Decon now scales to character level, not crafting level...

Heishi · September 2014

Lovely, my only crafter with all my research is lv 22 with only basic attack and the soul gem spell. At least he has a horse.. time use an add-on and go skyshard hunting.

timidobserver · September 2014

I get this change. They do not want you getting around using your main's skillpoints by making a craft only alt.

GreyRanger · September 2014

It seems clear that if you are deconing metal, cloth, or wood items you don't get the construction materials if you are too low a level (character level not crafting level).

What is not clear to me from the different statements made by different posters, is how/if this effects enchanting:

Does the character level for enchanting character effect what materials they can/do get back when they deconstruct glyphs and if so how?

Thanks.

drallar · September 2014

My character level 20, Enchanting level 44 character was deconstructing Vet level runes last night and I was receiving crafting xp and mats back(aspect, essence and potency).

My character level 17, Clothier level 50 never used to get back the cloth mats when I deconstructed items while levelling the skill but I did get crafting xp and upgrade mats. The no base materials for decon above your level has been in place for a long time if not since launch.

twev · September 2014

timidobserver wrote: »

I get this change. They do not want you getting around using your main's skillpoints by making a craft only alt.

The alt system seems terribly paradoxical.

There aren't enough alts to make one of each race.
The devs designed the game to be primarily played through all 3 zones by one specific character.
The banking system seems to have a handicap for trading stuff between alts built into it. It's just a big time sink in many cases. And that whole 'logging in to one after another to swap and get mail several times a day' is just a huge PITA that HAS to add more server load than it could possibly cure.
Inventory spaces are expensive for anyone not into the higher level questing, yet.

But if the alts aren't really designed for at least some of them to be used as mules, and aren't needed for multiple play-throughs, what's the point of having '8' alts? Why give me so many alts, put roadblocks in the way of using many of them as mules to make up for the bank storage, when they really have no use other than wasting time playing them to find that out?

And now it's clear that there's a penalty built in for spreading crafting onto several alts on a single account.

I put time and effort into playing my alts. I have to play them to level them up enough to get the skill points to level crafting to 50. I have to play enough on my main(s) and alts to get stuff and pass it around, as well as researching traits, etc.
I get that.
I have 3 alts that I played (to character levels 45, 31, and 30) and leveled to 50 crafting in everything but Enchanting (26).

But I sure as hell don't want to have to drag my several 'toon-butt's' through the same quests and zones several times on several alts to character level them to 50 while I've already craft leveled them to 50.
A level 50 crafter ought to get the full benefits of level 50 crafting no matter what. If there are going to be hidden restrictions, whats the actual POINT of them being hidden but to be frustration inducing? If there are restrictions, than be honest and openly restrict crafting progression in line with character progression.

The game is beautiful, but it seems that more people on the design/dev team are tasked with building hidden frustration into situations than ought be necessary.

I don't want the game to be 'easy', but I'm getting tired of finding hidden (undocumented) tripping hazards every time I'm engaged in progressing. Finding the hidden tripping hazards in progression isn't fun after I've spent weeks or months and scads of resources on a strategy....
I'd rather that the progress was just honestly slower, instead of feeling like they randomly apply Velcro to the bottoms of my shoes while I'm trying to run a race.

The game isn't so much 'play it your way' as it is 'play it so you can see how many different ways we can slow you down and frustrate you for the sake of frustration'.

The game is getting to be a real drudge.
And I'll burn every resource I have before I give any of it to you rowdy lot of scavengers....

Edited for speeling.

timidobserver · September 2014

twev wrote: »

timidobserver wrote: »

I get this change. They do not want you getting around using your main's skillpoints by making a craft only alt.

The alt system seems terribly paradoxical.
There aren't enough alts to make one of each race.

The devs designed the game to be primarily played through all 3 zones by one specific character.

The banking system seems to have a handicap for trading stuff between alts built into it. It's just a big time sink in many cases. And that whole 'logging in to one after another to swap and get mail several times a day' is just a huge PITA that HAS to add more server load than it could possibly cure.

Inventory spaces are expensive for anyone not into the higher level questing, yet.

But if the alts aren't really designed for at least some of them to be used as mules, and aren't needed for multiple play-throughs, what's the point of having '8' alts? Why give me so many alts, put roadblocks in the way of using many of them as mules to make up for the bank storage, when they really have no use other than wasting time playing them to find that out?

And now it's clear that there's a penalty built in for spreading crafting onto several alts on a single account.

