Crafting Surveys should be able to be done in one go!

Faltasë

What I mean is, if I have a stack of 16 alchemist surveys for Grahtwood, let me grab all the resources from what would be 16 spawns instead of me wasting precious playtime going back and forth to the same spot 16 times.

It's ridiculously patronizing to be manipulated into giving you guys more playtime(which you clearly dont need as you have plenty of other systems to garner playtime) when you could do what other MMOs do and just give us all the resources that the stack gives, without wasting precious time that i want to spend doing other parts of this game that dont feel as grindy.

Regards,
A crafter.

EDIT:
PS: If you have all the zones crafting surveys, as you do daily writs as often as i do, you have big stacks that go up in number and at times doing them can literally take more than 12 hours of playtime(this is in-game time spent). While the change to them for storage was good, I wish we could go a step further and make the tasks less menial. it takes way too long.

mdjessup4906

Idc how may times this topic is posted, YES THEY SHOULD.

yes, run run run back and forth like a human macro to respawn the things is soo engaging. Or playing the loadscreen game of porting. Over. And. Over. And over. Having to do that nonsense even ONCE is once too many.

LunaFlora

yes yes yes. it would be very awesome

Mik195

At a minimum, there should be immediate respawn if you have multiple surveys. Trying to guess how far you have to go to get the respawn is annoying.

Though I do find the current system with jewelry in Reapers March can be fun. I've been there with 4 or 5 other people picking up survey and watching everyone make the same loop over and over was amusing.

Nestor

They had something like this, it caused exploits so they won't do this again.

Do your surveys when you can, or trash them if they bother you. Soon you will be able stack thousands of these things, so get in the habit of harvesting.

Faltasë

Nestor wrote: »

They had something like this, it caused exploits so they won't do this again.

Do your surveys when you can, or trash them if they bother you. Soon you will be able stack thousands of these things, so get in the habit of harvesting.

This is a poor excuse. If it was exploited, then they should fix the exploit?

Faltasë

Mik195 wrote: »

At a minimum, there should be immediate respawn if you have multiple surveys. Trying to guess how far you have to go to get the respawn is annoying.

Though I do find the current system with jewelry in Reapers March can be fun. I've been there with 4 or 5 other people picking up survey and watching everyone make the same loop over and over was amusing.

Thats true! And some surveys have different distances to force the respawn, so its a weird guessing game sometimes. The distances arent entirely consistent.

method__01

i really hope that team sees all these surveys posts and -at least- plan something for the future
i dont expect happen tomorrow but as a sign that someone is aware of the prob and find a solution

MGRza

Faltasë wrote: »

Mik195 wrote: »

At a minimum, there should be immediate respawn if you have multiple surveys. Trying to guess how far you have to go to get the respawn is annoying.

Though I do find the current system with jewelry in Reapers March can be fun. I've been there with 4 or 5 other people picking up survey and watching everyone make the same loop over and over was amusing.

Thats true! And some surveys have different distances to force the respawn, so its a weird guessing game sometimes. The distances arent entirely consistent.

Yeah, and the more recent zones have terrible spacing for some of them.

MJallday

MGRza wrote: »

Faltasë wrote: »

Mik195 wrote: »

At a minimum, there should be immediate respawn if you have multiple surveys. Trying to guess how far you have to go to get the respawn is annoying.

Though I do find the current system with jewelry in Reapers March can be fun. I've been there with 4 or 5 other people picking up survey and watching everyone make the same loop over and over was amusing.

Thats true! And some surveys have different distances to force the respawn, so its a weird guessing game sometimes. The distances arent entirely consistent.

Yeah, and the more recent zones have terrible spacing for some of them.

the way ive found round this is to
1) go to the pickup zone
2) pick up the mats
3) fast travel to a preview house in the same zone (free)
4) immediately exit and it puts you back at the pickup zone - where magically the mats have respawned.

rinse and repeat

joergino

MJallday wrote: »

MGRza wrote: »

Faltasë wrote: »

Mik195 wrote: »

At a minimum, there should be immediate respawn if you have multiple surveys. Trying to guess how far you have to go to get the respawn is annoying.

Though I do find the current system with jewelry in Reapers March can be fun. I've been there with 4 or 5 other people picking up survey and watching everyone make the same loop over and over was amusing.

Thats true! And some surveys have different distances to force the respawn, so its a weird guessing game sometimes. The distances arent entirely consistent.

Yeah, and the more recent zones have terrible spacing for some of them.

the way ive found round this is to
1) go to the pickup zone
2) pick up the mats
3) fast travel to a preview house in the same zone (free)
4) immediately exit and it puts you back at the pickup zone - where magically the mats have respawned.

rinse and repeat

This still takes ages and isn't a solution to the problem of surveys the way they are right now.

Iriidius

Of all the timesinks in this game having to run a few meters back and forth between harvesting each of the surveys at same location is probably one of the lesser ones.
ZOS should reduce timesinks but there are much worse and more unnecessary ones.

