Motifs should be account wide

EnsisAeternus · February 2016

I know this topic has come up before, but now that there are 7ish legendary styles I think it is time to bring it up again. I propose that motifs should be learned account-wide rather than only on a single character, regardless of whether it is a crown motif or an in-game one.

This isn't an issue of wanting the game to be easier or wanting things for free, it's trying to rectify part of the general problem in ESO that playing multiple characters is unnecessarily penalized over playing only one. It is possible to play through all content and level all crafts on one character, but it seems obvious, at least for the sake of playing different classes and races, that ESO is best experienced from multiple characters with their own unique playstyles. If a player at one point decided to distribute crafting across characters, it is becoming increasingly more costly to learn multiple copies of the new styles that are released.

The fact that dyes are account-wide I think was a brilliant move and a step in the right direction, but I think that this other aspect of style also needs to be made account wide.

I originally posted this on the ESO subreddit and it received a lot of support there, but I figured for there to be any likelihood of something actually being done about it, I should to post it on the forums.

bryanhaas · February 2016

EnsisAeternus wrote: »

I know this topic has come up before, but now that there are 7ish legendary styles I think it is time to bring it up again. I propose that motifs should be learned account-wide rather than only on a single character, regardless of whether it is a crown motif or an in-game one.

This isn't an issue of wanting the game to be easier or wanting things for free, it's trying to rectify part of the general problem in ESO that playing multiple characters is unnecessarily penalized over playing only one. It is possible to play through all content and level all crafts on one character, but it seems obvious, at least for the sake of playing different classes and races, that ESO is best experienced from multiple characters with their own unique playstyles. If a player at one point decided to distribute crafting across characters, it is becoming increasingly more costly to learn multiple copies of the new styles that are released.

The fact that dyes are account-wide I think was a brilliant move and a step in the right direction, but I think that this other aspect of style also needs to be made account wide.

I originally posted this on the ESO subreddit and it received a lot of support there, but I figured for there to be any likelihood of something actually being done about it, I should to post it on the forums.

How about your character can craft account bound style books and recipes so if one player learns it the others can as well, maybe have something sold by one of the guilds like the merethic restorative gem.

Alorier · February 2016

I agree if you have bought motifs from crown store that these should be account wide

Elsonso · February 2016

Your crafting character can make ALL the crafted armor and weapons your alts need without the need for alts to have the skills.

Nestor · February 2016

The recommended meta is to have one character do all your equipment crafting. So, the Motifs work themselves out that way.

However, we all know that leveling a character for combat and crafting is not fun in the beginning so most people split their equipment crafting for this reason. I did this. But, my Clothier/Woodworker has been getting trained in Metal and will soon have all 9 traits in that to go with all 9 in wood and cloth. So, I will soon have one crafter, two plus years on from the game release.

Csiminae · February 2016

I feel your pain. My clothier is on a low level alt. Unthinkingly, I used her at first for inventory space, then leveled provisioning, enchanting, and alchemy on other alts for the same reason. She almost has 8 traits, while my main almost has all nine. I think account wide for yellow crafting motifs is reasonable. I don't truly hate that it takes 256 days to research all nine traits.
Not.... truly.

I don't hate that pc players have had a year longer to level and play, and acquire all the rare motifs and 9 traits in everything.

Not truly.

I do hate the guild trader monopoly. And that I just got my first purple style motif yesterday, after a year...

I forgive my personal RNG for ... everything.

But not truly.

llSRRll · February 2016

I like the way it is, I used my 1st character as my crafter and he is rank really high in all crafting catagories. I started a new guy on DC bc thats the faction I wanted to play with from the beginning. My crafter is on AD. On top of it he was a VR1 so had quit a bit of skills

Jayne_Doe · February 2016

Nestor wrote: »

The recommended meta is to have one character do all your equipment crafting. So, the Motifs work themselves out that way.

However, we all know that leveling a character for combat and crafting is not fun in the beginning so most people split their equipment crafting for this reason. I did this. But, my Clothier/Woodworker has been getting trained in Metal and will soon have all 9 traits in that to go with all 9 in wood and cloth. So, I will soon have one crafter, two plus years on from the game release.

Nestor - I did a similar thing when starting out, where my characters learned the crafts they needed, so my main only learned BS, in addition to the three consumable crafts. I then added WW, as I wanted to try out using a bow. It was only after the motif chapters were introduced that I realized that not all of my characters were going to be able to learn all the crafting styles, unless, of course, I wanted to spend a LOT of gold/crowns or farm myself to death.

So, I added Clothing to my main, but she still has Divines and Nirn to go (had learned Nirn on my clothing crafter already).

