Lots of Empty Containers after Update

BmcD73

I am a pack rat. I collect everything. I search everything. It takes me forever to go through dungeons, quests, etc because I search all objects. I have also been very lucky since headstart and have found LOTs of motifs. Maybe it's just numbers.

So today is no different. I have been searching everything but have noticed a definite difference with the amount of items that are either "empty" before you open them and just "empty" after you open them. When I do find items, 8 times out of 10 it's a lockpick.

Maybe the casual looter won't notice but since I loot literally everything in a dungeon (and have been known to stick around for a 1/2 hour after everyone else scouring), I noticed this right away.

Anyone else notice this today? I didn't see anything in the patch notes. If they did make a change then I would like to know because this will significantly change the way i scour throughout the world...as in I won't be doing it anymore which is the opposite of what I thought they wanted.

Lalai

I haven't noticed it myself and I'm a huge looter, but I do know there was an issue in beta where you could essentially get bugged.. and all your stuff would show as looted as far as crates/sacks/barrels/wardrobe/nightstand/dresser/ect stuff went. I want to say either relogging or completely restarting the launcher/client fixed it. Try that first, if not then you may want to file a bug report.

Edited: Initially after the patch I didn't notice a change, but after playing for a longer period of time I definitely do. Can agree there seems to be less things lootable, and the lootable items seem to be giving items of less value such as lockpicks.

Malediktus

I noticed this yesterday after EU downtime, much worse items in the chests and crates than before. Not sure if bad luck or if its nerfed.

Catches_the_Sun

I haven't been on today, but noticed this in the past couple of days. The interesting thing is my wife plays with me, so I can see her screen too. We are both pack rats (Provisioner here) and loot town first thing before we start questing. I've been noticing that there are times where I literally can't loot 90% of the containers, but she can still loot 60% of them or so. I don't know what the issue is, but it seems to be tied to account somehow. I even went through such a long run of not finding anything to loot that I attempted relogging to fix it.

BmcD73

I decided to do a little test. Granted this is not very scientific and it's a small sample so take it with a grain of salt.

I ran around town and looted 21 different pieces of furniture or backpacks. I did this 6 times in a row by logging in, looting, then logging out. The first time logging in is at the top with the last time logging in at the bottom.

total objects with items (non-lockpicks)
11111111
11111111
111111
111111
1111
111

total objects with lockpicks
11111
111
11111
111
1111111111
1111

total empty
11111111
1111111111
1111111111
111111111111
1111111
11111111111111

total empty or with lockpicks
1111111111111
1111111111111
111111111111111
111111111111111
1111111111111111
111111111111111111

With my very small sample one of two things is happening. 1) The more items you loot in a period of time the less likely you are to receive any item or 2) Logging out/in and re-looting containers causes you to get fewer items.

Either way I really don't care, I just want to know if this was in fact, a change in today's patch. If so, I am not going to waste time looting everything anymore.

BmcD73

I thought of a third point of what could be happening. It suppose it's possible that the area I'm in also has some diminished returns as well. This is less likely but possible.

Has anyone seen anything notes about a change to looted containers?

Laerian

Not only lots of empty containers, most of unopened with trash food or lockpicks. I can smell a stealth nerf 10 miles away.

Considering the chat comments about the same, it seems it just happened.

Another point for the "cons" list, not the nerf itself but how these things are handled.

BmcD73

Yea...they can call it whatever they want but I just want to know about it because changes to the game affect the way people play the game.

Part of the fun of searching all this stuff for me was finding the occasional cool blue item or good provisioning item. Now it seems that chance is so remote that it's a complete waste of time.

ZiRM

It's terrible, tons of opened containers and containers with nothing in them. What's the point of playing a MMORPG? Most of the time it's loot and the thrill of opening things and going SWEEET! Or killing things and having an awesome thing drop.

EramTheLiar

I suspect (but don't know) this is one of those things they did to combat gold farmers/botters.

BmcD73

isn't this just farming in general though? People farm all the time in MMOs...it's a way to get ahead. I can totally understand the dungeon bosses but the looting of containers? The farming of bosses affects anyone trying to complete the mission. The containers are specific to each player and have no impact on whether someone else can loot the container.

