Why Prosperous is Preposterous

Transairion · July 2016

To illustrate my point, this is what I have across all my characters in the 4 days since I've installed the Ledger addon: •Gold looted from kills: 1750 (from 308 corpses that had gold drops)
•Gold from sell-to-vendor: 20263
•Gold lost to vendor repairs: 9983

Now, I will caveat that this is a bit of an extreme example since most of my combat time in the past 4 days was spent in nSO, vSO, and vMA--more than any other content, the 12-man trials skew away from direct gold drops towards vendor goods, and vMA has no lootable corpses, just chests at the end of each stage to offset the repair costs, which is why the repair costs skew so high. But the point remains that the gold from vendorables make up the bulk of what I get.

Since you like bringing this up as "valid proof Prosperous is bad", can you actually go out and properly test Prosperous by fighting stuff that actually drops gold? Since you yourself admit here basically all you've done is Trials (which have very low gold gain) and Vet Maelstorm, which has no corpses to loot period. With repair bills being higher since the content is, of course, harder and dying reduces armor more than normal wear and tear.

If you want to debunk Prosperous, actually get full Prosperous and go farm a delve/solo dungeon full of gold-dropping mobs like bandits and so on until the armor completely breaks (which should be a long while). Then, get full Impen and repeat, farm the same delve until the armor breaks 50% slower. Track the gold gained from each test and you'll have your proof.

By all means I want it proved either way, but you don't have to look hard here to see the bias. Of course Prosperous will look bad if you're doing VMA where there's no lootable mobs >_< By that logic Impen is top-tier for PvE because it's hard and you'll die more, so your armor will last longer in Impen...

Smasherx74 · July 2016

Dumbest trait ever.

KenaPKK · July 2016

Lol ZOS is rekt.

"We're removing impen because no pve relevance."

I've been bitching forever about this. I'm surprised it took people this long to catch on.

code65536 · July 2016

Transairion wrote: »

To illustrate my point, this is what I have across all my characters in the 4 days since I've installed the Ledger addon: •Gold looted from kills: 1750 (from 308 corpses that had gold drops)
•Gold from sell-to-vendor: 20263
•Gold lost to vendor repairs: 9983

Now, I will caveat that this is a bit of an extreme example since most of my combat time in the past 4 days was spent in nSO, vSO, and vMA--more than any other content, the 12-man trials skew away from direct gold drops towards vendor goods, and vMA has no lootable corpses, just chests at the end of each stage to offset the repair costs, which is why the repair costs skew so high. But the point remains that the gold from vendorables make up the bulk of what I get.

Since you like bringing this up as "valid proof Prosperous is bad", can you actually go out and properly test Prosperous by fighting stuff that actually drops gold? Since you yourself admit here basically all you've done is Trials (which have very low gold gain) and Vet Maelstorm, which has no corpses to loot period. With repair bills being higher since the content is, of course, harder and dying reduces armor more than normal wear and tear.

If you want to debunk Prosperous, actually get full Prosperous and go farm a delve/solo dungeon full of gold-dropping mobs like bandits and so on until the armor completely breaks (which should be a long while). Then, get full Impen and repeat, farm the same delve until the armor breaks 50% slower. Track the gold gained from each test and you'll have your proof.

By all means I want it proved either way, but you don't have to look hard here to see the bias. Of course Prosperous will look bad if you're doing VMA where there's no lootable mobs >_< By that logic Impen is top-tier for PvE because it's hard and you'll die more, so your armor will last longer in Impen...

Oh yes, it is biased. Biased towards the kind of content that people use endgame gear for. Find me someone who grinds out sets of Scathing or Leeching or Infallible so that they can go grind bandits. Yes, bandits and other NPCs, because, as you point out, those are the ones that actually drop gold. Want to go grind scraps for wax refinement? Better go put on that Impen because Prosperous will do nothing for the many enemy types that drop zero gold.

So you're damned right my perspective is biased: It's biased towards relevance.

rootimus · July 2016

Joy_Division wrote: »

Just to remind everyone again, ZoS went out of their way to remove Impenetrable from loot tables and instead give us Prosperous (and training) even though more than 90% of feedback on the PTS forums indicated this was a bad idea.

That's just how ZOS roll.

The current incarnation of this trait is anaemic, at best, but if you do writs and are happy to use add-ons you can make it work; load up on repair kits and use the Auto Recharge mod to repair your gear at 1%, and use the SetSwap mod to flip between your killing gear and a set of preposterous just for looting. This way repairs cost you zero and you actually gain gold (and experience) from doing the writs that give you the repair kits.

