Messy1 wrote: »

People were initially excited about crafting, but it soon lost it's luster and has proven to be a rather shallow system.

As a crafter this is my problem. I'm routed to the same small handful of sets. I want crafted sets because I want to customize how I look. I sick of ZOS deciding almost every dropped set will drop in one of the few motifs I absolutely loathe. There's just so many sets that are absolutely borderline useless. I cant even imagine what the utility of some of them are supposed to be.

Pretty sure they never said that. I think you are remembering the reference that crafting items will always be stronger than the crown store, which itself is just a statement that could easily be changed later on. Fact is, crafted sets suck pretty bad with a few exceptions. TBS, Julianos, Hundings, NMG, and a few others can be pretty good stat boosters, but then you look at the majority of them, and you're like 'wtf'? Most of them are just trash. Especially the higher trait ones that you wait so long to get. Really wish they would just overhaul most of these and also throw in a couple more magic DPS sets. However, without jewelry crafting, really doesn't matter.

If they did say that there was probably some lawyer lingo in there somewhere so they didn't really say that exactly . Or something and stuff .

leepalmer95 wrote: »

Alcast wrote: »

Was that not a thing back in the days? Did ZOS not say that crafted sets shall stay superior to dropped gear? Or am I mistaken?
Scrolling through the list of craftable sets makes me almost throw up, most of them completely useless and underpowered.

They also said no RNG crates....

Think crafted sets are due a buff soon though or the useless ones revamped.

Hurrah for power creep! I really wish they would tone down the dropped sets instead, but I can already see the angry forum mob if they should do that.

Easy fix, add an item that can only be found in vma, hardmode trials, top 1% pvp score. This said item can craft double traits or increase 5th piece bonus on crafted.

Maybe even as a bonus station inside a dlc that allows us to retrait or the 9 divines forbid we get to reskin items.

The strongest sets drops in dungeons because people will have to farm them. If you could just buy everything from a craftsman or if you could craft everything, then no one would farm the dungeons and that would mean that less people would play the content and their game.

Farming is the solution, sadly. Farming divines for endless weeks.

Alcast wrote: »

Was that not a thing back in the days? Did ZOS not say that crafted sets shall stay superior to dropped gear? Or am I mistaken?
Scrolling through the list of craftable sets makes me almost throw up, most of them completely useless and underpowered.

True, ZOS has completely taken a *** on every crafter..

I always felt the drop sets should have been two sets three sets and best in slot crafted should have been 5.

I remember and this is going back a to about 2 months in if that for me about July/August 2015 just before IC and getting I think it was a part of 3 piece (healing staff of Thorne I think it was?) and wanting the 3 pieces. Being excited about seeing a 3 piece set ( It was new and cool then to me ok) Or in October doing trials and getting unusual things that also needed 3 piece.

Back in those days I wanted a monster helm shoulder and a 3 piece set. We had the willpower/agility/endurance follow and I thought it would work. I'm disappointed in truth it went for the 5 piece farmed preferance over 3 piece 2 piece. As that kept crafting important and farming important. As it was weapons/jewlery sets and monster head shoulders.
So you could not stack lots of little sets but could do 2 of a 5 piece or a 2/3/5 or 5/5.
I was looking forward to things like 5/2/2/2 but instead we just got 5 piece sets that surpassed the crafted ones.

I think we have enough powerful crafting sets, but we are lucking chances to use them.

No crafted jewelry means you cannot be fully decked in crafted gear.
No restyling of dropped sets means the whole motif hinting game worth nothing.

Game longevity sure needs some farm for BIS gear, but why not have best of both worlds - trials drop some items required to craft jewelry/restyle drop sets, some serious achievements (can be combination of crafting and battle achievements) are required to be able to use them.

It's just ESO moving more toward a Skinner box MMO, I feel. It's a very wrong direction, as is obvious, but I feel there's new management right now and they're just screwing the pooch. I think they're even hurting for money right now, badly, due to mismanagement, which is why we're seeing RNG crates. I really just think that this is mismanagement. And like every good MMO, mismanagement will drive it into the ground because it'll be too late before anyone important actually notices. Or worse (in the case of Battleborn), all of the higher-ups were equally as incompetent and just as responsible for the mismanagement.

I think they're hoping they'll increase their population by becoming a more Skinner box-esque MMO. So they're doing more grindy things (like the Christmas event), and boosting group content and PvP at the expense of the casual game. And a part of this means that they need the best armour for their Skinner box models. You can't have a Skinner box without rewards, after all. Casuals just play content to see the story, not to be rewarded. Whereas the addicts just continually run content because they're addicted to that Skinner box model.

This just reeks of mismanagement, it really does.

There's even a post above that talks about content not being rewarding enough. Why does it have to be? That's a very good question. Like I said, everyone who isn't a Skinner box addict can play content just for the story. That's why we play single player games. I mean, when I recently played Skies of Arcadia, I didn't play it for rewards. I played it to see what would happen next. That's the reason I play ESO, too. It actually has decent writing.

But the wrong people in key positions at ZOS think they need more and more Skinner box in their game. That's a huge mistake. Really, they should have just left it where it was, where it was quite easy to craft BiS gear. That way no one was grinding and everyone was just enjoying the content.

Mark my words, this sort of thing will kill ESO.

It killed so many games before it, after all. Wildstar, Champions Online, so many MMOs dead because they followed this path and ended up looking too much like a WoW clone. Problem is? WoW addicts aren't going to stop playing WoW. So if you want an audience you really do need to target casual players as best you can.

It was nice knowing you, ESO. I really don't think you'll be around for long at this rate. It really was nice knowing you, back before all this.

Alcast wrote: »

Was that not a thing back in the days? Did ZOS not say that crafted sets shall stay superior to dropped gear? Or am I mistaken?
Scrolling through the list of craftable sets makes me almost throw up, most of them completely useless and underpowered.

You know as well as I do that unfortunately ZoS doesn't always keep to the exact definition of their word. This was stated during a different regime and creative direction; in a time before 100's of max level sets. I do agree that a great majority need (another) reform. Hopefully this can be addressed for the sets to be competitive at least for end game. There is no grind if you can simply craft BiS day one.

P.S. Not in game right now but I think back in the day the armor/raw damage value was higher on crafted (Not Set bonuses). Not sure if this is the case. This is one thing that they meant.

I love ESO, but sometimes when I look back at it, the comparison from what was stated as to what was actually put forth makes me think ZOS runs their offices in the manner of the show Dreamland.