Lots of Empty Containers after Update

Lalai

Just out of curiousity, what level is everyone that is noticing the nerf? I'm 49 and in Coldharbor, and I don't relog a lot.. so if relogging triggers it, that'd explain why I didn't see anything.

Using alts in lower level areas, I did notice more lockpicks and less recipes/motifs. When I character hop to manage inventory stuff (usually once per day) I'll check the containers in the DC bank.. usually there are 2 recipes at least.. haven't really been finding that though, but the containers haven't been empty either. Just a lot of lockpicks.

Brydion

I noticed the change today also. What stood out for me was the large number of lootable containers that were empty when you opened them.

Laerian

Yes, now while I'm doing my "feeding horses" run, I can confirm lootable containers with air inside.

There it goes looting containers while questing and exploring.

/edit Those containers with nothing inside are backpacks, trunks, dressers, cabinets, etc. in short: all those that drop motifs and recipes.

pulversoppa

This whole thing troubles me a lot. I've not even reached a veteran zone yet, so I still need those four rare + the imperial motif, and to now because of the already so hated bots having an even smaller chance of finding those...? Not fun!

Looting, exploring and finding things are among the most enjoyable things in ESO. Sure I love watching pretty scenery, beating a hard mob or just joking around, but to now have my dear loot nerfed? Not good.

That thing someone wrote about the road to hell being paved with good intentions sounds about right. I worry for the future now. I'd rather (as long as the servers can manage) just wait the botting out, while normal players still can have their fun. The boss bot-farming sure is a pain when you come across it, but as mentioned elsewhere you can, if you're tricky, get their aiming messed up so they stand at a normal enemy spawn point if lucky and so on by pulling other enemies close.

I'm also doing a lot of provisioning (can't live without food!) so because of that I feel even more pissed off/worried.

Guess I'll have to see if this change is unbearable. Already thought there were waaaaay too many empty containers all over the place when not even having relogged.

BmcD73

In my test today, I logged in/out 6 times in a row. Each time the percent of air increased until about 90% on the 6th login. Then logged back in 5 hours later with same toon. The percent dropped to about 70% air. So it appears that the reset timer very slowly degrades over time. On top of that, they also lowered the possibility of good loot dropping (per the PTS patch notes).

My problem is threefold
1) There was no mention of this in the patch notes. It is mentioned in the PTS patch notes so I suspect that it made it in this patch today and was not mentioned. Something like this should be mentioned because it doubles or triples the time it takes to quest when you search everything and I rather not waste my time now.
2) There are still quests that cannot be completed. There is still missing functionality that would dramatically increase playability. The reporting system sucks...that could really be beefed up. The guild store search is totally broken. Vampire and WW both have animation problems where you get totally stuck and cannot do anything but die. How about having my hirelings send bags without me having to log on to every alt. How about a timer if that isn't possible. I still get stuck transferring from zone to zone all the time. How about work on some of these more pressing issues.
3) ZOS seems to take a massive hammer to perform delicate surgery. Almost every decision seems to be a massive swing in one direction or another. Not only did they significantly lower the probability of getting anything good out of containers, they also implemented some sort of container timer. The mechanics of which are unknown. Is it all characters on the account or is it just the single character? This just makes me not want to explore as much now. Will it stop a few people from logging in/out...sure. Will it drive the cost up of those motifs...you betcha. Say goodbye to the 400g normal motifs. Those will be back up to 1000-2000g each if not more. The 15k barb or primal. 45k now easy. And the 40k daedra or ancient elf, how about 100k now.

KerinKor

Ohioastro wrote: »

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.

ZOS were asked about this explicitly and said it's NOT an exploit, though they hinted at making some changes .. it was a problem reported back in beta testing which they knew about but hoped it wouldn't become widely known, one presumes therefore it's not something they can eliminate entirely very easily.

Lalai

KerinKor wrote: »

Ohioastro wrote: »

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.

ZOS were asked about this explicitly and said it's NOT an exploit, though they hinted at making some changes .. it was a problem reported back in beta testing which they knew about but hoped it wouldn't become widely known, one presumes therefore it's not something they can eliminate entirely very easily.

Yeah.. FFXIV kinda had a track record of doing the same thing. They'd say something was "working as intended" and then later nerf it without saying anything. I suppose that "not an exploit", and "working as intended" are two different things though.. so it's not exactly the same as FFXIV stuff.

