The farming in Clockwork City has been sucked of its fun.

makreth · October 2017

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

hmsdragonfly wrote: »

Phage wrote: »

Try doing something else in Clockwork City.

Like, I dunno...quests? Daily jobs? There's lots of fun to be had.

CWC has the lamest dailies in the universe.

"Gather 5 Cosmetics or Grooming items"

Wth?

Huh? Sounds like The Covetous Countess.

That's right. Justice system is part of the game and as past has shown Zos tries to maintain some aspect of it in current/future DLCs. That's a good thing since some people do like that sort of stuff. Nobody forces anyone to do them.

anadandy · October 2017

Here's an anecdotal example and then I'm out.

Last night, two of us did Hall of the Dead - a vanilla public dungeon - on alts for a daily. In the 90 minutes it took us to clear all the bosses we amassed 10 furniture recipes (including 2 blue) and about 20k worth of loot between us - just selling it back to NPC vendors, not even to guild traders.

In twice that time in CWC we got zero furniture recipes and barely cleared 2k worth of loot.

Rhetorical question: Which content was worth playing?

SGT_Wolfe101st · October 2017

lordrichter wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

Most people don't like farming.

Most people do like completion. Completing a motif collection. Completing a collection of furnishing plans, etc. Completionism is a pretty big deal for people who come into ESO from the single-player TES games.

So while farming itself isn't fun, it is indirectly fun because it helps people scratch their completionism itches. But when drop rates are such horseshit that people cannot reasonably attain completionism via farming--i.e., when you strip farming of its rewards--then farming becomes even less fun and tolerable.

But why does this surprise anyone? It's clear now that ZOS is more interested in monetization than in fun. Why would people buy Crown Store furnishings if they could craft those furnishings themselves?

People like to pull out the Crown Store as an excuse. (I like to poke ZOS in the Crown Store, too) While I think that is a part of it, another part is simply that ZOS has a much longer time-between-itches than some players. If a player thinks they will complete everything in a DLC, or even an event, in a few hours, but ZOS is thinking days or weeks, the player is not going to be scratching any itches. Yeah, ZOS could say the time they expect, but a lot of people would not even try. In the end, it is random-ish whether an individual will get the drop, even if the overall plan has different ideas.

It is frustrating, but good for the game, that stuff does not drop so quickly. I get frustrated, too, but the answermto that is to not farm that item.

I don't think the OP is suggesting that they have all of the available drops by this point. And I do agree that keeping items rare does help the longevity of the game, but in the "fix" ZOS implemented has reduce the drop to nearly zero. This could have the opposite effect, why play if I am going to be rewarded with nothing. The carrot and the stick need to be weighted fairly. If the stick is 3 miles long and then come to find out there isn't a carrot on the end, that is equally bad for the game.

Azurya · October 2017

Phage wrote: »

DeadlyPhoenix wrote: »

Phage wrote: »

Try doing something else in Clockwork City.

Like, I dunno...quests? Daily jobs? There's lots of fun to be had.

Didn't actually read the post I take it?

No, I read the post. I just think you guys take farming a little too seriously.

There's a lot more to the zone than motifs or recipes or whatever. If the grind is getting to be too much, maybe try something different for a bit.

I have been there, and I say the Gobi Desert has more to offer!

kylewwefan · October 2017

Clockwork isn’t even out yet on console

So there’s still plenty of fun waiting to be had

Apache_Kid · October 2017

Amazing that there are actual real people that came into here saying that posters are entitled for wanting a cosmetic item that does nothing except sit there in your house without having to pay real money or farm for months to get. Some people on here will defend literally everything this company does. It's like a cult.

Stormahawk · October 2017

Drop rates seem to be a difficult thing to balance.

On one end, you have furniture plans like those Daedric Platforms that drop often enough that the plan is literally cheaper than the craft cost of the furniture, meaning there is no reason to ever craft and sell it (I just delete them when I get them since they aren't even worth vendoring).

On the other hand you have things like the Ayleid Bookcase that go for a 1million gold+ due to the rarity.

The difference in the drop rate between the two could very well be as small as 0.01%, but when you have hundreds of thousands of players farming it, it makes all the difference.

Apache_Kid · October 2017

Stormahawk wrote: »

Drop rates seem to be a difficult thing to balance.

On one end, you have furniture plans like those Daedric Platforms that drop often enough that the plan is literally cheaper than the craft cost of the furniture, meaning there is no reason to ever craft and sell it (I just delete them when I get them since they aren't even worth vendoring).

On the other hand you have things like the Ayleid Bookcase that go for a 1million gold+ due to the rarity.

