 1,000 gold a piece. i think playing around with scribing should be a lot more accessible. i think we should have the ability to easily switch a dot to a hot if we like. tip the inkwell over and let the ink flow...

It'll be 1000 gold a piece in guild traders in a week or two I'd estimate.

while that would make it more reasonable to buy from traders

doesnt help increment the achievement for earning ink when you buy/trade for it

what we need is some form of a repeatable quest that can guarantee even 1 unit of ink to supplement those of us where the ink is refusing to drop in any useable quantity

Having tracked my ink drop rates more closely recently, I don't think ink only drops for some people and not others.

I think some people just dedicate more time to it, realizing that it evens out over time and there's no reason to stop farming even if you only get 3 one day - because you might get 20-something the next.

the most ive ever gotten in 1 day is 3 (1 random drop from enemy + 1 double drop in craglorn)

generally speaking ive been lucky to even get 1 a day

in the first 3 weeks the patch was out, my avg drop rate was 0.8 inks per day (18 inks in 21 days), a good portion of those were probably from the 2nd week when i did dedicate more time to actually farming nodes, but that is an extremely unfun way to spend my time in game, so im not going to do that

"casual" drops while actually doing content i do enjoy are few and far between, but if its that ridiculously rare, its not worth it to bother with, especially being RNG heavy it doesnt feel like my time was well spent farming nodes when the only real item i wanted was the ink and consistently got nothing

if i round up and use an avg of 1 ink per day, its going to take me another 1.5 years to finish accumulating 500 inks

if im doing hard node or enemy grinding, i should have been at 500 inks already if it had a proper drop rate

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

More and more players across games are choosing disengagement over grinding. Here's hoping game studios adapt.

this here is basically why ink is going down in price, majority of players are just not using the system, or unwilling to pay the high prices for the ink, so the demand is not there and the market is correcting itself with the average price dropping due to less and less demand

for me personally, i prefer relying on my own resources so i hate buying mats. with the drop rate of ink being so ridiculously low for me, farming is not an option as it feels im wasting my time if my end goal is ink. i did not enjoy the questline enough to want to run it again on my other 10 characters (but this is still an option if i needed an influx of 120 ink, say if that was enough to max out the achievement for the 500 ink)

so my only real current option is to not use the system at all until i can accumulate enough ink that i can feel like i can use the system, which at the current rate all of my characters will have ended up learning all of the scripts before that happens

The price is now dropping because there's over 10,000 ink for sale (10K listed on TTC alone) on PC NA. There's probably 2-3x that many in reality since not everyone uses that particular addon.

its nice thats available

again, does not help increment the achievement by buying it, this is purely relying on the RNG, which as its been noted in many threads, is all over the place with people (some reporting high drops, and others, well reporting almost no drops)

i have tried farming nodes, in crag, in bleakrock, picking them up whenever im traveling between 2 places, and my drop rate for them is still so bad, that i feel like im wasting my time with that

Erickson9610 · June 27

LaintalAy wrote: »

Yes, but if you could buy the ink from vendors, three major problems would occur:
there would be no 3600cp players farming every available node in every available zone

Players would go back to cyrodiil and start complaining about that again.

I'd have something to do again.

I think there should be a more PvP-specific method of accumulating Luminous Ink. Harvesting resource nodes and looting mobs are activities you can do within Cyrodiil, but they're not something directly related to PvP.

Instead of having a merchant to buy Luminous Ink from, why not just give Rewards for the Worthy a chance to grant Luminous Ink? That would give all forms of PvP (excluding ToT, unless that reward coffer had a chance as well) a chance to grant Luminous Ink, so PvP players can passively gain Luminous Ink doing what they're already doing?

LaintalAy · June 27

Erickson9610 wrote: »

LaintalAy wrote: »

Yes, but if you could buy the ink from vendors, three major problems would occur:
there would be no 3600cp players farming every available node in every available zone

Players would go back to cyrodiil and start complaining about that again.

I'd have something to do again.

I think there should be a more PvP-specific method of accumulating Luminous Ink. Harvesting resource nodes and looting mobs are activities you can do within Cyrodiil, but they're not something directly related to PvP.

Instead of having a merchant to buy Luminous Ink from, why not just give Rewards for the Worthy a chance to grant Luminous Ink? That would give all forms of PvP (excluding ToT, unless that reward coffer had a chance as well) a chance to grant Luminous Ink, so PvP players can passively gain Luminous Ink doing what they're already doing?

Yeah, I guess PvE players really aren't interested in scribing at all...

Erickson9610 · June 27

LaintalAy wrote: »

Erickson9610 wrote: »

LaintalAy wrote: »

Yes, but if you could buy the ink from vendors, three major problems would occur:
there would be no 3600cp players farming every available node in every available zone

Players would go back to cyrodiil and start complaining about that again.

I'd have something to do again.

I think there should be a more PvP-specific method of accumulating Luminous Ink. Harvesting resource nodes and looting mobs are activities you can do within Cyrodiil, but they're not something directly related to PvP.

Instead of having a merchant to buy Luminous Ink from, why not just give Rewards for the Worthy a chance to grant Luminous Ink? That would give all forms of PvP (excluding ToT, unless that reward coffer had a chance as well) a chance to grant Luminous Ink, so PvP players can passively gain Luminous Ink doing what they're already doing?