Knew the change was coming (well the nerf to motifs/recipes), but thought it wasn't until the 1.1 patch I too, wanted to get to Veteran ranks and get some Motifs before they nerfed drops, but oh well. I can understand why they did it. I never really liked the idea of logging in and out to farm stuff. Didn't think it was an exploit or anything, just a cheapy thing to do.

I will say I didn't really notice it until I started logging onto lower level characters (which is why my first post in this thread said I hadn't noticed it). I'd been getting icky stuff from trunks/wardrobes/nightstands and the like for a long while on my higher level character. Figured it was just bad luck as I use to get 4-5 motifs per play session when I was level 20-30.

knaveofengland

if you loot with one toon then go loot with another toon in the same area ,you will notice it balances its self out , this I would suggest might be better than players just looting for hours on end to get like racial books .
so I know it can be frustrating see a empty crate but it would stop over looting
and would help keep the gold sellers away

Laerian

I have characters in the other factions and the 8th character I logged to feed her horse (Wayrest bank) had around 80% of the containers opened and all the rest with nothing. So it's not in "the same area".

wrlifeboil

Players who need what was in the containers already have the items they need so it's not too surprising that the loot drop rates would be nerfed. Otherwise the prices would drop next to nothing like with motifs. Hardly anyone advertises motifs in chat anymore. The gold sellers do send mail with their price lists on various items though.

BmcD73

Laerian wrote: »

I have characters in the other factions and the 8th character I logged to feed her horse (Wayrest bank) had around 80% of the containers opened and all the rest with nothing. So it's not in "the same area".

This is what I was afraid of. It seems to be tied to your account and it appears to be global to looting. But again, since they didn't post any notes on what they actually did and how the mechanics work...we will have to guess and waste time until they do.

BmcD73

I just ran a test on a toon that has been sitting overnight. I took the portal to 6 different places in 2 separate zones and went into every building and looted all furniture/backpacks. The initial containers were about 50% empty or lockpicks. But what I saw was that the empty/lockpicks chances increased as I looted more, even in totally separate areas.

I would see about 1 container with loot per 4 or 5 containers. That's 75% to 80% of containers that are empty/lockpicks. This is a drastic change from what it was and solidifies my feelings of giving up looting these containers in the first place.

I remember reading a post how the devs wanted people to look through everything. To search every barrel, urn, backpack, etc. I remember seeing something that said they wanted to increase the good loot to encourage people to take time to scour dungeons, quests, buildings, etc. This is a drastic departure from those statements.

Seraseth

So are you saying
a) that more containers show as empty now? Like before on avg 7/12 containers had stuff in them and now only 4/12
or
b) containers showing as not empty actually are empty? So it's still showing 7/12 containers not empty, but 3 of them actually are empty when I loot

BmcD73

I think both. They dropped the probability that good loot will drop off containers in general. In my test today, it appears that they also quickly increase the probability that empty or lockpick will drop no matter where you loot. It seems to cap at about 80% empty or lockpick.

Seraseth

See that just annoys me. Any container that is empty should SAY empty. Looting everything is already a huge time sink for little gain, having to also loot empty containers that aren't labelled as such is just stupid.

BmcD73

I see what you are saying. And YES definitely yes. That is what I noticed first. The sheer amount of containers that were not "empty" until I opened them and then they said empty. That's when I decided to start testing my theory.

Laerian

After 20 hours not playing, first character Vulkhel Guard bank ~50% empty containers, 2 with air the rest with lockpicks adn style mats.

This is bs I'm gonna feed my horses and that's it

Zsymon

As long as you don't keep trying to loot the same containers over and over, you will not have any problems with constantly finding empty containers. In other words, play the game as if you're a hero going on an amazing adventure, rather than as a powergamer trying to elongate his e-peen. Everything the story gives us tells us that the former is how the game is meant to be played, and not the latter.

Laerian

Zsymon wrote: »

As long as you don't keep trying to loot the same containers over and over, you will not have any problems with constantly finding empty containers. In other words, play the game as if you're a hero going on an amazing adventure, rather than as a powergamer trying to elongate his e-peen. Everything the story gives us tells us that the former is how the game is meant to be played, and not the latter.

