I agree and was talking to guild members about the exact same issue this past weekend. Way too many and way too easy to pick. I like the idea of making them harder to find, harder to pick and less of them around with the payoff being better loot.

I am only VR9 and the chests i find never give anything decent anyway. Yeah i agree with you mate. I don't know if chests are worth in VR14 dungeons or craglorn.

Tend to agree with this. That being said, you didn't mention Master - which I think is above advanced?

There's 3 chests i tend to pick up in Craglorn and they almost always give next to nothing. 64g and some item that I sell for another 60 gold or so. Experience is 4k however, which is nice.

I can see the chests benefit for 1-50 - first time I found one was awesome...an that feeling stayed with me for a while.

I'd like to see maybe Master Chests placed in the wild, middle of no where type locations. A VERY large Random placement area for each chest. Gold in Color so you know it's special and it gives out a nice item from a feature set.

This way, bot's couldn't grind them (subject to spawn area being large enough with a solid RNG) and it pays for you to be an explorer.

There is an unmarked cave (no Objective marker on the map) in Malabal Tor. I discovered it while looking for unmarked locales after finding several in Cyrodiil, and at the end is a treasure chest. A keg lies off to the side, a sword and shield fallen near the chest. I approach to pick the lock and loot the contents when an odd sound rings out from behind... two skeletons rose from the ground, intent on stopping me from stealing their loot.

It was a normal treasure chest.
With an abnormal surprise.

I am going to say I disagree with you.

Treasure Chests are the only way for people who do not want anything to do with Stealing and Murdering in town to level up the Legermain skill line and it takes a long time at that just from opening the chests. The items inside also come in handy for deconstructing later on, or just selling. Every little bit of gold you make helps.

Additionally, in the lower zones, you get a lot more competition for them than you do at Vet levels so you don't usually come across them as often unless you have a map or know their spawn locations and are actively hunting them.

So unless they are willing to have them give much more gold, much better items and more of them, and a heck of a lot of XP to compensate for fewer chests. I would prefer they stay just how they are. No one is forcing you to open those chests when you come across them.

I really like the system as it is now. All chests include gold and at least one green item so that's a guaranteed ~120 gold value in VR zones (equippable crafting material nodes [Nightwood/Void Bloom/Voidstone Ore], in comparison, are worth about 45-60 gold, including the value of tempers/resins you will get by refining the materials).

But then chests also have a low chance to include items from some rare sets which are very rare as drops from regular monsters. VR 10 chests, for example, may include Rings and Pendants of Soulshine that sold for 15k+ gold to other players on the EU server until the release of Update 6.
That was a real treasure and you could easily make a lot of gold searching for treasure chests for a few hours in your alliance's VR 10 zone. VR 11+ chests may include Martial Knowledge set items.

The system you propose with rare chests that include a guaranteed great treasure but are hard to open would require the chests to be personalized just like regular loot, in my opinion (so only you can see your chest).
Otherwise some people would camp/farm the spawn locations, train monsters on you to make your attempt to open the chest fail, try to steal the chest each time your attempt to open it fails.

I do agree that ESO lacks randomized really rare but really good rewards for most content. Basically, the gambling mechanic, that makes many games more exciting (there are games like Diablo 2 that rely almost exclusively on that mechanic; also, many indie games rely on randomized rewards/levels to add replay value).
In Korean grinders you often had extremely rare drops for almost any monster (in Ragnarok Online, for example, you had monster cards or full items that were better than the ones you could buy from merchants; in Lineage II, you had full item drops which were extremely rare and valuable).
In ESO, there's mainly the Boss Helmets (hard to find groups; cannot be traded so no market; shoulders greatly rely on luck and you get only one chance per day and character; some of the sets are ***; doing the same story-based instance over and over again is no fun).
There's some sets and rare items that can drop in trials and DSA. Again, most of these are bound so there's no market.
And there's the rare PvP sets (random per armor type). Luckily, these can be traded and there's an interesting market here. Unfortunately, the blue PvP reward bags require the same currency as siege weapons (that makes no sense in my opinion; siege weapons should have a separate resource that slowly builds up again up to a set maximum value; see PvP MMOGs like Planetside 2).

In a completely randomized system, you want there to be a market/the ability to trade.
In a system with bind on pickup gear that has to be earned, you want the gear to be really good and exactly what the player needs/wants with only minor variations.
(When the auction house in Diablo 3 was removed, the drops all became bind on pickup, but all dropped items have a high chance now to be of a type that's useful to your character).
Completely useless traits like sturdy should be removed/replaced.

But I digress
Why not make only the chests you find with treasure maps really rare and valuable (and of Master difficulty) but leave the other ones unchanged?

fromtesonlineb16_ESO wrote: »

Dahveed wrote: »

The chests could then have a tidy sum of gold and some really fun or rare items in them

On release that's what they were like, usually got a 'blue' at least, rarely a 'purple'. The bots farmed them, ZOS nerfed them .. story of the game really, same thing can be said of delve bosses, XP grinds, etc.