Transairion · July 2016

Oh yes, it is biased. Biased towards the kind of content that people use endgame gear for. Find me someone who grinds out sets of Scathing or Leeching or Infallible so that they can go grind bandits. Yes, bandits and other NPCs, because, as you point out, those are the ones that actually drop gold. Want to go grind scraps for wax refinement? Better go put on that Impen because Prosperous will do nothing for the many enemy types that drop zero gold.

So you're damned right my perspective is biased: It's biased towards relevance.

I wasn't aware players only did Vet Dungeons/harder group PvE content, and did nothing solo anymore... endgame gear is CP160, true, but endgame play is anything over level 50 now thanks to CP system.

So you're basically discounting 90%, or MORE of ESO's playerbase and basing "this trait is bad" on that? The entirety of Cadwell's Silver, Gold, all DLC, just wiped out of consideration because only PvE group content matters and the rest of it is "invalid"?

.... really?

magnusthorek · July 2016

There's a poll started by @ZOS_JessicaFolsom here on General Discussion asking the opinion of players about these traits. Sadly, it wasn't pinned, so unless we keep pushing it up, it'll vanish soon or later.

It's an RFC (Request for Comment) so at least gives the hint they have intention to change that.

But just like Divines trait for gold on Cyrodiil's vendor, this can be promised and announced but not delivered, or worse! Stay on "No ETA" stage for too long.

code65536 · July 2016

More data from a classic grind, in response to certain critics who say that I didn't have enough data or that data from trials shouldn't count...

I had a romp today in the Imperial City and Imperial Sewers for a few hours, grossing around 12K stones.

Total gold from kills: 1128g
Total gold from vendorables: 8395g
Total repair bills (with 5p Impen): 971g

(Vendorables are white/green trash armor/weapons. I deconned my glpyhs and also deconned any non-ornate ancestor silk and rubedo leather pieces, and those were not counted towards the vendor total.)

Yes, Impen does work. During one of my repair sessions, my Impen gear had around 50g each in repair costs, while my non-Impen gear had around 100g in repair costs.
Impen saved me around 50% in repair costs on 5 of 7 pieces of armor. If I had no Impen gear, my repair costs would've extrapolated to around 1510g. Wearing 5p Impen saved me around 539g.
If I had instead worn 5p Prosperous, I would've gained 35% more gold, or 395g.
So, when grinding PvE mobs in the Imperial Sewers and City, 5p Impen outperformed a hypothetical 5p Prosperous by 144g. Oh, and Impen also helped keep me (mostly) alive during the few player encounters I had.
Of course, the big elephant in the room is that 88% of my gold gain during this session didn't come from gold drops at all--it came from all the dropped trash loot that I vendored--the value of the vendorables so greatly overshadow gold drops that even if Prosperous could outperform Impenetrable, it would still be irrelevant.

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom Your thread seeking feedback about Prosperous and Impenetrable in the loot table has almost everyone saying that Prosperous should be dropped in favor of Impenetrable. Please heed the community's feedback, because Prosperous is so bad that even the intended audience for Prosperous would be better off running Impen instead. Either that, or you need to go back to the drawing board with Prosperous and completely start over.

Oakmontowls_ESO · October 2016

I'm just going to push this back up to the top since this is still a very relevant topic especially with all the new sets dropping in training/preposterous. Also can any devs comment on the future of preposterous and training traits in set loot tables? @ZOS_GinaBruno

nimander99 · October 2016

I wish that part of crafting skill lines was the ability to reduce armor deg in the crafting line you learn. I also wish we had repair hammers (Oblivion) and not weird wooden boxes that magically repair gear...

RAGUNAnoOne · October 2016

IT always sounded stupid on paper... most things in this game at least sound good on paper...

acw37162 · October 2016

Nice Work.

So if properous increased gold drop rate and ornate and intricate item drop rate from mobs it could pay for itself and keep crafters in materials?

LioraValkyrie · October 2016

Impenetrable gear gives crit resistance and your item takes 50% less damage. Impen is used for PvP, but your gear doesn't take damage from dying in PvP.

Prosperous gives you a boost to gold looted, but takes full damage when dying.

So, simple solution: Prosperous gear boosts gold looted AND takes 50% less damage, whilst Impen ONLY gives crit resistance.

This makes Prosperous more viable for farm runs, and removes a presently pointless feature from Impen.