The difference in the drop rate between the two could very well be as small as 0.01%, but when you have hundreds of thousands of players farming it, it makes all the difference.

I'm willing to say without question that the drop rate of the daedric bench, ashen isn't anywhere remotely freaking close to the Ayleid Bookcase...

ZOS_Mika · October 2017

We have recently removed several off topic/combative posts. Please keep the discussion civil and on topic.

Elsonso · October 2017

MasterSpatula wrote: »

ZOS must be completely aware by now that the playerbase is largely fed up with atrocious-droprate RNG grinds, but they're utterly committed to this inherently bad mechanic. They have us chasing quasi-imagionary carrots because someone over there thinks it leads to a solid revenue stream. If anyone at ZOS were in touch with reality enough to know the effect that customer satisfaction has on revenue, they'd be putting a stop to this immediately.

This game is built from the ground up on RNG. They are not only committed to it, it is the main tool in thier toolbox. This is hardly surprising as this is an RPG.

The bottom line is that they use a low probability random drop because not everyone is intended to get one of these recipes. The time required is undefined and the effort only pays off as a statistical probability that cannot guarantee a reward within a certain amount of time. It is not an inherently bad mechanic, it is a deliberate, calculated, decision.

The first thing to know about chasing this carrot is that there is no carrot. A carrot implies a guaranteed reward. There is no guaranteed reward. You could play the game for the rest of your life and not get one of these recipes.

This isn't a problem for anyone who doesn't absolutely want one of these, which is probably the case for the majority of players in the game. Many are unaware that it is even an option that could drop. When they get it, they are pleasantly surprised, and that is what is really intended.

This is a problem for those who do absolutely want one. They are trying to guarantee a reward in a situation where the game itself does not. Now they are deliberately farming the item, and part of the deliberately calculated decision is to make sure that people who do farm these items do not flood the game with them.

From a design perspective, they can change the reward so that it is guaranteed for all who attempt it after a prescribed amount of work. They can make it a reward for a quest, or create a series of stages that must be completed in order to get the reward. This is assuming that they want to guarantee the reward for all who attempt it.

Another thing they can do is make it so that it is easier to get, but bind it to the player so that the player is the only one who benefits. BoP. This helps prevent rare drops from becoming too common. With recipes, that means that eventually the player gets these recipes and they are junk. They already know it and no one else can use it.

Drummerx04 · October 2017

lordrichter wrote: »

MasterSpatula wrote: »

ZOS must be completely aware by now that the playerbase is largely fed up with atrocious-droprate RNG grinds, but they're utterly committed to this inherently bad mechanic. They have us chasing quasi-imagionary carrots because someone over there thinks it leads to a solid revenue stream. If anyone at ZOS were in touch with reality enough to know the effect that customer satisfaction has on revenue, they'd be putting a stop to this immediately.

This game is built from the ground up on RNG. They are not only committed to it, it is the main tool in thier toolbox. This is hardly surprising as this is an RPG.

The bottom line is that they use a low probability random drop because not everyone is intended to get one of these recipes. The time required is undefined and the effort only pays off as a statistical probability that cannot guarantee a reward within a certain amount of time. It is not an inherently bad mechanic, it is a deliberate, calculated, decision.

The first thing to know about chasing this carrot is that there is no carrot. A carrot implies a guaranteed reward. There is no guaranteed reward. You could play the game for the rest of your life and not get one of these recipes.

This isn't a problem for anyone who doesn't absolutely want one of these, which is probably the case for the majority of players in the game. Many are unaware that it is even an option that could drop. When they get it, they are pleasantly surprised, and that is what is really intended.

This is a problem for those who do absolutely want one. They are trying to guarantee a reward in a situation where the game itself does not. Now they are deliberately farming the item, and part of the deliberately calculated decision is to make sure that people who do farm these items do not flood the game with them.

From a design perspective, they can change the reward so that it is guaranteed for all who attempt it after a prescribed amount of work. They can make it a reward for a quest, or create a series of stages that must be completed in order to get the reward. This is assuming that they want to guarantee the reward for all who attempt it.

Another thing they can do is make it so that it is easier to get, but bind it to the player so that the player is the only one who benefits. BoP. This helps prevent rare drops from becoming too common. With recipes, that means that eventually the player gets these recipes and they are junk. They already know it and no one else can use it.

An excellent and honest deconstruction of why RNG can be a good thing.

Naturally it falls flat when you get into situations like,
"I can clear vMA in < 40 minutes with no deaths and have done so 200 times, but I've never seen a destruction staff in the weekly rewards or from the chest"

vs

"I struggled for hours in vMA across 32 play sessions and was rewarded with a sharpened (back when OP) lightning destruction staff as my first and only drop so I never have to run again lololololol!!"

