[Discussion] Spitballing Ideas - Traits, Storage, Housing.

SwimsWithMemes · February 2017

As title suggests, just some future ideas for all different kinds of content. Please, leave detailed discussion and critique of what bits you did/didn't like. Also is there just a general ideas forum section? TL;DR at bottom

Anyway, here goes:

Previous Ideas - Traits:

Updated Prosperous traits:
- Make Prosperous work similar to the Treasure Hunter Champion Point passive - each item of prosperous increases gold gain as well as slightly improving % odds of finding the next tier of item - if you would find a blue, while wearing 1 piece of Superior (blue) Prosperous, you now have a 3% chance to find a purple item. Also, give it increased odds of doubling materials found from harvesting nodes. 3% chance with a single Superior Prosperous piece of gear to find double the materials. Not sure if it should be able to find legendary items.
  - Pros: Lets people have greater odds of finding harder to get items, makes some jewelry easier to obtain, gives farmers easier way of obtaining materials, encourages people to wear a "useless" item trait.
  - Cons: Hardcore farmers may be annoyed by need to collect new gear, and if it can find Legendary items it may devalue the market and make people grind more for the new tiny chance to get them.
Updated Training traits:
- Let training items boost guild experience too - could be done by artifically inflating guild questlines (e.g., instead of 100 experience now takes 10000 experience, but everything gives an appropriate amount to match.). Then, training items can boost guild experience by a similar amount to normal experience gain - no fractions required.
  - Pros: makes getting higher ranks in guilds easier - Undaunted, Mage's guild etc. Can even be useful at high levels if people are using for stuff like DB or Thieves Guild and didn't finish them before.
  - Cons: Might be too quick to finish them? People might have access to some abilities at too low a level? Some people probably enjoying collecting all the books and doing dailies (they still can do this but there are less intrinsic rewards attached)

New Ideas - Traits:

Infused and Charged weapon traits:
- Combine current Infused and Charged into one, enchantment boosting stone. Just give it "Increases weapon enchantment effect, chance, and also reduces cooldowns"
- Create a new use for the leftover trait gem that boosts your OTHER trait gems. Not too sure what this one should actually be, but having 2 gems for weapon enchantments is just ridiculous. Obviously this new boosting gem would have to be not too strong, otherwise people end up with 100% crit chance with only a 5k penetration trade off. Perhaps instead it could boost move speed? Not sure how this would effect PvP. Or even a "lucky" gem, that increases proc chances for sets and passives slightly (or maybe just passives) or could decrease time between set and passive procs? (or maybe just passives).
  - Pros: Gives all the weapon enchantment buffing items into one enchantment, possibly leading to new uses? Maybe you could run [new trait name] weapons if your group already has enough penetration. Reduces grind then, potentially. For the "new" trait gem, it might just be something spicy - maybe you want to risk a throw of the dice on making Earthen Heart passives happen more often, or you really, really want to power up your current traits (Make Nirnhoned Great Again!)
  - Cons: Might be too strong depending on numbers/available enchantments. Maybe weapon enchantments just aren't meant to be stronger than the penetration buff for solo play. For the new trait gem, might be too overpowered in any iteration unless it is nerfed into uselessness (so hard to find a balance between good and not good), and would thus be an exercise in futility changing it.
Powered and Reinforced weapon and armor traits:
- Let them also increase the power of buffs done - give a real utility trait item to pick from. E.g., Powered boosts healing done and extends any Major buff duration by 20%, and any Minor buff duration by 10%. Reinforced gives extra armor, and boosts by 3%/1.5% respectively. Perhaps it also works for shields?
  - Pros: Gives more utility to underused sets (maybe gives self buffing DPS soloplayers a reason to take powered! Gives reinforced light armor some real options etc), gives healers a little power boost.
  - Cons: Might still be useless, and not worth the change. Might be too strong depending on how well it can stack (welcome back the days of 20 second shielded sorcs!)

