You don't really have twice the frequency. Your hireling in order to give a second delivery, you must log in a second time - 12 hours later. Not everyone can do that, so this system is a punishment. I am punished for not being able to log in twice a day in 12 hour intervals.

I think there should be no twice a day thing. Hireling should give tiered rewards once a day. Hireling 3 should be definitely better than hireling 2, just as Stage 3 of any other passive is better than Stage 2.

I noticed this and can only assume this is a bug, my tier 2 hireling often gives kuta, my tier 3 never does. Can we get a dev to comment here?

I only have one enchanter and just upgraded my hireling to level 3 recently. I can tell a difference too. I AM getting some nice potency runes in the level 7/8 range, but aspect runes almost seem to have gone down in quality.

Maybe it's just that the level 2 hireling is giving too much? The Kuta and Rekuta are clearly the most valuable when you are leveling because those are the ones that most greatly impact how much research advancement you get from crafting or deconstruction. I have found that Kuta plus a high level Potency rune gives a very nice return, but Ta plus the same rune is hardly worth noting. So Kuta and Rekuta is what you really want if you are trying to level.

I thought I was going crazy for noticing this! I get almost exclusively negative Potency runes now ( it is on the order of 15 negative to 1 positive ) and I have not seen a Kuta or Rekuta in some time. I thought maybe this was just because I get about 5/8 logins due to my schedule I hope we all just have really bad luck and this isn't an actual game mechanic.

Maybe the level 2 does give too much.

I only have this problem with Enchanting and it didn't really happen until my Enchanter hit 40 enchanting skill. When I was 30 enchanting with hireling 3, I got stacks of 2-4 Kuta and Rekuta at a time.

Once I hit about 40 enchanting, I started getting just one essence rune and a subtraction potency rune 99% of the time. My alts with Enchanting Hireling 3 never get Aspect Runes except Ta. My alts with Enchanting Hireling 2 get all kinds of Aspect Runes every day.

Selecting the upgrade should be more beneficial than not choosing it.

Um, no you don't and never did. I am talking about Hireling Mail, not Extracting.

I have no Aspect Extraction on my level 18 with Enchanting 36 and got 1 Kuta today. I have no Aspect Extraction on my level 19 with Enchanting 50, and got 0 Kuta for the last 16 days. I got 1 Denata a couple days ago. My level 19 has all points in Enchanting (except extraction).

I have a V1 with Hireling 2 and no other enchanting skills and get about 1 Colored Aspect Rune every day.

yeah, I confirm. I also noticed the problem with the hirelings lvl 3.
As for the mandatory login at 12 hours interval to get the email, this is simply a stupid implementation.

Any feedback from ZOS on this?

it definitely changed for the worst last patch.... i am getting much much less kuta's now & non aspect hireling mail delivery's are worse ... before the patch i got 17 kuta a week, which is normal for me. Last week, after the patch and after i maxed everyone's potency extraction, I got 9 kutas in a week. It was much worse the two days i forgot to put the points back in extraction, so i havent counted those days. I have a spread sheet and track it each week. My average extraction is down 15% and my Kuta delivery's are down 84%.

Zero Aspect Delivary's used to be rare for me also, especially with toons whom had hireling 3 at enchanting level 32.... now it is my most common delivery.... if they dont fix this we should be able to get the hirling skill points back since they arent worth it anymore. For so little gains its not worth trying to log in twice a day at the exact minute.

I liked the old enchanting better.... now purples give one ridicules amounts of extraction bonus. I am not sure why every small change they do, effects everything else. Do they hard code data in there code.......or write spagetti code that cant be maintained with out all sorts of side effects, every time something is touched it effects 2 other things.... if i wrote a similar piece of code, i would put all data, in a seperate data model and fixing one thing would not effect another because they would be in seperate models... i would have tools to view the tables of data the model made also... i would make tools to graph the data to make sure it was correct.... and my work would be reviewed by others before it was ever released.
We would have all lost our jobs if we introduced so many unrelated bugs every new revision.

EDIT'd for corrections and new comments 9/26.

KenjiJU wrote: »

I understand that, and I wouldn't expect you to be getting them twice a day. However, that wouldn't stop the design from thinking you're getting them twice as much, and thus reducing the quality per individual mail 'to be fair'. If that's how the devs figured anyway. It would seem to make sense to me (this is not saying it would be a good design). You might see an actual gain if you did have 2 a day, but since you can't, you see a loss.

Considering this now, I might opt out of Hireling 3 and stick with 2.

'Fair'? why do they have to be fair? If you are investing a skill point to advance the skill to maximum... fairness is moot. You should get more if you invest more than someone that only has 2/3... to me, it isn't 'fair' for us to not get more since we have invested more!

I remember a couple days after launch someone was complaining about the fact people got free resources this way and it wasn't fair for people trying to gather and sell. Maybe Z listened.

Soloeus wrote: »

You don't really have twice the frequency. Your hireling in order to give a second delivery, you must log in a second time - 12 hours later. Not everyone can do that, so this system is a punishment. I am punished for not being able to log in twice a day in 12 hour intervals.

I think there should be no twice a day thing. Hireling should give tiered rewards once a day. Hireling 3 should be definitely better than hireling 2, just as Stage 3 of any other passive is better than Stage 2.

Yes. This is exactly why ALL my hirelings are only at tier 2, not 3. I never know if I'll be able to login every 12 hours, so I spent these skillpoints on something else instead. I like your idea.

Well, that sucks. But I am glad I found out about it before I started upgrading my hirelings to level 3.

Origin wrote: »

As for the mandatory login at 12 hours interval to get the email, this is simply a stupid implementation.

Raygee wrote: »

Soloeus wrote: »

You don't really have twice the frequency. Your hireling in order to give a second delivery, you must log in a second time - 12 hours later. Not everyone can do that, so this system is a punishment. I am punished for not being able to log in twice a day in 12 hour intervals.

Yes. This is exactly why ALL my hirelings are only at tier 2, not 3. I never know if I'll be able to login every 12 hours, so I spent these skillpoints on something else instead. I like your idea.

OK, I figured out why this is not a problem for me with my twice a day deliveries. I always get two emails a day, and normally only log on once.

I did a respec of all of my crafters at 7AM one weekend, which included 3/3 in hirelings. As long as you log in during the 12 hours after the email is sent, then you get it. So, put the points into the hireling at time that is during when you usually play, not just before you get home or log on.

I usually log on at 5:30 to 6PM and play until 8 or 9 each night. I get the morning emails as soon as log in, then an hour or two later, I get the evening email. If you assign the third point, you reset the schedule from my experience. But since I seem to do these things at either early on the weekends, or when I play at night, it gets done at roughly the same 12 hour interval. So, those who have not upgraded will have to verify if you change the schedule when you assign the point.

For those wondering about hireling timers and login requirements, there is already a thread on the subject with an official, albeit vague, response on page 4:
http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/93659/request-for-a-change-in-hireling-timer-mechanics