I guess while they are at it, they should only allow you to gather resources from the same type of node once every five minutes...that will prevent people from farming resources.

Killing large groups of mobs could also be considered farming so they should only allow you to get loot once every 5 minutes no matter how many mobs you kill. That will surely stop them!

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Natjur

Containers used to 'reset' when you log off and on. Now they are 'remembered per account', so you will find a lot more empty (or just lock-pick) containers.

Just another part of the anti-farming code (bosses and containers\chests)
You can only farm normal mobs, and I wonder how long before the anti-farming code is added to them too (forcing you to move area).

Danarchist

There was one shack in the Stonefalls area that for some reason I would get motifs out of constantly, to the point where I would swing by there as part of my daily routine. After the first week of the game I noticed while standing around in there chatting or watching tv etc I would see characters named like Gbdsbv log in, run around the room once, then disappear. This happened more than once in "My house" and I reported it.

Although not much different than what I was doing technically, it appeared to be an automated script as the character would pause at every piece of furniture for a few seconds even though I had already emptied it. I am guessing if I saw this a few times it was happening constantly and regularly, likely in numerous locations. Nerfing "relooting" is slightly annoying, but anything that puts a boot in the spammer butt I am good with. Plus both my crafters have all their motifs now =P only had to buy Khajiit

Mercurio

I have no issue with this. They are closing loopholes and exploits that they didn't really intend, whether you are used to it (after a month now) or not.

BmcD73

Danarchist wrote: »

There was one shack in the Stonefalls area that for some reason I would get motifs out of constantly, to the point where I would swing by there as part of my daily routine. After the first week of the game I noticed while standing around in there chatting or watching tv etc I would see characters named like Gbdsbv log in, run around the room once, then disappear. This happened more than once in "My house" and I reported it.

Although not much different than what I was doing technically, it appeared to be an automated script as the character would pause at every piece of furniture for a few seconds even though I had already emptied it. I am guessing if I saw this a few times it was happening constantly and regularly, likely in numerous locations. Nerfing "relooting" is slightly annoying, but anything that puts a boot in the spammer butt I am good with. Plus both my crafters have all their motifs now =P only had to buy Khajiit

Well the problem with this is that not everyone has all the things you do. Not everyone is a gold spammer. This affects everyone and we can't be so short sighted and say, "well I don't need it so I really don't care" or "I already have it so I'm fine with everyone else getting hosed". I too have all my motifs but I can see this being a problem and a very slippery slope.

Farming should not be "against" any sort of rules. The accumulation of wealth in game should not be against the rules as long as it doesn't affect other people.

For instance, let's say Adfadflkj logged in and out every day, all day long. He/She/It may have looted 3 motifs...maybe 4. While anything new starts out high, the price will eventually go down. They may be driving the price down and capitalizing on the "new" factor but so what? If they want to spend all day farming iron or calcinium...so what? Let them.

In headstart, I was selling motifs for around 2-3k each because they were new and everyone wanted them. Now they are selling for a couple hundred. The higher end motifs are rare and are selling for 10s of thousands. In a few weeks, that will change as more and more people have access to get them. Changing the mechanic to find these hidden treasures in containers just doesn't seem right.

BmcD73

Mercurio wrote: »

I have no issue with this. They are closing loopholes and exploits that they didn't really intend, whether you are used to it (after a month now) or not.

I'm just curious. What farming would you allow and not allow?

1. Would you allow farming of resource nodes?
2. Would you allow farming of mobs for xp?
3. Would you allow farming of mobs for gold?
4. Would you allow farming of mobs for items?
3. Would you allow re-running of same level instances?
4. Would you allow re-running of low level instances?
5. Would you allow someone farm containers?

If you answered anything but no to all of these, why is it ok to allow farming of one thing and not another?

If you answered no to all of them, don't you think this kinda goes against the entire point of an MMO; to build up personal wealth and power within the game?

rawne1980b16_ESO

It does, however, seem like a lot of people DO have an issue with it.

There has been a lot of complaining in zone chat about it.

Have to admit, i'm one of the ones complaining about this. I like looting, it's one of the things I love about Elder Scrolls games .... and I just love loot.