I put time and effort into playing my alts. I have to play them to level them up enough to get the skill points to level crafting to 50. I have to play enough on my main(s) and alts to get stuff and pass it around, as well as researching traits, etc.
I get that.
I have 3 alts that I played (to character levels 45, 31, and 30) and leveled to 50 crafting in everything but Enchanting (26).

But I sure as hell don't want to have to drag my several 'toon-butt's' through the same quests and zones several times on several alts to character level them to 50 while I've already craft leveled them to 50.
A level 50 crafter ought to get the full benefits of level 50 crafting no matter what. If there are going to be hidden restrictions, whats the actual POINT of them being hidden but to be frustration inducing? If there are restrictions, than be honest and openly restrict crafting progression in line with character progression.

The game is beautiful, but it seems that more people on the design/dev team are tasked with building hidden frustration into situations than ought be necessary.

I don't want the game to be 'easy', but I'm getting tired of finding hidden (undocumented) tripping hazards every time I'm engaged in progressing. Finding the hidden tripping hazards in progression isn't fun after I've spent weeks or months and scads of resources on a strategy....
I'd rather that the progress was just honestly slower, instead of feeling like they randomly apply Velcro to the bottoms of my shoes while I'm trying to run a race.

The game isn't so much 'play it your way' as it is 'play it so you can see how many different ways we can slow you down and frustrate you for the sake of frustration'.

The game is getting to be a real drudge.
And I'll burn every resource I have before I give any of it you you rowdy lot of scavengers....

I understand your frustration. I just get where they are coming from. They don't want you outsourcing your crafting to an alt to save skillpoints given how easy it is to level most crafting professions. I have clothing, woodworking, and blacksmithing at 50 and I never actually crafted an item with those professions. Enchanting was the only challenging profession and they recently fixed that.

david.haypreub18_ESO · September 2014

I have to say I really dislike this change.

Garetth · September 2014

It is not true that this has always been this way.

My level V4 Templar is level 50 in blacksmithing, clothing and woodworking and he deconned every bit of green and above armor/weapons that my level V10 Soc found. I always got materials and plenty of tempers like elegant linings, mastic etc. including gold items.

After the latest patch and testing last night, this is no longer the case.

zhevon · September 2014

Hey ... play like you want ... NOT.

Plus - this was not mentioned in the patch notes.

Wreuntzylla · September 2014

From an immersion perspective, tying crafting to character level is nonsensical.

I guess you just have to level your main high enough in a craft to max out the deconstruction passives (28?). Send everything to the main for deconstructions, craft as usual with the alts.

SpAEkus · September 2014

The way I started playing at release fortunately set me up to mitigate this somewhat.

I started day one with 8 characters but only leveling my master crafter to L50 up until a few weeks ago. My master crafter deconned everything the whole time to level his crafts and did constant harvesting and after that was done for the most part I craft-swapped to level all my alts for hireling work.

Luckily my Main had already amassed enough stock that I'm still going through today.

One issue with this change is for Alts, you won't get decon mats except at their Character level but the Hireling will deliver mats at crafter level as far as my results show this AM. My Character Level 7 Alt will only get decon from Maple but the hireling is bringing him Beech every day.

If I want to leave a few hirelings for residual lower level mats to avoid farming them, I can leave them at lower crafting levels. But if I want decon mats at higher levels I have to level the Alt character level and still leave the craft level lower if I want the lower mat mails.

In the end I can use the hirelings to bring me whatever mat levels I want and still not level any Alt-crafter characters.

starkerealm · September 2014

twev wrote: »

The devs designed the game to be primarily played through all 3 zones by one specific character.

From what I remember hearing, this wasn't the original design decision.

The bank is supposed to work as a soft cap on crafting, so you only have room for, I think three professions at once. You can easily get around this by plugging all of the crafting crap for the other three into each character's inventory, but, as we all know, it's annoying as hell to micromanage.

starkerealm · September 2014

Ourorboros wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

Wait, really? I guess I'm lucky that my main is also my primary crafter (I started doing most crafting skills on him before I went down the rabbit hole and created an army of alts). I guess I'll also have to level my secondary crafter - she's currently only level 26. I'm not sure what the reasoning is on this, and frankly I don't really understand why this change would be made.

I suspect, to deal with players that were powerleveling the motif crafting skills. Particularly blacksmiths trading daggers for decon and getting to 50 in no time. Though, Clothiers and Woodworkers had their own. (I'm not sure what the woodworker item of choice was.)

