Should Surveys Be Account Bound, or Sellable?

Auberon1983

Full disclosure: I absolutely love doing treasure maps and crafting surveys. I find it cathartic. If you sell maps on PS/NA, I've probably bought some off of you.

However, surveys cannot be sold. I would pay top dollar (gold) for these. I have guildmates with literally hundreds of unused surveys, just waiting for the gold burning a hole in my pocket.

So... should we be able to buy and sell surveys? Or should they stay bound?

LunaFlora

Other

i am fine with Surveys potentially becoming tradeable and fine with them staying account bound.
i wouldn't trade them and i probably wouldn't purchase any Surveys from other people.

DenverRalphy

Surveys Should Stay Account Bound

Nope. Gold Sellers would jump on them in a heartbeat.

I could see it now. Uncountable free accounts churning out daily writs for surveys.

Elvenheart

Surveys Should be Sellable

I wouldn’t mind them being sellable. But what I really wish is that we could sell antiquity furnishings. Not the lead, just the furnishing we dig up. It would make the tomb raider fantasy that much better.

Auberon1983

Surveys Should be Sellable

DenverRalphy wrote: »

Nope. Gold Sellers would jump on them in a heartbeat.

I could see it now. Uncountable bot accounts churning out daily writs for vouchers.

That's a fair counterpoint. I don't tend to think about nefarious accounts, like bots (I mean ya see them on the starter islands, and believe it or not, even Craglorn now), but I didn't even think of them buying surveys, too.

And that's too bad. Of course the bad apples would spoil the bunch.

Auberon1983

Surveys Should be Sellable

Elvenheart wrote: »

I wouldn’t mind them being sellable. But what I really wish is that we could sell antiquity furnishings. Not the lead, just the furnishing we dig up. It would make the tomb raider fantasy that much better.

Oh same. I am not at all into the housing aspect of the game. My houses (all free) are glorified yard sales of antiquities. I'd happily sell them all to people who would actually use them.

Credible_Joe

Surveys Should be Sellable

I don't see a difference between selling surveys and selling stacks of raw mats. Someone mentioned gold sellers; you still need an initial stockpile of mats to do daily writs and get surveys. There are already bot-trains going through zones farming mats, so what would the difference really be?

Would it even be more profitable by the numbers to convert mats into surveys for bots? They do nothing but farm 24/7. Surveys aren't guaranteed to drop from daily writs. I think a conversion like that would run a deficit.

And even if it wouldn't, If anything, it'd make them easier to identify, both by users and algorithms. Accounts with no adventure achievements churning out daily writs on the same rails every day? Getting a steady source of mats from other accounts with no adventure achievements?

Bots avoid notice by farming in low traffic zones. Even if they switched to operating in low traffic hubs, they'd still stick out enough for a much larger number of players to identify and report. And then, presumably, their mat suppliers would get flagged as well.

This would be great for guild traders in low traffic zones, btw. Because if you're in a modest guild with a cross-roads trader, and you have surveys for the zone that trader is in, they'd sell a LOT better than anything else in that store.

I say sell surveys. Good for inventory management, good for players, good for guild traders in lower traffic zones, potentially bad for bots and gold sellers.

Thysbe

Surveys Should Stay Account Bound

This will probably result in Dreugh Wax ending up at like 500g per piece or less, the market flodded with organised farming of cheap writs. How hard something like the ink farm hit the market you can still see nowadays.

With no significant demand increase I don´t see the current market taking such a massive influx of supply. I know long term players sitting on hundreds or more of them.

RealLoveBVB

Surveys Should Stay Account Bound

I saw several inventories of other players with several hundred surveys, because for some players it's to time-consuming doing them. To unbound them, would flood the market with surveys, which will result in totally devaluing and destroying the resource market.

Freelancer_ESO

Surveys Should Stay Account Bound

I'd assume most of the people buying them would be people that would go to the location with 100 or so pick up- log out - log back in and repeat. You might get the occasional variance as it might be more profitable on alchemy surveys to log out and back in over and over until the resource spawns were what you wanted.

I'd question if that is gameplay one really wants to encourage.

Economically, it would likely reduce the value of players farming materials/doing surveys naturally as it would likely drop material prices.

Lower level players could end up in the position where it might be more economical to sell the survey than it would be to actually do it because they may lack Plentiful Harvest and thus will receive less materials than someone with Plentiful Harvest.

AcadianPaladin

Surveys Should be Sellable

Everything should be sellable. That gives folks who don't like certain activities the means to acquire the resultant items painlessly while, at the same time, rewarding those who enjoy the same activities a nice source of income - with which to buy things from activities they don't enjoy. Win-win.

Credible_Joe

Surveys Should be Sellable

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

I saw several inventories of other players with several hundred surveys, because for some players it's to time-consuming doing them. To unbound them, would flood the market with surveys, which will result in totally devaluing and destroying the resource market.

That would be a temporary market disruption. Take advantage of it. Knock out some expensive master writs.