Did you read what I wrote? +20 hours OFFLINE

Is that enough for you? NO? wait... I tell you what, I have no interest in continue playing the game knowing the containers in the world are filled with air so I'll be offline until tomorrow while I play a decent non broken game.

rowdog

What I don't like about the "stealth nerf" is that, instead of being rewarded for scouring the corners of the world, we're punished by wasting time running around trying to loot empty/worthless containers. They're conditioning us to not loot anything.

BmcD73

Zsymon wrote: »

As long as you don't keep trying to loot the same containers over and over, you will not have any problems with constantly finding empty containers. In other words, play the game as if you're a hero going on an amazing adventure, rather than as a powergamer trying to elongate his e-peen. Everything the story gives us tells us that the former is how the game is meant to be played, and not the latter.

This is not what I was seeing with my test yesterday. I ported to 6 different locations in 2 different zones. All I did was loot containers. The initial 20 containers were about 50% empty/lockpicks. But the more I looted the more empty/lockpick containers I saw up to around 80% empty.

So it appears that looting in general is on a timer no matter where you are. Someone in another thread suggested that in his test this loot timer was for the entire account so even logging in with different characters yielded a high percentage of empty containers.

Censorious

It's annoying as hell (I just started to level provisioning having left it on the back-burner)

BUT - it's going to mess up the bots so it's probably worth it.

ClaudiaMay

I didn't notice any different between my characters yesterday.

Then again, I'm not crunching numbers on the percentage of how many backpacks do or do not have loot in them.... Because that just seems silly.

BmcD73

ClaudiaMay wrote: »

I didn't notice any different between my characters yesterday.

Then again, I'm not crunching numbers on the percentage of how many backpacks do or do not have loot in them.... Because that just seems silly.

Well I noticed this right away after the patch this week. What struck me was the high number of containers that were "empty" once I looted them. I never noticed that before the patch. So I started digging and found this item for the PTS patch notes: "The rate at which you can earn racial motifs and provisioning recipes from lootable containers and furniture has been slightly reduced."

This matched what I was seeing so I decided to test if this change had made it into the patch this week. I have spent a TON of time exploring everything in game during quests, exploration, etc. to be rewarded with these things. So if they indeed did change this, I wanted to know. Since there were no notes on it, I decided to test it myself and I think the results are pretty conclusive.

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/87867/patch-notes-v-1-1-inc-craglorn-from-pts

Censorious

It looks like there is now a timer. It seems to be set on around two hours. After that the containers gradually start to re-fill.
There's no clear-cut point where all of them become lootable together, it's a gradual reset.

Zershar_Vemod

Censorious wrote: »

It looks like there is now a timer. It seems to be set on around two hours. After that the containers gradually start to re-fill.
There's no clear-cut point where all of them become lootable together, it's a gradual reset.

What is up with them and adding timers to everything lately...what was the point in adding more lootable containers if you can't even access most of them....?

Taven

Censorious wrote: »

It looks like there is now a timer. It seems to be set on around two hours. After that the containers gradually start to re-fill.
There's no clear-cut point where all of them become lootable together, it's a gradual reset.

Source? I would love for them to just own up to nerfing it. Much better than all this guess work we are doing.

BmcD73

Taven wrote: »

Censorious wrote: »

It looks like there is now a timer. It seems to be set on around two hours. After that the containers gradually start to re-fill.
There's no clear-cut point where all of them become lootable together, it's a gradual reset.

Source? I would love for them to just own up to nerfing it. Much better than all this guess work we are doing.

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/87867/patch-notes-v-1-1-inc-craglorn-from-pts

"The rate at which you can earn racial motifs and provisioning recipes from lootable containers and furniture has been slightly reduced."

This is all we have atm and the testing I have done that pretty much confirms this. So the probability of getting decent loot coupled with the loot timer makes looting containers a total waste of time.

grizzbi

I also noticed something that might be a change, or a "stealth nerf". But I'm not sure...It could be the zone.

There are locations with almost only empty containers, but other locations with almost only full containers. It's usually quite logical considering the story of the area.

e.g: a pirate boat is likely to have a lot of food.

That said, container loots are not always coherent with the area story. Far from that!

From my point of view, overall there are too many containers with "valuable" materials (aka food). Most of them should contain trash. It would still be a source of income, but as a provisioner, I'd like to have to think even more to find my materials. Much more fun, and more rewarding.

Gwarok

Malediktus wrote: »

much worse items in the chests

I, for one, am really getting tired of finding green staves with crappy stats in a chest 93.6% of the time.