Not liking the way Zenimax is handling things.

Mercurio

Funny, I seem to be growing in wealth and power every day, by playing the game the way the devs intended (yes there are gaps and loopholes and poor decisions they are now fixing) - by questing, pvping, exploring and generally just playing the game in an enjoyable fashion. "farming" is the worst excuse for a gaming method ever. It was a meta that grew out of ARPGs and is not an enjoyable thing for anyone to do. Some people who are able to do it without vomiting use it to gain advantage over others, these are the ones crying. Is this really the game you want to play, box looting sim + stock market sim with a fantasy skin? blows my mind.

Ohioastro

This is normal for a MMO. There are some places and behaviors where people can get much more return for much less effort than elsewhere. And MMO players can be remarkably single minded: as in, they will cluster around the optimal pellet dispenser. Designers get feedback about these things and adjust. I like the idea of diminishing returns; I do hope it isn't just a global drop in items, because that would be painful for provisioners etc. Feedback from Zen on this would be helpful.

Natjur

Once I stopped breaking down everything to level trade skills and now vending the 'white' drops. The gold starts pouring in. The gold sellers should die off once everyone has more gold then they can spend.

Once everyone, has max bag\bank space, and the motifs and bites they want, and have a horse or three. Who will buy gold then? Repairs do get costly, but with every drop selling for 50+ gold to the vendor.

Mercurio

also, these terms "farming" and "grinding" et al are ones used by non-rpgers, who have this attitude that it's a slog to actually go through the content designed for these games - to get to what they consider the "good stuff". Farming and grinding are what you do when you are bored and have nothing else to do. Like in diablo when you have seen everything in the game except that odd rare loot you are "farming" bosses for. it's a powergaming thing. It's an e-peen thing. If that's what you like, great, but kudos to the devs for making this stuff unnecessary. Guild Wars 2 was designed around grinding and farming and that game is truly awful.

BmcD73

Mercurio wrote: »

Funny, I seem to be growing in wealth and power every day, by playing the game the way the devs intended (yes there are gaps and loopholes and poor decisions they are now fixing) - by questing, pvping, exploring and generally just playing the game in an enjoyable fashion. "farming" is the worst excuse for a gaming method ever. It was a meta that grew out of ARPGs and is not an enjoyable thing for anyone to do. Some people who are able to do it without vomiting use it to gain advantage over others, these are the ones crying. Is this really the game you want to play, box looting sim + stock market sim with a fantasy skin? blows my mind.

I'm not saying anything. The best part of Elder Scrolls is that people can play it the way they like. If you like looting all day long to get ahead, then great. If you like to do it your way, great.

You didn't answer a single question I posed. Does that mean you are against all farming of any kind or is the only kind of farming that is acceptable is the kind you do?

I'm not being smart here...I just really want to know.

Mercurio

like most ZOS fixes so far, it does leave a lot to be desired. I don't think leaving containers empty is a good method. It it nice to be rewarded for exploring and looting. Not a lot of MMOs have this type of looting, though. It is NOT equivalent to mat nodes or killing mobs haha. It causes problems to put really useful stuff in there to be farmed ad nauseum. They need some sort of additional, inoffensive loot type as a replacement to give that little "reward" for it. hopefully they can some up with some better solution.

Tetujin

Originally I would have thought that the containers would respawn after a certain amount of time, but then saw you could force it by relogging and hit another instance or something. If they changed this, I don't really think it is such a bad change, you can still farm but you have to move around from place to place to find stuff instead of just dimension hopping.

Mercurio

yeah I don't like farming/grinding in general but it definitely has a place in extending gameplay in MMOs, which is necessary. Especially early in the game's life. But I don't play Asian/F2P MMOs either, maybe these thing exist as a more central theme in those games. GW2/TERA turned me off to that.

A big thing is the "container loot" mechanic doesn't really exist in other MMOs. it's mainly seen in SP games. It's not equal to mat nodes and mob kills, as those all have their own checks and balances. There are more efficient and fun ways to make the same xp/gold/whatever profit : by playing the game as intended.

ZOS is now applying their own checks/balances to the container loot. Even in farm/grind MMOs like GW2 there is present a diminishing return mechanic. I guess it comes down to whether or not you think ZOS intended this type of gameplay. Despite some weird design choices, I do not think they did.