Elvenheart

Surveys Should be Sellable

I would probably give my surveys away to someone if I could, but I just can’t delete them because that just seems so wasteful so I have to go dig them up to avoid inventory woes. And if I have to dig them up, I’m not going to give the resulting mats away! 🤣

SilverBride

Surveys Should Stay Account Bound

DenverRalphy wrote: »

Nope. Gold Sellers would jump on them in a heartbeat.

I could see it now. Uncountable free accounts churning out daily writs for surveys.

I don't think they should be sellable for this reason.

DenverRalphy

Surveys Should Stay Account Bound

chessalavakia_ESO wrote: »

I'd assume most of the people buying them would be people that would go to the location with 100 or so pick up- log out - log back in and repeat. You might get the occasional variance as it might be more profitable on alchemy surveys to log out and back in over and over until the resource spawns were what you wanted.

<snip>

As a sidenote... you don't even need to log out and back in. Just preview or fast travel a house that you don't own, exit immediately, and voila, spawn reset.

Elvenheart

Surveys Should be Sellable

Oh, I’ve got it - have an in-game npc hireling like Pirharri that collects our surveys for us for a substantial cut of the mats.

Elvenheart

Surveys Should be Sellable

SilverBride wrote: »

DenverRalphy wrote: »

Nope. Gold Sellers would jump on them in a heartbeat.

I could see it now. Uncountable free accounts churning out daily writs for surveys.

I don't think they should be sellable for this reason.

And I do agree with this, they would definitely have to figure out a way to keep this scenario from happening first.

Thysbe

Surveys Should Stay Account Bound

DenverRalphy wrote: »

As a sidenote... you don't even need to log out and back in. Just preview or fast travel a house that you don't own, exit immediately, and voila, spawn reset.

Used to ride a bit away and then come back to have them respawn. The size of their cells is about what you would see with an anitquity lead on the Map. Some are small and some are bigger. Most of the time its just around the corner.

Have to try your method next time.

DenverRalphy

Surveys Should Stay Account Bound

Thysbe wrote: »

DenverRalphy wrote: »

As a sidenote... you don't even need to log out and back in. Just preview or fast travel a house that you don't own, exit immediately, and voila, spawn reset.

Used to ride a bit away and then come back to have them respawn. The size of their cells is about what you would see with an anitquity lead on the Map. Some are small and some are bigger. Most of the time its just around the corner.

Have to try your method next time.

Yeah, you can still do that. It's kinda Zone dependant though. Some locations you can just trot 10 meters away, come back, and it's reset. But then some (like N Elsweyr) you gotta run what feels like halfway across the zone before it resets.

tomofhyrule

I'm fine with surveys being account-bound. It's a reward for doing writs.

I will say though that the whole "I have too many surveys to do!" is 100% a player-generated problem. If you use Lazy Writ Crafter to do daily writs on 20 characters a day and then don't feel like collecting surveys to they pile up into the 10s or 100s, that's completely on you. You do realize that... you don't need to do that many writs, right? And you do realize that even if you do think you need to, that you don't need to collect all of the surveys and you can just trash them, right? And if you think you need to do all of those writs every day and you also think you need to collect every survey, then you need to also realize that your playtime is 100% a job.

If you're not having fun, then don't do the thing that's not fun. Easy. This is a game, not a job. And the second it feel like you're in a gold-farming bootcamp, then maybe rethink if that's how you want to play this game.

Now as for the surveys, I am not a fan of some of the ones that put them miles from the wayshrines (Blackwood Jewelry) or spread them across a full acre (High Isle Blacksmithing). I'd love a pass to go back through and cluster them like the basegame zones so it doesn't take 50 years to do one of them. But there's a difference between "this survey is annoying to do" and "I'm farming gold for no other reason other than to have money and as such my inventory is full of hundreds of surveys across 27 zones and I can't be bothered to farm them because unlike my writ crafting I can't automate collecting them!"

DenverRalphy

Surveys Should Stay Account Bound

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I'm fine with surveys being account-bound. It's a reward for doing writs.

I will say though that the whole "I have too many surveys to do!" is 100% a player-generated problem. If you use Lazy Writ Crafter to do daily writs on 20 characters a day and then don't feel like collecting surveys to they pile up into the 10s or 100s, that's completely on you. You do realize that... you don't need to do that many writs, right? And you do realize that even if you do think you need to, that you don't need to collect all of the surveys and you can just trash them, right? And if you think you need to do all of those writs every day and you also think you need to collect every survey, then you need to also realize that your playtime is 100% a job.

If you're not having fun, then don't do the thing that's not fun. Easy. This is a game, not a job. And the second it feel like you're in a gold-farming bootcamp, then maybe rethink if that's how you want to play this game.

Now as for the surveys, I am not a fan of some of the ones that put them miles from the wayshrines (Blackwood Jewelry) or spread them across a full acre (High Isle Blacksmithing). I'd love a pass to go back through and cluster them like the basegame zones so it doesn't take 50 years to do one of them. But there's a difference between "this survey is annoying to do" and "I'm farming gold for no other reason other than to have money and as such my inventory is full of hundreds of surveys across 27 zones and I can't be bothered to farm them because unlike my writ crafting I can't automate collecting them!"