Yeah, I guess PvE players really aren't interested in scribing at all...

All methods of acquiring Luminous Ink are already catered toward PvE players (looting mobs, looting resource nodes, or completing the Scribing quests). But sure — PvE players could be given a chance to receive Luminous Ink from daily dungeons/trials/arenas, if PvP players get to have a chance to receive Luminous Ink from Rewards for the Worthy (and also daily Battlegrounds, while we're at it).

You can't get Luminous Ink from killing enemy players or the guards at any keeps/flags in Cyrodiil/Imperial City, so that's why PvP players would benefit from something more than what's currently available.

harvey07 · June 27

i get about 10-20 inks a day....just from picking up nodes of anything and on different levels of alts. the scribing system is kinda 'meh' for me anyways. never scribed anything over the intro spell. kind of lack luster for my game play....but...you gotta role with the changes.

Necrotech_Master · June 28

Erickson9610 wrote: »

LaintalAy wrote: »

Erickson9610 wrote: »

LaintalAy wrote: »

Yes, but if you could buy the ink from vendors, three major problems would occur:
there would be no 3600cp players farming every available node in every available zone

Players would go back to cyrodiil and start complaining about that again.

I'd have something to do again.

I think there should be a more PvP-specific method of accumulating Luminous Ink. Harvesting resource nodes and looting mobs are activities you can do within Cyrodiil, but they're not something directly related to PvP.

Instead of having a merchant to buy Luminous Ink from, why not just give Rewards for the Worthy a chance to grant Luminous Ink? That would give all forms of PvP (excluding ToT, unless that reward coffer had a chance as well) a chance to grant Luminous Ink, so PvP players can passively gain Luminous Ink doing what they're already doing?

Yeah, I guess PvE players really aren't interested in scribing at all...

All methods of acquiring Luminous Ink are already catered toward PvE players (looting mobs, looting resource nodes, or completing the Scribing quests). But sure — PvE players could be given a chance to receive Luminous Ink from daily dungeons/trials/arenas, if PvP players get to have a chance to receive Luminous Ink from Rewards for the Worthy (and also daily Battlegrounds, while we're at it).

You can't get Luminous Ink from killing enemy players or the guards at any keeps/flags in Cyrodiil/Imperial City, so that's why PvP players would benefit from something more than what's currently available.

technically pve does get a chance to get ink from dungeons/trials, because of the random drops from mobs lol (ive gotten at least a couple this way)

not sure about arenas as most arena mobs dont really drop anything

i think it would be fair though to add it to rewards of the worthy and tribute coffers

BasP · June 28

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

not sure about arenas as most arena mobs dont really drop anything

I did get an Ink in vVH the other day, but yeah, that dropped from a chest after defeating a boss. I think that it would be nice if the final boss would drop a guaranteed Ink every time though, because I feel that the current drop rate for bosses is way too low.

DigiAngel · June 28

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

More and more players across games are choosing disengagement over grinding. Here's hoping game studios adapt.

That's exactly what I did. As soon as I saw that scribing was a horrid grind I didn't bother to get the chapter...barely log in now.

Tandor · June 28

One idea might be to give some ink a couple of times in the month as daily rewards. Even if it was only 10 inks each time, that would cover some of the experimenting issues at least for average players, as opposed to those who - perfectly legitimately - want to test every single combination.

XSTRONG · June 28

Tandor wrote: »

One idea might be to give some ink a couple of times in the month as daily rewards. Even if it was only 10 inks each time, that would cover some of the experimenting issues at least for average players, as opposed to those who - perfectly legitimately - want to test every single combination.

They give away gold mats in daily rewards so giving away Ink might be possible but I never seen them give away transmute crystals or potent nirncrux so dont get hope up.

Tandor · June 28

XSTRONG wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

One idea might be to give some ink a couple of times in the month as daily rewards. Even if it was only 10 inks each time, that would cover some of the experimenting issues at least for average players, as opposed to those who - perfectly legitimately - want to test every single combination.

They give away gold mats in daily rewards so giving away Ink might be possible but I never seen them give away transmute crystals or potent nirncrux so dont get hope up.

Indeed, but it was just a suggestion from me, not a wish. I'm fine with scribing the way it is, it's only of slight interest to me and I probably have more ink (20 or so on each server) for my present needs. I do enough routine harvesting to get a few more over time.

ZOS_Kevin · June 28

Just wanted to follow up here. We have heard this feedback regarding ink and have some plans to address some this. We are working on finalizing some things now, so we just need some time to make sure we're hitting a good balance.

NordSwordnBoard · June 28

Acknowledged, maybe next time I'll consider purchasing the chapter then. Sounds like I made the right decision to wait this one out. Thank you to all the forum posters who saved me money and more importantly - time. When I do come back to ESO, I will have a more positive attitude and less resentment having skipped the frustration. GG

RicAlmighty · June 28

[Removed]

darvaria · June 28

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

More and more players across games are choosing disengagement over grinding. Here's hoping game studios adapt.

^

@Kevin at least we know ZOS is thinking about this issue now. Thanks.