Zershar_Vemod

Containers are pretty much pointless to have at this point...might as well add a timer/nerf/restriction to more things as an excuse to combat anything negative that might occur in the future..

BmcD73

Farming is farming whether its mobs, dungeons, containers, resources, etc. I've been in some XP grinding groups where I literally just run in a circle and hit 1. I would say this is FAR more destructive than container looting. I am barely doing a thing, getting a bunch of xp for free, and tons of loot with almost zero effort. To say this isn't the same as container looting is correct in that it is worse.

Also, what is the difference in the "intention" if you loot a bunch of containers and log in/out vs. moving from place to place? The only difference is the second is worse. So while I understand what all of you are saying but farming is farming and if this wasn't the intention, is the intention that they give us mechanics that are worse? If the intention is to get rid of farming, why not apply those intentions equally to everything. That's all I'm saying.

There are so many other things that need to be fixed that to spend time on this seems a bit silly as the impact on gold farmers seems non existent. The only impact I see is a dramatic drop in my desire to kick over every stone and look under every rock which is one of the cornerstones of Elder Scrolls games.

sociald100ub17_ESO

BmcD73 wrote: »

With my very small sample one of two things is happening. 1) The more items you loot in a period of time the less likely you are to receive any item or 2) Logging out/in and re-looting containers causes you to get fewer items.

Either way I really don't care, I just want to know if this was in fact, a change in today's patch. If so, I am not going to waste time looting everything anymore.

I think there is some truth to this. I dont know about your number 2 but I think the number one has some validity and I think logging in an logging out isn't completely a way to get around it.
I was working the bookshelves myself. wanted to get some hirelings on an alt. went through the mages guild bookshelves with 3 alts. last alt tried with relogs about oh at least 10 times and got not a damn skill up.
So i went about playing and retried after a few hours tried again and got 5 skill ups , theres something like 24-28 bvookshelves in there, on that same guy first try and got what i was looking for.

BmcD73

I just logged in with the toon I did that test with after being offline all day. The results were very much like the last run. It did not appear to "reset" at all. Out of the 21 containers, 67% were empty or contained a lockpick as opposed to my final run after logging in/out a number of times where 87% were empty or contained only a lockpick.

In all cases, the chance of getting ANYTHING is reduced. I have not seen the number of containers that contain something increase in any test run.

Of the times I did get "something", it was total trash. Level 1 provision item or a level 1 recipe at best possibly a basic racial crafting mat for a VR5 zone.

Either way, I am certainly done spending any time exploring the nooks and crannies of my quests and dungeons.

Ohioastro

What do you mean by a container? After reading this I checked sacks/crates/etc and those seemed fine. I then checked cabinets etc. and noticed that when I looted and relogged the drawers were in the open position - which I think is good, in the sense that otherwise people simply mine the Auridon bank room instead of playing the game. I still got goodies from them, but shard jumping seems disabled. Also, I was finding more recipes as random drops from mobs. I suspect that the repeated logins stress the servers, which is one practical reason to drop this as well.

Ohioastro

BmcD73 wrote: »

Farming is farming whether its mobs, dungeons, containers, resources, etc. I've been in some XP grinding groups where I literally just run in a circle and hit 1. I would say this is FAR more destructive than container looting. I am barely doing a thing, getting a bunch of xp for free, and tons of loot with almost zero effort. To say this isn't the same as container looting is correct in that it is worse.

Also, what is the difference in the "intention" if you loot a bunch of containers and log in/out vs. moving from place to place? The only difference is the second is worse. So while I understand what all of you are saying but farming is farming and if this wasn't the intention, is the intention that they give us mechanics that are worse? If the intention is to get rid of farming, why not apply those intentions equally to everything. That's all I'm saying.

There are so many other things that need to be fixed that to spend time on this seems a bit silly as the impact on gold farmers seems non existent. The only impact I see is a dramatic drop in my desire to kick over every stone and look under every rock which is one of the cornerstones of Elder Scrolls games.

I think that repeated relogging is exactly the sort of tactic that bots would use, and in between server stress and gold production it would be an issue.