Top Tier Crafting Writs Awarding Inspiration

Thestephenmcraeub17_ESO · January 2017

Not sure if there is already a thread for this, but I didn't find one, so here goes. Does anyone know why the top-tier crafting writs award inspiration upon completion? It seems like a waste to me, unless I'm not understanding it properly, but in order to complete those writs, you need to have your crafting level in that skill maxed out. So inspiration gains are effectively worthless. Unless that isn't how it works, I feel like the inspiration reward should be replaced with either more experience, more gold, or just a slight bump in the RNG chances of getting gold mats or surveys.

And side note, the shipments of refined materials make very little sense to me, given that I have only ever received crafting materials for lower-level items. If someone could explain this to me, that would be great, because right now all I see is a pile of junk that I'll have to go out of my way to sell. It doesn't make for a very enticing reason to pursue crafting writs at max level. But it seems like there should be a reason, or else it would be less important for characters to even learn crafting at all. There needs to be a meaningful reward for the time and money that crafters put into their crafts. I'm fine with rewards of refined materials, just as long as I can actually put those materials to use. I feel like the assumption is that we will use them to make gear for alts that we want to level, but it isn't difficult to get ahold of those materials at the respective level, so the shipments seem like overkill. Plus, only one character even has to go through CP ranked materials under 160, because as soon as an alt hits level 50, they can use the same top-level equipment. (If that was unclear or confusing, let me know and I'll try to clarify)

If I've missed any important information, or don't seem to understand the current systems, please feel free to enlighten me. Thanks!

Gracous · January 2017

I think that you have hit the nail on the head. Ever since they made leveling way to easy they have effectively nullified any reason to use the lower level mats. This is why I have stopped doing the writs for Alchemy, Blacksmithing, Woodworking, and Clothing. The frequency that you get surveys at, for these crafts, is so low its not worth doing. I only do the Enchanting and Provisioning surveys currently. But, in the next update you will be able to get Gold surveys for Clothing, Blacksmithing, and woodworking that require you to make a specific piece. IE torug's pact resto staff in divines. You will get it whether or not you can make it. So it will have its uses soon. But until then its pretty much useless.

davey1107 · January 2017

My hypothesis, having worked on video games, although not this one of them so this is a random guess - the program code for what you receive for these is set on some sort of algorithm that they don't want to mess with unless necessary. They probably could turn off inspiration for top level writs, but then the programming department says "why bother, it just flows into a full bucket and doesn't hurt anything."

And this way, if and when they add a new higher level material, they don't have to go turn it back on. The inspiration gain programming could also be connected somehow to xp gains, so that they don't want to mess up xp rewards.

Also, it's possible that zos sees discussion about weird game glitches as a viable social marketing tool. (/s...but only just barely)

Ourorboros · January 2017

Cuz zos logic =

Nestor · January 2017

Thing is, the Inspiration from Writs has never been anything that really contributes to leveling crafting.

I ran some mules doing provisioning writs for about year, doing writs each day to farm rare recipes. The provisioning skill barely leveled when turning in the writs. I got more Inspiration from making the product, so much so that I did not invest in the multiple serving passives just so leveling would happen faster. Even then, I was always having to grind up the skill when I wanted to elevate my mules to the next Recipe level, even after weeks of doing provisioning writs.

Yes, the Inspiration on a maxed crafter is not doing any good, but it was not really helping during crafting leveling. I think ZOS should just boost the Experience we get from doing top end writs.

Thestephenmcraeub17_ESO · January 2017

davey1107 wrote: »

My hypothesis, having worked on video games, although not this one of them so this is a random guess - the program code for what you receive for these is set on some sort of algorithm that they don't want to mess with unless necessary. They probably could turn off inspiration for top level writs, but then the programming department says "why bother, it just flows into a full bucket and doesn't hurt anything."

And this way, if and when they add a new higher level material, they don't have to go turn it back on. The inspiration gain programming could also be connected somehow to xp gains, so that they don't want to mess up xp rewards.

Also, it's possible that zos sees discussion about weird game glitches as a viable social marketing tool. (/s...but only just barely)

That's a really good point, I hadn't even considered the fact that in the future, they will definitely add more crafting materials. Although it does seem like at that point, they will have to change around every crafting skill and add more points to it, unless they just rearrange the current crafting passives to squeeze another material in. In any case, they will either set max crafting levels to 60 to accommodate new materials, or a new material will come one day, and those of us with 50 crafting will already be able to craft it. In the latter case, we still run into the same problem of useless inspiration for completing writs. As it stands, and no matter what they plan on doing in the future, it still doesn't offer a whole lot of incentive for us to do writs once we have reached the max level of skill in the respective crafting line.