You need to do lot of crafting dailies to collect so many surveys.

Especially with alchemy surveys players go back and forth to reset nodes until they get the number of columbine nodes they want.
Maybe a player also wants to harvest only a few ones or without eso+ has inventory full before harvesting all.

Faltasë

Iriidius wrote: »

Of all the timesinks in this game having to run a few meters back and forth between harvesting each of the surveys at same location is probably one of the lesser ones.
ZOS should reduce timesinks but there are much worse and more unnecessary ones.

You need to do lot of crafting dailies to collect so many surveys.

Especially with alchemy surveys players go back and forth to reset nodes until they get the number of columbine nodes they want.
Maybe a player also wants to harvest only a few ones or without eso+ has inventory full before harvesting all.

I don't think any of these are really good reasons why we shouldn't have them all in one go.

Just because other timesinks are worse doesn't mean we should have any of them. I get the idea of an mmo is to be grindy since sometimes MMOs just have to be, but I honestly don't think they have to go that hard at being grindy. MMO's constantly make the mistake of not being balanced in terms of timesinks and ZOS is just really not great at balancing them.

And don't even get me started on non eso plus players. I feel like this game is just infinitesimally worse without ESO plus, and I think that instead of using that as an excuse to not remove a timesink, maybe we should be more in an uproar about how ZOS makes ESO Plus a necessity, because otherwise non eso plus members are just playing inventory simulator anyways, and how is that any fun? Especially when they take away bank space for not having plus, which makes it harder to manage inventory. Which brings me to say that this game has the worst inventory management system i've ever seen. So we could theoretically fix that first, before using it as an excuse to not remove ridiculous timesinks.

tincanman

When thinking of this in the past, I considered but rejected the idea of suggesting something like the old merethic restorative resin (from glass motif origin days) to combine a stack of craft surveys into one single survey with a range of possible outcomes, eg

• summation of survey map node yields (highest probability of this result)
• doubles all node yields
• halves all node yields
• summation of survey map node yields but huge swarm of trash creatures appear to defend their resources (beetles, goblins...)
• summation of survey map node yields and additionally provides furnishing mats from each node
• replaces resources normally obtained with furnishing mats of associated type in qauntity equal to resources that would've been available

But doubted if it or similar would be even remotely desirable or workable

But, even if zos added a (bug free...) button that enabled the next survey without having to port/move that would be greatly appreciated. Just click when ready for second/subsequent and nodes are regenerated.

Or just a straightforward merge all on the survey maps to make one that could be harvested as suggested by the OP would be better.

Selen677

There's plenty ways this coud be changed. I guess a simple multiplying of nodes yield based on survey number held would be somewhat of weird thing considering how alchemy survey works but let's try some other approach:

New implementation:
*each survey now drops as a map fragment
*you can combine map fragments into survey(zone would be picked randomly after combining)
*combining is available for some small price(or some easily available items), it would either be an npc selling surveys for fragments or it could be some kind of cartography table that you would need to use
*possible sizes are: current survey size for 1 fragment, x3 for 3 fragments, x8 for 8 fragments
*size price adjustments: none: because on one hand small maps require more running, but also patience pays, so price should be linear.

Or adjustment on how surveys work now:
*you can quick-slot a survey to make it usable on hotkey
*there might be a quick animation, maybe like counterfeit pardon edict, but faster
*nodes spawn within a second after use
*spawning nodes would not yet consume the survey, gathering the first node does
*for consideration: this could also work for resetting currently spawned nodes, like alchemy

Possible problems on first solution: maps of different sizes for the same place on character: we could utilize solution known from Craglorn, each map size would have separate gathering location.

As is now, some nodes are easy to get, no mobs around, small distance to reset. Others, well... big distances, not sure going which way is better, 1-2-3 mob groups on the way respawning pretty often, not cool for somebody that has more than 8 chars doing daily writs and getting ton of surveys.

Currently implemented stackable surveys helps mostly those who have only a few toons doing writs and gather surveys e.g. once a month, then ofc why have 6 places in bank taken for alchemy surveys while they can take 1 place and be unwrapped once needed. However for those who have a ton of surveys, it's gathering them that is a problem, not storing(although of course it will be nice that i will finally have some free places at my survey-banker toon, but still doesn't solve the issue of having amount of surveys that would take 25+ hours to gather...)

SeaGtGruff

Iriidius wrote: »

Of all the timesinks in this game having to run a few meters back and forth between harvesting each of the surveys at same location is probably one of the lesser ones.
ZOS should reduce timesinks but there are much worse and more unnecessary ones.

You need to do lot of crafting dailies to collect so many surveys.

Especially with alchemy surveys players go back and forth to reset nodes until they get the number of columbine nodes they want.
Maybe a player also wants to harvest only a few ones or without eso+ has inventory full before harvesting all.