Just to take it one step further... why not combine Prosperous and Training into, say, "Accumulating" which increases XP gain, increases gold looted, and takes less damage. In addition to being the clear choice for new players and under-50s, this trait would be quite tempting for a lot of the easier endgame content, in my opinion.

Netherscorn · October 2016

This is extremely important. Well said.

danno8 · October 2016

acw37162 wrote: »

Nice Work.

So if properous increased gold drop rate and ornate and intricate item drop rate from mobs it could pay for itself and keep crafters in materials?

I think Prosperous should be 7% more gold and 7% chance at a receiving a second (white only) item.

KloudKotuzai · October 2016

I'd say make prosperous give you a 100% bonus. So that you know that you're getting double from before but loosing out on the same armor damage.

altemriel · October 2016

LOL, nice!!!

altemriel · October 2016

code65536 wrote: »

TL;DR: This trait is so bad that you're better off with a different trait even if you want to farm for gold.

Prelude: How armor degradation works is ESO

Armor degradation in ESO is not very intuitive, and most people don't realize exactly how it works:

Every time you earn combat XP fighting a PvE enemy, a random piece of armor takes a small amount of damage. Every time you die to PvE or environmental damage, a random piece of armor takes a large amount of damage.

This has several implications:
How many hits you take and how much damage you take are completely irrelevant (unless you die, of course). It means that, in a group, a tank taking a beating on the front line takes the same durability hit as a healer who stands in the back and is never hit by the enemy.

You suffer zero armor damage when fighting enemies that are so underleveled that you are earning no XP (unless you die, of course).

You suffer a lot of armor damage when you are grinding for XP. This is also why armor degrades so quickly in the Imperial Sewers, as that is typically an XP-dense area.

Since any kill that has a chance of dropping gold is also a kill that grants combat XP and damages your armor, armor damage is a mechanic designed to be a gold sink counterweight to gold looted from kills.

That final point is very important, and to quantify this, I use the Ledger addon; it lets me see exactly how much gold I've earned and spent, and what the sources/sinks of gold are. I had some writ surveys to do in Wrothgar this morning, and I took the "scenic route", killing anything that crossed my path for about 20 minutes. The result was that I looted 100 gold and suffered 95 gold in repairs; I never died, so there are no extra repair costs from death.

This is with my usual combat gear, this is the baseline without any Prosperous traits. 100g does seem pretty low, though, and I'll explain that next...

The real source of gold: Killing mobs is lucrative--just not in the form of direct gold drops.

Of course, anyone who's grinded mobs for XP or gold will tell you that there is a lot of gold to be made. But most of that is in the form of vendor goods. I'd usually come away with lots of Foul Hide worth 9g each. Lots of trash gear that's worth anywhere from 20-80g each. Ornate items that are worth hundreds of gold. These items pile up, and their sell-to-vendor value comprise the bulk of what people earn.

Most of the gold from mob grinding doesn't come in the form of dropped gold, yet the Prosperous trait only increases the amount of dropped gold, not the chance or value of dropped loot.

To illustrate my point, this is what I have across all my characters in the 4 days since I've installed the Ledger addon:
Gold looted from kills: 1750 (from 308 corpses that had gold drops)

Gold from sell-to-vendor: 20263

Gold lost to vendor repairs: 9983

Now, I will caveat that this is a bit of an extreme example since most of my combat time in the past 4 days was spent in nSO, vSO, and vMA--more than any other content, the 12-man trials skew away from direct gold drops towards vendor goods, and vMA has no lootable corpses, just chests at the end of each stage to offset the repair costs, which is why the repair costs skew so high. But the point remains that the gold from vendorables make up the bulk of what I get.

Prosperous vs. Impenetrable: One of these traits was removed from the Undaunted chest, and the other was added.

The original Sturdy trait reduced the degradation that armor took. With the recent trait revamp, the original Sturdy has now been merged into the new Impenetrable trait.

Each Impenetrable piece takes 50% less damage (regardless of gear color). Each Prosperous piece increases gold earned from kills by 5.5% at blue and 7% at purple.

Remember my 20 minutes in Wrothgar this morning? I'd consider this to be a more typical scenario (unlike trials, which skews towards repairs, and group dungeons, which skews towards gold drops).

At the baseline, I gained 100g in gold from kills, and lost 95g to repairs, for a net gain of 5g (again, this is not taking into account the value of mats and vendorables).

If I ran with 7p Impenetrable gear, I'd have gained 100g in gold from kills, and lost 47g to repairs, for a net gain of 53g.

If I ran with 7p blue Prosperous, I'd have gained 139g in gold from kills, and lost 95g to repairs, for a net gain of 44g.