As for making them account-wide - where do we stop? Why not all recipes, too? And then, all research. IDK - style motifs have no gameplay impact, so maybe account-wide is ok. But, only Crown motifs and maybe only the gold ones - not Imperial, as that's found as a book in game - but the ones that are broken into chapters in-game.

wayfarerx · February 2016

Nestor wrote: »

The recommended meta is to have one character do all your equipment crafting. So, the Motifs work themselves out that way.

However, we all know that leveling a character for combat and crafting is not fun in the beginning so most people split their equipment crafting for this reason. I did this. But, my Clothier/Woodworker has been getting trained in Metal and will soon have all 9 traits in that to go with all 9 in wood and cloth. So, I will soon have one crafter, two plus years on from the game release.

I am two weeks away from having all 9 blacksmith traits on my original clothier/woodworker. I leveled blacksmith on a different alt at the beginning simply for role playing reasons, but later realized that if they kept adding motifs I would be bankrupt trying to get them all on both characters. So I've spent months now slowly transferring traits from the old blacksmith to the new one.

I'm not sure how I feel about making motifs account wide. Obviously in two weeks I don't really have a reason to care, but I'm leaning towards keeping them character bound. I've enjoyed the hunt for getting all the mercenary motifs on all my characters to maximize my laurel drop rate. If motifs were account bound then I would have been done with that quest in the first two weeks.

Duiwel · February 2016

Obvious L2P issue.

OP you like alts as you mentioned in your post, well good news.

You can have an alt JUST for crafting, literally hundreds of thousands of players have done this. I did it on launch day already, even role played him by making him an orc ( that's where the role play stopped ).

You just teach that 1 char all your motifs and voila no need for any heartache or headaches...

IF you however decided to learn X on one character and Y on another that is entirely your choice and you are welcome to it ( the devs allow this ). From a practical point of view (your post's topic) however it seems that it is not the ideal choice.

My recommendation is stop learning motifs on other characters and focus on one alt for crafting ( the one with the glass / akaviri or other expensive / takes a long time to learn motif ). IF you have no such character problem solved you do not need motifs for enchanting, alchemy, provisioning ONLY woodworking, blacksmithing and clothing - it's easy to max the last 3 on multiple characters. I already have it maxed on 3 & I only tried maxing it on one.

CuzImHarley · February 2016

It's great if you knew the mechanics of crafting and how this game would be played in started your crafting on one character in the beginning well that's great for you. But not all of us knew that some of us are new and I didn't even start researching until my second character and then I backed up and made my first character my crafter, so I've got two characters doing half this and half of that and I am going bankrupt trying to get all of these motifs for both characters if you buy anything in the crown store it should be account wide save the obvious such as potions and utility type of things. Or at the least, if I delete a character, give those items back to use on my new character

EnsisAeternus · February 2016

A lot of people have pointed out that the thing to do is to put all equipment crafts on one character so that you only need one set of motifs. Yes, that is the current workaround to the problem, and that is the path I am taking right now that I judge to be the lesser of two evils. Even though I have to respec my highest character, relevel crafts, and redo many months of research, including the costly nirnhoned, I am aware that this is the best way given the current system to learn motifs moving forward.

That said, there is no reason for a single equipment crafter to be the only answer to the problem. When I started this game back in pre-release, the skill point cost of crafting far outweighed the issue of getting motifs, even considering the set of advanced motifs. The problem developed because the game went in the direction of adding many more very expensive legendary motifs that continue to be character-bound, and their cost/rarity has made it unfeasible to acquire multiple sets.

So from the standpoint of someone who started out in a different crafting meta or for a new player that doesn't immediately understand the current system, I believe that the motifs need to be learned account-wide instead of penalizing players that for whatever reason have crafting on multiple characters. In truth, there would be no loss to everyone who already has all of their crafting on one character; they can continue to do all of their crafting on one character and would even have any of their current motifs apply to any other characters they have. I am glad for them that they grasped the best answer earlier, but I have gathered that a lot of people who prefer the current system do so only because they come out ahead, regardless of whether it is fair or not. So for the sake of equality for all types of crafters, ZOS please make motifs account-wide.

Duiwel · February 2016

Why relearn Nirnhoned? It would be quicker to make an alt your main in that case...

You can get them to VR16 quicker, get them the gold it costs for Legendary gear quicker.

DO NOT re-learn Nirnhoned...

That would be way more expensive!

Acharnor · February 2016

From a convenience point of view it would be sweet. However, I look at each of my characters as unique and they know different stuff. It does not make logical sense they would know the same things. Same with the mounts - it would be great to have my new alt sorting a spiffy fast Guar right out the gate but they have not earned it.

EnsisAeternus · February 2016

Duiwel wrote: »

Why relearn Nirnhoned? It would be quicker to make an alt your main in that case...

You can get them to VR16 quicker, get them the gold it costs for Legendary gear quicker.