Highly unlikely,if this was a change and not a bug, that it has anything to do with players trading items for decon to level. Not only has this been the basic mechanic to leveling since beta testing, but also seems part of game design to encourage group play. If this was an intentional change for some other reason, ZOS bunged this by not clearly communicating the forthcoming change.

The alternative possibility is, this is actually a quality of life "feature." If the intention was, originally, just to keep low level characters who get handed high level gear from having their inventory clogged by mats that are only used in items they couldn't use anyway... Especially if at some point the design idea was that characters were expected to be primarily crafting for themselves and not for the entire account...

Faulgor · September 2014

My level 37 Redguard still recovers Galatite Ingots from VR armor. However, the message "You lack the skill to recover all the materials from this item." is shown anyway.

radiostar · September 2014

Perhaps there was some type of percentage/chance change about getting back high mats. I also noticed receiving the message about the crafting level while getting some mats back.

Maybe Z can comment or add something to the patch notes?

GreyRanger · September 2014

I had the same experience today, I got the message "You lack the skill to recover all the materials from this item." on my level 40 character who was deconing a VR1 item, but whose crafting skills were plenty high enough, but then I got a temper and the core materials.

This is just broken. I hope that we can get some information on what is actually the intended behavior, what it is doing now (if the QA team at Zeni knows), and when they expect to get it to the intended behavior.

It feels a bit like the comedy of errors surrounding stealth and NBs, just has gotten less attention so far.

Srugzal · September 2014

Tootall2186 wrote: »

MasterSpatula wrote: »

It's been this way for a long time, if not from the beginning. I had a level 17 alt with Woodworking. Had the skill points invested in her to be able to craft Hickory, but I only got materials back from Maple and Oak (and very occasionally Beech). I started leveling her again last week for exactly this reason.

It hasn't been this severe though. I've broken down countless blues green and purples on my 50 crafting level 16 character level toon since launch and have always gotten some type of mat back... Racial style, infusion, resin or mat... Now I'm literally getting nothing from VR items I break down.

I tried an experiment a month or so ago when one of my crafting characters was level 25. I hadn't unlocked VR1-3 materials yet (just up to Level 50). When I tried to decon a VR2 item, I got nothing. I spent a skill point to level up the material skill (from 5 to 6, I think). The next time I deconned a VR2 item, I got VR mats.

If this had really been like it is now from the beginning, I wouldn't have been able to make level 46 items, let alone VR2 items. But I could.

But here's my question: This is a HUGE change to the crafting mechanic. Where is it in the patch notes? I read them, did I miss it somehow?

Second question: WHY?

ZOS has some 'splainin' to do. @ZOS_GinaBruno‌, step up to the podium. We're all ears.

Srugzal · September 2014

Unknown_poster wrote: »

The amount of hand-wringing and general "the sky is falling" posts on the forums on this issue shows exactly how much this change was needed.

Okay, how is that? Should design decisions be made to punish people for reacting?

Rune_Relic · September 2014

I assume its because your skill level should never exceed your character level.
So how would a level 30 character be able to craft level >30 gear ? Or find an area capable of dropping gear greater than their character level ? Normally you travel through levelled zones for exactly this reason. You pick up materials appropriate for you character level.

The idea is they cant....unless you use alts to bypass this. In effect its a kind of exploit that ZOS has closed the door on IMHO.

So the question becomes.....is sending high level gear to low level characters (to rapidly and artificially level their skills) an exploit ?

jcost4o · September 2014

Is this actually fixed yet? My blacksmith is a VR6, lvl 50 blacksmith, maxed all but hireling and eye, yet I couldn't craft anything over a lvl 1 iron mace . This was yesterday so it may be fixed, let me know.

GreyRanger · September 2014

Rune_Relic wrote: »

So the question becomes.....is sending high level gear to low level characters (to rapidly and artificially level their skills) an exploit ?

I can't see how it is an exploit. I am leveling 2 characters, a solo character and one I play with my son. They are leveling different crafting professions and pass materials for decon to level crafting. I can't see how that is an "exploit".

MikeBob · September 2014

timidobserver wrote: »

I get this change. They do not want you getting around using your main's skillpoints by making a craft only alt.

My main is the primary crafter on my account - does all the gathering, leveling, deconstructing, etc.

While this may ultimately render him a gimped fighter - due to the placement of so many of his earned skill points in crafting trees - it also means that my (7) alts will 1) never need to make crafting development a priority, and 2) be free to place the aforementioned skill points elsewhere.

drallar · September 2014

jcost4o wrote: »

Is this actually fixed yet? My blacksmith is a VR6, lvl 50 blacksmith, maxed all but hireling and eye, yet I couldn't craft anything over a lvl 1 iron mace . This was yesterday so it may be fixed, let me know.