Essentially, this game's rng does a very poor job of rewarding skill based accomplishments.

Stormahawk · October 2017

Apache_Kid wrote: »

Stormahawk wrote: »

Drop rates seem to be a difficult thing to balance.

On one end, you have furniture plans like those Daedric Platforms that drop often enough that the plan is literally cheaper than the craft cost of the furniture, meaning there is no reason to ever craft and sell it (I just delete them when I get them since they aren't even worth vendoring).

On the other hand you have things like the Ayleid Bookcase that go for a 1million gold+ due to the rarity.

The difference in the drop rate between the two could very well be as small as 0.01%, but when you have hundreds of thousands of players farming it, it makes all the difference.

I'm willing to say without question that the drop rate of the daedric bench, ashen isn't anywhere remotely freaking close to the Ayleid Bookcase...

The point is that it's something difficult to balance, and something that looks like a small change can have a pretty big effect. You can probably agree that the drop rates on the Daedric Bench plans are too high and getting them as drops is annoying rather than rewarding. The question is, what drop rate is good for making plans feel rewarding, rare, and exciting, but without making them impossible or too common? And how to determine what that rate should be?

CaffeinatedMayhem · October 2017

lordrichter wrote: »

This game is built from the ground up on RNG. They are not only committed to it, it is the main tool in thier toolbox. This is hardly surprising as this is an RPG.

The bottom line is that they use a low probability random drop because not everyone is intended to get one of these recipes. The time required is undefined and the effort only pays off as a statistical probability that cannot guarantee a reward within a certain amount of time. It is not an inherently bad mechanic, it is a deliberate, calculated, decision.

Then where do I sign up to be one that gets them? I sub and pay what I can in Crowns, I deserve to be able to play the game and get stuff I want.

code65536 · October 2017

lordrichter wrote: »

MasterSpatula wrote: »

ZOS must be completely aware by now that the playerbase is largely fed up with atrocious-droprate RNG grinds, but they're utterly committed to this inherently bad mechanic. They have us chasing quasi-imagionary carrots because someone over there thinks it leads to a solid revenue stream. If anyone at ZOS were in touch with reality enough to know the effect that customer satisfaction has on revenue, they'd be putting a stop to this immediately.

This game is built from the ground up on RNG. They are not only committed to it, it is the main tool in thier toolbox. This is hardly surprising as this is an RPG.

The bottom line is that they use a low probability random drop because not everyone is intended to get one of these recipes. The time required is undefined and the effort only pays off as a statistical probability that cannot guarantee a reward within a certain amount of time. It is not an inherently bad mechanic, it is a deliberate, calculated, decision.

The first thing to know about chasing this carrot is that there is no carrot. A carrot implies a guaranteed reward. There is no guaranteed reward. You could play the game for the rest of your life and not get one of these recipes.

This isn't a problem for anyone who doesn't absolutely want one of these, which is probably the case for the majority of players in the game. Many are unaware that it is even an option that could drop. When they get it, they are pleasantly surprised, and that is what is really intended.

This is a problem for those who do absolutely want one. They are trying to guarantee a reward in a situation where the game itself does not. Now they are deliberately farming the item, and part of the deliberately calculated decision is to make sure that people who do farm these items do not flood the game with them.

From a design perspective, they can change the reward so that it is guaranteed for all who attempt it after a prescribed amount of work. They can make it a reward for a quest, or create a series of stages that must be completed in order to get the reward. This is assuming that they want to guarantee the reward for all who attempt it.

Another thing they can do is make it so that it is easier to get, but bind it to the player so that the player is the only one who benefits. BoP. This helps prevent rare drops from becoming too common. With recipes, that means that eventually the player gets these recipes and they are junk. They already know it and no one else can use it.

The problem is that this is game in the Elder Scrolls franchise. A lot of players come into this game from the other TES games. These are largely single-player games where people strive for completionism.

So the first problem is single- vs. multi-player. A number of people have pointed out that if you don't get the plan, that shouldn't be a problem: just buy the item from someone who found the plan. This works in theory, but in practice, a lot of people who get a plan don't bother to craft copies of it for sale. This is in part because people who do want to participate in trade will find that the market is pretty cumbersome: you have a very limited number of sales slots, you are reliant on your guild being able to maintain a trader stall, and it's very hard to let potential buyers know that you have a unique furnishing for sale at a particular location (TTC helps a bit with that, but it's only on PC and only a small subset of the player base use it). Buyers don't want to scour all of Tamriel and slogging through the utterly useless vanilla store UI to find the one trader that has a particular Telvanni lamp for sale, and sellers have to deal with the hassles of limited listings and the difficulty of connecting buyers to your product. In short, the current guild-kiosk model is not well-suited for the furnishing market. It's fine for commodities--when you're looking at large quantities of a relatively narrow selection of items that are sought after and supplied by large numbers of people. But it's a horrible system for a unique wares market--where you have a very wide selection of many thousands of different items, each one selling relatively small quantities to a limited number of interested buyers, available only from a limited number of sellers. So this notion of "it should be rare because you should be buying the crafted item" doesn't really work because the game's mechanics hinder it.