New Ideas - Housing:
Despite housing being so fresh, there are still many new ways ZOS can go with it.

Storage:
Yeah, this is the big one. "3% of players" etc. etc.. What if storage was craftable though? I'm sure many of you have already thought of most of these ideas, this one included.
- You can craft storage - but it is not a very large number per item. Or, it is limited per item types per storage unit. For example, you can now craft a Mannequin which can hold exactly 12 items - and they must all be different except for the 2 ring slots and the 2 weapon slots a la Skyrim's mannequin display (NOT the inventory). A barrel can hold 5 different stacks of food items. (Big barrel, but sure, whatever.) A weapons rack can hold 6 weapons, etc etc. A desk can hold 10 small items, and a wardrobe can only hold big items. (Imagine big and small to be a whole range of things - most weapons are big, but daggers are small. Most armor is big, but belts are small.)
  
  Maybe they also take up an appropriate amount of item slots in your house (per stack not per item)? So a fully pimped out Mannequin takes 13 slots, but a non-decked out one takes only a single slot. Likewise a full barrel would take 6 slots, but an empty barrel only one.
- Consider doubling the availability of placeable/storeable items if this housing change ever goes through! And also double pet spaces! My tiny Twin Arches can only fit 4 dogs/jackals, when I need my polar bear cub to join in, too.
Craftable/Purchaseable guild stuff:
From things like, replica MASSIVE target dummies with ~50 million health, to your own hireable/placeable Guild vendor to place at your house - displays wares of your own chosen guild in your house.
- For the dummies, imagine say, an enormous Argonian skeleton with vet Serpent level HP. Or you could just have replica Trials bosses - see if you can do Vet Mantikoras! Two at once! Practice your positioning against the Twins! Maybe the bosses fight back? Would probably be a bad idea to do so - would increase the skill gap between elite "haves" and those who are just trying to move on from being "have-nots". But maybe the elite becoming super practiced isn't a bad thing? I mean, you wouldn't get achievements/skins/ etc until you do the real trial. Would provide more gold sink/writ voucher sink etc. Probably need a required house size - Large or Manor.
- Guild Vendor: You can acquire a specific, new NPC to come live at your house and be your guild vendor! This way if you don't have one for the week, you can invite people to your house to check out the wares available Again, possibly only available at big houses? Does a vendor being craftable make sense? Perhaps even, you can choose any lootable/killeable NPC in the world to come live there (but then they become immune, of course). Choose via dialog preference! Might just be easier to have 1 new available person than a whole new system
- Other Merchant NPCs - Why not have a full time mystic on the premises? Choose your favourite from among those in the world! After all, they would surely be impressed by the crafting writ vouchers you can offer.
- Buildable "private" rooms - Similar to how in an inn in game (heck of a tongue twister) you are in your own instanced room, maybe we can have sub-instances within these houses. So your guild master can have their luxurious locked room, you can also have regular plebian rooms for the rest of your guild mates, without having to allocate 499 spaces in your manor. Maybe too complex and unnecessary.
- Another one that most people have said - an overhall of all items found in the world to be placeable in your house. Steal a pair of dice in Davon's Watch? Bam, they go on the table.

And that's it folks! 6 major/minor ideas to just make the game feel a little better overall.

Tl;DR: 1) improve useless traits, 2) storage in housing 3)make housing do more stuff

RavenSworn · February 2017

I'm bumping this up because there seems to be no one commenting on this great thread. Everyone wants to complain but I hardly see ideas thread being put up for discussion.

Will be putting up my own ideas as well on housing, traits and in general.

KimoBitz · February 2017

Great ideas man,keep it up

SwimsWithMemes · February 2017

Thanks guys

that's why I want a section just for articulated ideas!

RavenSworn · February 2017

Traits
This should be more streamlined than it already is. certain traits are really not that useful and/or only situational. I'm wondering if it's better if certain traits do not stack with each other. This might keep the trains in line with each other in terms of utility.