This is an entirely different bug. If you set the material to the level you want and then toggle between items it will reset to the correct level item. For example if you want to craft a VR14 sword - select enough ore to get to VR14(it wont show), then click over to mace and then back to sword and it should show the correct item at the correct level. That work around allowed me to craft a few items for guildmates last night.

Srugzal · September 2014

GreyRanger wrote: »

Rune_Relic wrote: »

So the question becomes.....is sending high level gear to low level characters (to rapidly and artificially level their skills) an exploit ?

I can't see how it is an exploit. I am leveling 2 characters, a solo character and one I play with my son. They are leveling different crafting professions and pass materials for decon to level crafting. I can't see how that is an "exploit".

I agree.

The whole "they changed it so it must have been an exploit" line of thinking is just silly. The practice doesn't need defending. Friends and guildies helping each other level crafting is an essential game dynamic. It also allows you to devote characters to deep RP as crafters. There's no downside to the practice at all.

What needs defending is the rationale behind changing it. As to that, we've heard not a peep from the people who know.

I tend to think that it was changed in error. The fact that the decon was changed, but not the item creation mechanic, suggests that it was, in fact, that all-too-common phenomenon, the "churn bug" cause by not properly regression testing the release.

xaraan · September 2014

This shouldn't happen to a character once they hit vet however IMO. Especially if they plan on getting rid of vet levels. My crafter is VR2, yet I guess I'll have to level him up to at least VR8 just to break stuff down now. I'm sure they will get rid of vet levels as soon as I get there.

Falmari · September 2014

People saying that it has always been like this are wrong I have 2 crafters (maxed in all trades but enchanting) 1 is 33 and one is v2 and deconstructing I was getting traits, motifs and materials back even for top tier items that my main picks up.

Deconstructing should not be tied to your level.

The game was marketed on playing the way you want to play pvp or pve or craft.
Now to be a crafter you have to level to virtually full level that just sucks.

Changing the rules penalises players who have put a lot of effort into levelling crafting alts.

MasterSpatula · September 2014

UrQuan wrote: »

Here's a conceivable benefit:
I suspect, to deal with players that were powerleveling the motif crafting skills. Particularly blacksmiths trading daggers for decon and getting to 50 in no time.

But since you couldn't think of it, then surely it is inconceivable. OK, you got me, it wasn't ridiculous hyperbole.

Except, of course, that this limitation isn't a very effective way to do that. To get to level 50 "in no time," you'll need to be deconstructing high-level items, items made from materials you wouldn't be able to craft with until you're high-level in the skill anyway. Getting those materials back doesn't really enable power-leveling, and not getting them back doesn't hurt it.

But you're right, you have successfully argued that there is a conceivable reason to do it. I guess I'll need to change my assertion to "no reason that bears up to even slight scrutiny."

starkerealm · September 2014

MasterSpatula wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

Here's a conceivable benefit:
I suspect, to deal with players that were powerleveling the motif crafting skills. Particularly blacksmiths trading daggers for decon and getting to 50 in no time.

But since you couldn't think of it, then surely it is inconceivable. OK, you got me, it wasn't ridiculous hyperbole.

Except, of course, that this limitation isn't a very effective way to do that. To get to level 50 "in no time," you'll need to be deconstructing high-level items, items made from materials you wouldn't be able to craft with until you're high-level in the skill anyway. Getting those materials back doesn't really enable power-leveling, and not getting them back doesn't hurt it.

But you're right, you have successfully argued that there is a conceivable reason to do it. I guess I'll need to change my assertion to "no reason that bears up to even slight scrutiny."

In my defense, if we're restricting ourselves only to design decisions that actually make sense, we're going to be left with a lot of choices in this game that can't be explained.

MasterSpatula · September 2014

starkerealm wrote: »

In my defense, if we're restricting ourselves only to design decisions that actually make sense, we're going to be left with a lot of choices in this game that can't be explained.

Touché

dodgehopper_ESO · September 2014

If this is really true, this makes me not want to play the story at all, and just powerlevel my way to the top on all my crafter characters... which just makes me sad. I have a bunch of mid 20's alts that I leveled there so that they could comfortably craft and still have their skills for when I actually want to level them. I agree this is not cool. I really don't see what combat prowess has to do with being a crafter.