I remember those days too. Chests were harder to find and someone else or a bot usually got there first. It seems chests were harder to open too but that was probably more reflective of my skill level before I got used to it. But yeah, like the other things there was a lot of bad behavior going on to get them in the early days. Now they're more something you stumble across than a competitive sport.

I like the new system and sometimes I do get something good out of the chests so it's worth it to me to stop and open them, even just for the XP boost. For people who don't think they're worthwhile, no one is forcing you to stop to open them. Don't feel pressured, really. Someone else will happen along to take it if you don't want it.

Also has anyone ever run into the treasure hunters in Cyrodiil who are digging up a buried treasure and will start fighting you when you start digging too? That's a fun way to get a chest. Maybe we could use more scenarios like that for the immersionists.

I think the amount is fine but that maybe more should be at the master level and if they ARE at the Master level, they should have at least a piece of Blue loot in them every single time. I also tend to agree with the fact that chests are typically extremely easy to open but unfortunately I also know several people who have a very hard time understanding the mechanics of lock picking. They are constantly frustrated by not being able to open chests. For this reason, I enjoy the difficulty levels in chests and timers but I just wish there were more Master level locks with better loot behind said locks.

They also give you a chance at a soul gem. I can't remember the last time I had to buy those.

I like the chests as they are. Of course, in the higher zones with fewer people, you will get them more often because of less competition, but they are a good source of set items, some of which are very hard to come by if you are not the right level.

Going to side with those who like the current system.

Treasure chests are rare enough that I still appreciate finding them. Advanced/master locks require me to concentrate and don't leave a lot of room for error. So I'm not sure what the problem is here. Seems like trying to fix something that isn't broken to me.

If you invest skill points into lock picking they are suppose to made easier. If they weren't: what would be the purpose?

I have no problem with reducing the number of chests found in Vet zones, because in those zones it seems like you find them everywhere. In lower level zones, however, there is enough competition for chests (because there are many more players - especially since TU) that finding them (and getting to them first) is still a relatively rare and exciting experience (granted, it's more exciting for a newer player than for a vet leveling up an alt).

To me an ideal solution would be to increase the rewards in the chests, but have the number of chests present in a zone at any given time be scaled to the number of players in the zone. For example, (and I'm just throwing around random numbers here - I haven't taken any time to try to figure out if these numbers are reasonable) say the number is set to 1 chest for every 10 players in a zone. So if there are 100 players in a zone, there will be 10 chests spawned in that zone. If the number of players drops, no chests will de-spawn, but no new ones will spawn until the ratio of chests to players drops to lower than 1:10 again.

Of course, I have no idea how much effort would be involved in programming this.

Ffastyl wrote: »

There is an unmarked cave (no Objective marker on the map) in Malabal Tor. I discovered it while looking for unmarked locales after finding several in Cyrodiil, and at the end is a treasure chest. A keg lies off to the side, a sword and shield fallen near the chest. I approach to pick the lock and loot the contents when an odd sound rings out from behind... two skeletons rose from the ground, intent on stopping me from stealing their loot.

It was a normal treasure chest.
With an abnormal surprise.

Oh, I know that cave! Surprised me too. I love finding cool things like this, and I wish there were more. I seem to remember coming across something similar in the swamps of Shadowfen too.

Fine as is, just make 1 out of 100 master level...and make lockpicks break more often on those master level ones.

In the master level boxes...have rare loot that usually only drops in trials or pvp bags appear...along with yellow mats.

Hell, have yellow mats appear in all of them, just more rare the easier it is to pick.

I agree with the OP though, that finding a chest isn't much different than finding a wardrobe to loot.

Nestor wrote: »

Here is my idea for the Chests.

1. Level lock the chests, perhaps tie to the Legerdemain Skill. You have to be a certain rank in order to open a Master or Advanced or Intermediate chest. Loot is increased per level where Masters give one Gold item, Advanced Purple, Intermediate Blue. This along with the other stuff you get. Anyone can open Simple Chests and they give Green items.

Please don't. That's one of the things I hated about Fallout. If your arbitrary game "skill" wasn't high enough you couldn't open a lock regardless of how good you were at actually picking said lock. I like that you have less time for higher-leveled chests, but I don't want to be locked out from trying (though I remember seeing "Impossible" chests when I was lower level).

Chuggernaut wrote: »

AlnilamE wrote: »

They also give you a chance at a soul gem. I can't remember the last time I had to buy those.

I like the chests as they are. Of course, in the higher zones with fewer people, you will get them more often because of less competition, but they are a good source of set items, some of which are very hard to come by if you are not the right level.

lol, my enchanter is sitting on 196 grand soul gems thanks to writs and the soul magic ability to passively steal souls!

Oh yeah! Those are a great way to get soul gems too!