Gear
There Has to be a difference in the gears of PvP and PvE. Make it so that you can only use PvP gear in pvp, PvE gear in pve. This does create however a clear distinction between the two worlds and would definitely make it even more elitist or exclusive then it already is.

Having two different effects on gear to npcs and players is another great option for this, though it's much more work to change the 30+ gears sets. not to mention new sets that might come in the future.

Housing
Craftable storage. the storage however shouldn't have too many slots, so not to create too much stress in the system loading the houses. the lag is already bad as it is, shouldn't add to it imo. The storage should be a 1 slot per item, much like crafting an urn or barrel and having that extra 1 slot. it will then be equal to horse stamina training. however, all it does is give extra slots in your bank, not having straight access to it. RP wise, having lots of chests, or barrels around a banker npc in the housing will create this view that the banker is 'using' to storage there.

There should also be more low level recipes that are cheap and easy to get. The materials for this would be the regular items you farm on nodes, so it's more streamlined. having multiple mats for different items is just... too much work for both devs and players imo.

SwimsWithMemes · February 2017

Definitely agree with you on traits, and that's interesting - making like, half the armor traits "unique" and slightly more powerful, and then keeping the other half stackable, but weaker is a pretty cool concept.

I don't think limiting players to wear certain gear in PvE or PvP is the answer, but they could certainly balance procs, etc based on if you are in PvP zone or not. Just add it to Cyro battle leveling - like "special gear bonuses are altered". It does create a problem wherein the game doesn't offer much information as to differences between PvP and PvE, so people might say "wow viper looks awesome for ganking!!" But then it does half the PvE tooltip of damage, for example. But that's a problem with ESO, not your idea.

Housing - everyone wants craftable storage I think! Basically cheaper bank slots after a point, adds something for master crafters to profit on. I'm not so sure about 1 slot per thing unless you can access it through a house bank interface - otherwise I'd have to check 14 locations to find my PvP set. So yes, banker is good idea!

I'd like it if there were some "common" furnishings that can be crafted by people with 0 crafting skill, then you could segregate it with greens being certified and so on, with blues and purples being domain of experienced crafters. I have actually come to like the new housing materials. Maybe they could incorporate already existing materials to give items a different coloration - you can go to a dye station and use 10x Shadowhide to make your bed grey, instead of the default.

RavenSworn · February 2017

strebor2095 wrote: »

Definitely agree with you on traits, and that's interesting - making like, half the armor traits "unique" and slightly more powerful, and then keeping the other half stackable, but weaker is a pretty cool concept.

I don't think limiting players to wear certain gear in PvE or PvP is the answer, but they could certainly balance procs, etc based on if you are in PvP zone or not. Just add it to Cyro battle leveling - like "special gear bonuses are altered". It does create a problem wherein the game doesn't offer much information as to differences between PvP and PvE, so people might say "wow viper looks awesome for ganking!!" But then it does half the PvE tooltip of damage, for example. But that's a problem with ESO, not your idea.

Housing - everyone wants craftable storage I think! Basically cheaper bank slots after a point, adds something for master crafters to profit on. I'm not so sure about 1 slot per thing unless you can access it through a house bank interface - otherwise I'd have to check 14 locations to find my PvP set. So yes, banker is good idea!

I'd like it if there were some "common" furnishings that can be crafted by people with 0 crafting skill, then you could segregate it with greens being certified and so on, with blues and purples being domain of experienced crafters. I have actually come to like the new housing materials. Maybe they could incorporate already existing materials to give items a different coloration - you can go to a dye station and use 10x Shadowhide to make your bed grey, instead of the default.

Different gear for PvP and pve will allow developers to create new more unique armor for the said purposes. We already have problems with frost tanking, where the cons outweigh the pros. Injecting new sets will help change the meta, change the way some players play the game. And having either different PvP /pve gear sets will only help out.