If I ran with 7p purple Prosperous, I'd have gained 149 in gold from kills, and lost 95g to repairs, for a net gain of 54g.

However, Prosperous is useless for anything besides mob grinding, whereas Impenetrable is the best PvP trait. If you want to grind mobs, just put on your 7p Impen PvP gear, and you'll do just as well as wearing 7p purple-quality Prosperous!

The irony is that ZOS has added Prosperous to the loot table for monster shoulders and headpieces while removing Impenetrable.

Update: More data, from grinding PvE enemies for a few hours in the Imperial City/Sewers...

More data from a classic grind, in response to certain critics who say that I didn't have enough data or that data from trials shouldn't count...

I had a romp today in the Imperial City and Imperial Sewers for a few hours, grossing around 12K stones.

Total gold from kills: 1128g
Total gold from vendorables: 8395g
Total repair bills (with 5p Impen): 971g

(Vendorables are white/green trash armor/weapons. I deconned my glpyhs and also deconned any non-ornate ancestor silk and rubedo leather pieces, and those were not counted towards the vendor total.)
Yes, Impen does work. During one of my repair sessions, my Impen gear had around 50g each in repair costs, while my non-Impen gear had around 100g in repair costs.

Impen saved me around 50% in repair costs on 5 of 7 pieces of armor. If I had no Impen gear, my repair costs would've extrapolated to around 1510g. Wearing 5p Impen saved me around 539g.

If I had instead worn 5p Prosperous, I would've gained 35% more gold, or 395g.

So, when grinding PvE mobs in the Imperial Sewers and City, 5p Impen outperformed a hypothetical 5p Prosperous by 144g. Oh, and Impen also helped keep me (mostly) alive during the few player encounters I had.

Of course, the big elephant in the room is that 88% of my gold gain during this session didn't come from gold drops at all--it came from all the dropped trash loot that I vendored--the value of the vendorables so greatly overshadow gold drops that even if Prosperous could outperform Impenetrable, it would still be irrelevant.

What needs to happen: Though by this point, I've given up on ZOS listening.

Right now, Prosperous is nothing more than the original Sturdy trait in a different dressing: they both increase the net value of PvE kills--one increases the positive side of the equation while the other decreases the negative side. I already said this over a month ago during the PTS feedback period, to no avail. The old Sturdy trait was so useless that ZOS scrubbed it from endgame loot tables when IC was released and later eliminated it by merging it into the much more useful Impenetrable.

Yet, here we are, with a trait that is just as useless as the original failed Sturdy trait, and I'm seeing this trait everywhere in endgame content rewards: vWGT, vICP, vSO, Undaunted chests, etc.

At this point, Prosperous needs to be completely reimagined, because even if you want to grind mobs, you're better off with a full set of Impenetrable than with a full set of Prosperous. Not that it matters anyway since direct gold drops are overshadowed by vendorables.

In the short term: Please replace Prosperous with Impenetrable in the loot tables for Undaunted shoulder/heads and for SO/MoL/ICP/WGT. People want Impenetrable for PvP. Plus, it does the same job as Prosperous.

In the long term: Reimagine Prosperous. Making it increase the chance of loot drops or the chance at better quality loot drops would make it far more useful than it is now. Direct gold from kills is just too insignificant to be worth an armor trait.

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_BrianWheeler @ZOS_RichLambert

could you please check out this tread and change the loot tables and the prosperous trait?

Banana · October 2016

Pissing it off completely would be even better

altemriel · October 2016

Banana wrote: »

Pissing it off completely would be even better

well based on the info in the OP, if they would change prosperous that it would not work for gold loot increase, but for increase of chance to loot higher items, that would be nice for non-vet chars

Kodrac · October 2016

Nice necro, no really, this one actually served a purpose other than to troll. On a serious note, I need that ledger addon.

Solus · October 2016

Im bumping this, because i had a similar post, less information and agree 110% with everything stated here.

Maybe separate PVP undaunted chests with PVE chests.

That way people can choose which RNG to participate in. I personally want two sets, my PVP gear and PVE gear.

Dont be like EA, dont just do stuff because you can, do things because we as the community (that gives you money so you can pay your bills BTW, in case you forgot) collectively agree that your choices are poor ones regarding this matter, and need to be redone.

NewBlacksmurf · February 2017

code65536 wrote: »

More data from a classic grind, in response to certain critics who say that I didn't have enough data or that data from trials shouldn't count...

I had a romp today in the Imperial City and Imperial Sewers for a few hours, grossing around 12K stones.