Yeah, I don't think the requested change would work very well with Alchemy surveys, due to the way they work, where each of the 6 nodes can spawn a randomly-chosen type of flower from among a variety of different flowers.

Also, I can see this change leading to some severely irate players if it were ever (re?)instituted, because the survey is deemed completed as soon as the player harvests the first node, and it's possible for something to happen right after you harvest that first node, causing you to get disconnected from the server, or for your computer to crash, or for your internet or power to go down suddenly.

Guess what happens when you log back in and go back to the survey site? Your survey is gone from your inventory and all of those survey nodes you didn't get a chance to harvest are gone, too.

I know, because it once happened to me, while I was still fairly new to the game, and when having a single Alchemy survey was a pretty big deal to me. I reported the incident, providing details about my account and character name, the server and zone, and the time when it occurred, because I was under the badly-mistaken impression that Support could just look at some game logs to verify what I was saying, then magically "roll back" the inventory on that character to restore the lost Alchemy survey so I could complete it as desired. After going back and forth with Support a few times, the final outcome was having the rep say to me-- in completely understandable exasperation-- "You can't possibly expect me to just give you an Alchemy survey?" Well, yeah, of course that's sort of what I had expected!

Nowadays I'm practically drowning in undone surveys of all types, so I can look back at that incident and laugh at my clueless naivety about what's possible and reasonable versus what's impossible or unreasonable.

But can you imagine how bad it would be if an angry horde of players starting raising a ruckus in the forums because they were doing a stack of surveys numbering in the hundreds all in one go, but something happened after they harvested the first node and they got kicked from the server, resulting in five unharvested nodes going poof along with their stack of hundreds of surveys? Yeah, it would not be good at all.

Faltasë

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

Iriidius wrote: »

Of all the timesinks in this game having to run a few meters back and forth between harvesting each of the surveys at same location is probably one of the lesser ones.
ZOS should reduce timesinks but there are much worse and more unnecessary ones.

You need to do lot of crafting dailies to collect so many surveys.

Especially with alchemy surveys players go back and forth to reset nodes until they get the number of columbine nodes they want.
Maybe a player also wants to harvest only a few ones or without eso+ has inventory full before harvesting all.

Yeah, I don't think the requested change would work very well with Alchemy surveys, due to the way they work, where each of the 6 nodes can spawn a randomly-chosen type of flower from among a variety of different flowers.

Also, I can see this change leading to some severely irate players if it were ever (re?)instituted, because the survey is deemed completed as soon as the player harvests the first node, and it's possible for something to happen right after you harvest that first node, causing you to get disconnected from the server, or for your computer to crash, or for your internet or power to go down suddenly.

Guess what happens when you log back in and go back to the survey site? Your survey is gone from your inventory and all of those survey nodes you didn't get a chance to harvest are gone, too.

I know, because it once happened to me, while I was still fairly new to the game, and when having a single Alchemy survey was a pretty big deal to me. I reported the incident, providing details about my account and character name, the server and zone, and the time when it occurred, because I was under the badly-mistaken impression that Support could just look at some game logs to verify what I was saying, then magically "roll back" the inventory on that character to restore the lost Alchemy survey so I could complete it as desired. After going back and forth with Support a few times, the final outcome was having the rep say to me-- in completely understandable exasperation-- "You can't possibly expect me to just give you an Alchemy survey?" Well, yeah, of course that's sort of what I had expected!

Nowadays I'm practically drowning in undone surveys of all types, so I can look back at that incident and laugh at my clueless naivety about what's possible and reasonable versus what's impossible or unreasonable.

But can you imagine how bad it would be if an angry horde of players starting raising a ruckus in the forums because they were doing a stack of surveys numbering in the hundreds all in one go, but something happened after they harvested the first node and they got kicked from the server, resulting in five unharvested nodes going poof along with their stack of hundreds of surveys? Yeah, it would not be good at all.

I don't really think this is a good retort either. If the Alchemy nodes are such a big gripe, then we could at least meet in the middle and make them instantly respawn as soon as you gather the last node.

And i dont think you should be defending a stupid timesink due to game issues that happen, and if they do happen, are because the system is poorly implemented in the first place. So instead of griping about why the change wouldnt work because their system is ***, why not just acknowledge that we should fix the *** system instead so the change can happen.

I'd honestly rather have the whole system revamped if forum goers would have such a fit with removing the timesink. We should do it like the herbalist satchels in dlc areas like Deadlands, where one node would give you randomly generated amounts of randomly generated mats from all the surveys you have. They already coded some containers in the game to give you multiples of materials, I doubt this would be a difficult change to make.

The only time i could see this not being a pro gamer move is in Craglorrn where you get nirncrux occasionally from survey mats, but i feel like they drop so uncommenly anyways that it should be a miniscule issue. I can't think of a reason why players would get so up and arms about having LESS menial tasks.

But maybe now it matters slightly less since the lazy folks can just sell the newer surveys for someone else to do.