DO NOT re-learn Nirnhoned...

That would be way more expensive!

I have to relearn nirnhoned because right now my nirnhoned traits, of which I have most but not all, are on two different characters, my blacksmith/enchanter and my clothier/woodworker. My highest character, an alchemist/provisioner has no nirnhoned but has plenty of skillpoints. At 20k per weapon and 5k per armor, learning all nirnhoned would be 350k, of which I can knock off 100k for me in comparison because I don't yet have 5 of the blacksmith weapons on my existing blacksmith. The cost of the glass motif alone I estimate conservatively to be about 300k, and ancient orc runs for more. That still leaves xivkyn, dwemer, mercenary, imperial, and more importantly any new ones that are added like thieves guild; so all in all I would estimate the cost of learning all motifs to be at least 1 million gold. So it's true that I could pick one of my existing, skill-point-lacking equipment crafters to learn the other crafts in order to reduce the price of relearning nirnhoned by about 100-150k, but anyway you slice it the cost of getting a second set of motifs to keep my existing nirnhoned distribution completely dwarfs the cost of relearning all nirnhoned on one character, and the difference is only going to get larger as new motifs are added. Basically the crafting system and the value of motifs has evolved to the point where it is no longer an option to have crafting on multiple characters; it has become an arbitrary requirement rather than merely a preference that they all be on one character because of the astronomical cost of getting multiple sets of motifs.

Acharnor wrote: »

From a convenience point of view it would be sweet. However, I look at each of my characters as unique and they know different stuff. It does not make logical sense they would know the same things. Same with the mounts - it would be great to have my new alt sorting a spiffy fast Guar right out the gate but they have not earned it.

I've heard the argument too about it being unrealistic that if one character learns something that other characters know it automatically, but what is less realistic is that when you read a motif book it disappears. If realism or logic is your concern, motif books could be account bound and passed among your different characters who can each individually read them, but for simplicity's sake I would still advocate them just being something that is available account-wide once read the first time.

Jimboo84 · March 2016

Some motifs are soooo rare, that if you found it with character x, it should be applicable for all your characters.

helediron · March 2016

Duiwel wrote: »

Why relearn Nirnhoned? It would be quicker to make an alt your main in that case...

You can get them to VR16 quicker, get them the gold it costs for Legendary gear quicker.

DO NOT re-learn Nirnhoned...

That would be way more expensive!

Dividing initial trait learning and later consolidating to one main speeds up considerably trait learning, including nirn. In very early phase of nirn i had it divided to six toons: four crafters and two mules to redistribute the trait to others in six hours. So, relearning nirn is not a big deal. You don't have to spend any gold to nirncruxes. Writs and farming bring in nirn nicely these days.

Usually motif learning can be postponed alltogether, or preplanned to main crafter. To young crafters i recommend to learn only blue motifs, and hold on to others, until it is clear how to arrange the crafters.

gw2only1b14_ESO · March 2016

Csiminae wrote: »

I feel your pain. My clothier is on a low level alt. Unthinkingly, I used her at first for inventory space, then leveled provisioning, enchanting, and alchemy on other alts for the same reason. She almost has 8 traits, while my main almost has all nine. I think account wide for yellow crafting motifs is reasonable. I don't truly hate that it takes 256 days to research all nine traits.
Not.... truly.

I don't hate that pc players have had a year longer to level and play, and acquire all the rare motifs and 9 traits in everything.

Not truly.

I do hate the guild trader monopoly. And that I just got my first purple style motif yesterday, after a year...

I forgive my personal RNG for ... everything.

But not truly.

True story..Pop into PVP on a non vet toon looted a back and got a Purple mottif now my vet toon never ever got one in pvp needless to say 2 days later got the Imperial mottif as well RNG luck? Im pretty sure but youll be surprised how many containers/bags ect laying around in pvp areas and in the camps granted im sure you cant get the Orsciliam ones ect but was surprised to find 2 on a non vet toon

Jayne_Doe · March 2016

EnsisAeternus wrote: »

I've heard the argument too about it being unrealistic that if one character learns something that other characters know it automatically, but what is less realistic is that when you read a motif book it disappears. If realism or logic is your concern, motif books could be account bound and passed among your different characters who can each individually read them, but for simplicity's sake I would still advocate them just being something that is available account-wide once read the first time.

I like the idea of motif books being account bound on pickup and usable by all characters, rather than just disappearing after one of them reads it. This would solve the unrealism of one toon reading a book and then all of the other toons suddenly knowing the motif. This could also be implemented for recipes.

However, I'd only want motifs/recipes to be account-wide if they're implemented in this fashion, where the book doesn't disappear after reading. And, the book only becomes account-bound once it's read by a toon. If it remains unread, then it can be sold. This would keep these items tradable.