Total gold from kills: 1128g
Total gold from vendorables: 8395g
Total repair bills (with 5p Impen): 971g

(Vendorables are white/green trash armor/weapons. I deconned my glpyhs and also deconned any non-ornate ancestor silk and rubedo leather pieces, and those were not counted towards the vendor total.)
Yes, Impen does work. During one of my repair sessions, my Impen gear had around 50g each in repair costs, while my non-Impen gear had around 100g in repair costs.

Impen saved me around 50% in repair costs on 5 of 7 pieces of armor. If I had no Impen gear, my repair costs would've extrapolated to around 1510g. Wearing 5p Impen saved me around 539g.

If I had instead worn 5p Prosperous, I would've gained 35% more gold, or 395g.

So, when grinding PvE mobs in the Imperial Sewers and City, 5p Impen outperformed a hypothetical 5p Prosperous by 144g. Oh, and Impen also helped keep me (mostly) alive during the few player encounters I had.

Of course, the big elephant in the room is that 88% of my gold gain during this session didn't come from gold drops at all--it came from all the dropped trash loot that I vendored--the value of the vendorables so greatly overshadow gold drops that even if Prosperous could outperform Impenetrable, it would still be irrelevant.

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom Your thread seeking feedback about Prosperous and Impenetrable in the loot table has almost everyone saying that Prosperous should be dropped in favor of Impenetrable. Please heed the community's feedback, because Prosperous is so bad that even the intended audience for Prosperous would be better off running Impen instead. Either that, or you need to go back to the drawing board with Prosperous and completely start over.

Thanks

It was worth reading the whole thread.
I've always felt it odd when I wore all training gear for grinds and now I see why. It's the repair bill that's creating this feeling.

I honestly didn't think of impen gear in any equations. It was training and prosperous cause I don't PvP. Because training doesn't give quest exp I'm 100% done with these sets as it's costing me more than I make as they've removed and lessened the mob and respawn rates in most of my grind spots.

Vaoh · February 2017

Can we PLEASE replace Prosperous already? Prederably with armor that buffs either your:
1. Loot Drop Rate
2. Set Loot Drop Rate
3. Good trait drop Rate

Giving it negative side effects like -1% damage done per piece would be fine if considered too powerful as well. Idc.

Just replace Prosperous.

sevomd69 · February 2017

Slayer9292_ESO wrote: »

Each piece of Prosperous should decrease your chance of getting prosperous on pickup gear by 15%

That would be truly prosperous.

That would be preposterous...

electromagnets · February 2017

...or just don't ever repair your prosperous grinding gear...

But, does armor lose its trait effect when fully damaged?

Phatmattfu · February 2017

LioraValkyrie wrote: »

Impenetrable gear gives crit resistance and your item takes 50% less damage. Impen is used for PvP, but your gear doesn't take damage from dying in PvP.

Prosperous gives you a boost to gold looted, but takes full damage when dying.

So, simple solution: Prosperous gear boosts gold looted AND takes 50% less damage, whilst Impen ONLY gives crit resistance.

This makes Prosperous more viable for farm runs, and removes a presently pointless feature from Impen.

Just to take it one step further... why not combine Prosperous and Training into, say, "Accumulating" which increases XP gain, increases gold looted, and takes less damage. In addition to being the clear choice for new players and under-50s, this trait would be quite tempting for a lot of the easier endgame content, in my opinion.

This guy kinda sums it up in his first bit. WTF does Impen have reduced item damage when you don't take any in PVP?! Add it to prosperous, bang easy solution. Impen still #1 for pvp. Why this was done in the first place is a massive derp. How they let that through is beyond me.

Lynx7386 · February 2017

I'd take a craftable intricate trait over this, just to help level crafts faster

Oakmontowls_ESO · February 2017

oh hey this thread is back and Zos still hasn't touched this trait.

code65536 · February 2017

Phatmattfu wrote: »

WTF does Impen have reduced item damage when you don't take any in PVP?!

Well, to be fair, this makes Impen useful in both PvP and (non-competitive) PvE. One of its features is 100% useless in PvE, and its other feature is 100% useless in PvP, so it's a good match to put the two together. So Impen is, IMHO, in a good spot: useful in PvP, and not 100% useless in PvE. Meanwhile, Prosperous is not only weak in PvE, but is also 100% useless in PvP.

A simple revamp of Prosperous into something like Lucky, where it increases both gold drop and crit chance (but not so much that it competes with Divines) would instantly make the trait much more balanced and less insulting.