My idea for the craft able storage is this: just like horses stamina training, all it does is to add, more slots to your personal bank. That to me is a better compromise for storage in housing. You still get access to more space but now, you don't have to run all over the houses to see which chest or urn houses your epic chest piece. So for eg:

You use mats to create the urn. It's a common item and can only provide an additional 1 slot to your bank. Make it so that you can only have these storage in medium and large houses, with a limit of 10/20 per house. The amount of gold you spend on these needs to be on par though with current horse stamina upgrades. From here on, ZoS can create new storage items for housing in later patches.

SwimsWithMemes · February 2017

Oh I get it, that's really good. I was still thinking Skyrim storage, where I had 4 safes each with a different set of items.

However a good draw of housing storage is being able to access what you've put there, and it's unlikely ZOS will give everyone a free banker in their home, so its either a separate storage system or only accessible through travel to towns ot 5k Crown bankers.

ArchMikem · February 2017

Im too tired to give this a thorough read but i know a legit attempt when i see one so you get an insightful. And my post to keep this at the top. Also ill just leave my 2 cents as well.

I now agree with other people, two handed weapons need to count for 2 pieces of a gear set.

RavenSworn · February 2017

I actually appreciate your prosperous trait suggestion. Increasing the chance of finding an item with more prosperous items will definitely help both new players and grinders alike. Make it so that the treasure hunter is for chests and boss drops. While prosperous would be for mob drops.

I don't think merging infused and charged solves anything much. Personally I think changing powered to increase healing done AND received would be better. Not too sure if it's a bit too much though.

SwimsWithMemes · February 2017

Thanks for your feedback

Prosperous could be insanely useful, give farmers their own BiS, as it were.

Yeah some kind of buff to Powered would be nice, it would just be interesting to have lots of viable alternatives - we have Sharp/Precise for damage, so utility or defensive strengths add diversity without powercreep.

I was just throwing Charged/Infused ideas out there because I recall like, nobody ever using Charged.

My suggestion was probably a bit too much for the devs to just tweak, but an overhall on various crafting systems would be nice!

RavenSworn · February 2017

You may be on to something though, charged increases proc on weapon enchants, putting them together with infused is prudent. How bout if charged makes it so that the weapon does not need any soul gems to be recharged? That will be in line with utility traits as you suggested.

I was also thinking of well fitted increasing speed and reducing sneak speed stamina cost, much like medium armor. Again, it's more utility than a straight damage buff which will work in many situations.

SwimsWithMemes · February 2017

Combining them into 1 thing is definitely the way to go, but yeah then we need ideas for "new" trait. We want most of these to feel exciting, and by end game players have 100s of soul gems. New players also just pick up new weapons, and never really recharge, I have found.

Maybe the trait could be a PvP focussed one - gives a small AP farming boost?

Or it could be to decrease your own stealth radius, and also increases your detection of others? That still has PvE uses, for Theives Guild or DB quests, or regular pickpocketing.

I'm not a PvP expert, so I'm not sure if movement speed is something that can be changed without having adverse balance effects. Maybe Well-Fitted armor increases duration of break free and roll dodge?

RavenSworn · February 2017

strebor2095 wrote: »

Combining them into 1 thing is definitely the way to go, but yeah then we need ideas for "new" trait. We want most of these to feel exciting, and by end game players have 100s of soul gems. New players also just pick up new weapons, and never really recharge, I have found.

Maybe the trait could be a PvP focussed one - gives a small AP farming boost?

Or it could be to decrease your own stealth radius, and also increases your detection of others? That still has PvE uses, for Theives Guild or DB quests, or regular pickpocketing.

I'm not a PvP expert, so I'm not sure if movement speed is something that can be changed without having adverse balance effects. Maybe Well-Fitted armor increases duration of break free and roll dodge?

Yeah you're right, well fitted should be used to decrease stealth radius rather than sneak speed.

If charged and infused however are fused, then it shouldn't stack, in line with what we discussed earlier I suppose. Bigger effects, only on one item. Smaller effects, stackable.