I let them stack up. Not because I'm too lazy to do them. But because I'm prepping for more streamline harvesting. Every other week or so I grab all the surveys that have a stack of 10 or more, and do those while leaving the rest to stack higher. I can knock out a couple hundred surveys in no time by only visiting around a dozen locations instead of spending half my gaming day traveling all over the map. Frees up a LOT of time for me to just go out and pursue more entertaining activities that way.

RealLoveBVB

Surveys Should Stay Account Bound

Credible_Joe wrote: »

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

I saw several inventories of other players with several hundred surveys, because for some players it's to time-consuming doing them. To unbound them, would flood the market with surveys, which will result in totally devaluing and destroying the resource market.

That would be a temporary market disruption. Take advantage of it. Knock out some expensive master writs.

Why would it be temporary? Surveys are generated daily on mass, which will flood the market.

It's way more valuable to sell materials, rather than doing masterwrits for cheap mats.

wolfie1.0.

Surveys Should be Sellable

Everything should be sellable

TaSheen

Surveys Should Stay Account Bound

DenverRalphy wrote: »

Nope. Gold Sellers would jump on them in a heartbeat.

I could see it now. Uncountable free accounts churning out daily writs for surveys.

This right here.

Credible_Joe

Surveys Should be Sellable

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

Credible_Joe wrote: »

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

I saw several inventories of other players with several hundred surveys, because for some players it's to time-consuming doing them. To unbound them, would flood the market with surveys, which will result in totally devaluing and destroying the resource market.

That would be a temporary market disruption. Take advantage of it. Knock out some expensive master writs.

Why would it be temporary? Surveys are generated daily on mass, which will flood the market.

It's way more valuable to sell materials, rather than doing masterwrits for cheap mats.

Your original comment cites stockpiled surveys. Once those liquidate, the only surveys on the market would be the ones sold by people who aren't inclined to use them.

But if you're also worried about a new source of raw materials, don't be. You're over-estimating how many surveys are produced relative to the people presently buying raw materials. One character has a chance of pulling a survey from each turn-in. At most, a single character will produce between one and seven surveys in a week.

That might be abundant for a dedicated crafting account pumping out 20 sets of writs every day, but the casual player doing one set a day on their primary crafting toon will produce, on average, three to five surveys of each type in a seven day period. This is with a very generous presumed 50% drop chance for each survey type. I don't know the rates, so I'm going with a binary did or did not receive a survey per day.

Even if every single survey produced went on the market, the demand would always outweigh supply. The gear chase is just too compelling. Adding another source of raw materials alternative to farming will not crash the price of either, since the convenience of buying them directly will always hold value. Convenience pays. The guilds with all the top tier real estate know this.

Between people using surveys they earn themselves, people using surveys they buy, and people buying raw mats directly, the price of both raw materials and survey reports would would stabilize. Might be a little less, might even be a little higher depending on where you're selling. Like I said in my initial post, selling surveys local to their zone would be hugely beneficial to cross-road guild traders. Reverse to that, raw and refined mats would sell for a lot more in crafting hubs compared to surveys.

PS. I just now realized, it'd be pretty simple to prevent bound surveys from entering the market. Something similar was done with legacy jewelry when Summerset launched. I can't remember if legacy jewels were all bound, or if it had to do with decon... I think it was decon. Couldn't break down a bunch of stockpiled jewelry and flood the market with the new platings.

katanagirl1

TaSheen wrote: »

DenverRalphy wrote: »

Nope. Gold Sellers would jump on them in a heartbeat.

I could see it now. Uncountable free accounts churning out daily writs for surveys.

This right here.

Would it be that, or bots collecting the surveys themselves with no competition from other players?

I was going to select the option to let them be sellable but either of these is a good reason not to.

Amottica

Surveys Should Stay Account Bound

DenverRalphy wrote: »

Nope. Gold Sellers would jump on them in a heartbeat.

I could see it now. Uncountable free accounts churning out daily writs for surveys.

This could be an issue since during surveys is easy.

DreamyLu

Surveys Should Stay Account Bound

For me, surveys are linked to our way to play: depending how we play, we get different ones, different amount of them, or none at all. So it's quite logic that it's bound to us.

Now, it's one - for me - logic case out of many that aren't. Generally, it's a mystery to me why something is bound or not. I can't see a general logic. I suppose that the basic criteria for ZOS to decide on bound/not bound is mainly if they want the item to be sellable or not.

amig186

Surveys Should be Sellable

Yes, I want to trade them to my friend who has more time for these things than I do. If it results in cheaper mats, all the better.

XSTRONG

Other

If they were sellable they would probably be priced around how much mats you get per survey.
You can already sell the mats after you done the survey.

ChaoticWings3

Surveys Should Stay Account Bound

I think they should stay account bound. I get enough them anyway from doing writs. I wish they would go into my craft bag though rather than taking up over a 100 bank slots for when I don't feel like doing them.