The other side of the single-player bias of TES is that people like being independent. They like doing things themselves and derive enjoyment from doing so. It's fun to find a unique new plan and to craft it. I would much rather acquire a plan and craft it just once, even if that's more expensive than just buying the crafted item from someone. Crafting is a crucial part of this game (it even has its own subforum, after all), and people enjoy crafting because it caters to the single-player TES roots of the player being self-sufficient and resourceful.

The second problem is that people want completionism. That's what TES games have all been about. And until recently, completionism was pretty attainable. It's not easy and took a lot of effort, but those who cared about completionism could reasonably attain it. And that's the way it's always been in ESO, until Morrowind, when completionism of furnishing plans became impossible for all practical intents and purposes. And to salt the wound, Morrowind was an expensive separately-bought expansion, and what do people get? They find that they bought a grind so impossible that they are forced to abandon their completionist way of gameplay after so many years.

Is it any wonder why people are insulted by ZOS?

code65536 · October 2017

Stormahawk wrote: »

And how to determine what that rate should be?

They have metrics. They know exactly how many have dropped. They know exactly how many people have learned it. And they know exactly how much to tweak them to achieve a certain level of saturation. This isn't complicated. The drop rates are what they are because ZOS intended them to be what they are. We are just here questioning that intent.

Also, stop being facetious by saying that the drop rates between the Daedric plans and the Ayleid plans are "as small as 0.01%". The differences are at least an order of magnitude in size if not larger. You know better than that.

Rawkan · October 2017

So don't do it until they're being sold cheaper or they up the drop rates again.

I don't see the harm of having some things really rare though. That's what makes it rare and cool when you finally get it.

code65536 · October 2017

Stormahawk wrote: »

The question is, what drop rate is good for making plans feel rewarding, rare, and exciting, but without making them impossible or too common?

The perfect drop rate could be hard to find, sure. But avoiding the obviously wrong extremes should be pretty easy, too. Let's say I ask someone to pick the geographic center of the continental US. If someone didn't already know the answer, they'd probably need to find a map, get a ruler, and spend some time measuring. But, frankly, I really don't care if they tell me that the center of the US is in Iowa or Missouri or Colorado--it's wrong, but not egregiously wrong. The Morrowind and CwC furnishing drop rates is the equivalent of ZOS telling me that the center of the country is in Oregon. It doesn't exactly take much effort or skill (or a map and ruler, in this analogy) to know that is way, way off.

And to answer your question, if a dedicated player can complete the plans before the next major update adds to the treadmill, then that would be reasonable. Completionism in this case would be out of reach of the mainstream player and of new players who are starting years behind the treadmill. But allowing a dedicated player to keep up with the treadmill would be the least they can do. Right now, even the most hardcore of farmers are reporting that they aren't even remotely close to being able to keep up. And that's just wrong.

Wreuntzylla · October 2017

The fact of it is that I generate hundreds of thousands of gold a week running writs and gave up on being able to afford Vvardenfell motifs or furniture recipes. At the point one page of a motif is selling for 250,000 gold, even after the next DLC comes out, there is a problem.

I continue to play because I am not a hyper completionist, but many of those types are leaving the game. It's not so much the rarity, it's the huge spread of items that are subject to the rarity. New content motifs and furniture recipes absolutely should be difficult to come by, but the drop rate for everything that came before should have skyrocketed. If for no other reason than the fact that far fewer people will be playing prior content.

Azura help the casuals.

Wraithscream · October 2017

I've been farming urns since Morrowind dropped. Zero epic Morrowind patterns.

This is that main factor pushing me away from the game. I have posted here on the forums, I have pm'ed the mods. They will not respond. Each day I wake up hoping to have a message from them about these issues and each day I'm disappointed.

KingMagaw · October 2017

code65536 wrote: »

And to answer your question, if a dedicated player can complete the plans before the next major update adds to the treadmill, then that would be reasonable. Completionism in this case would be out of reach of the mainstream player and of new players who are starting years behind the treadmill. But allowing a dedicated player to keep up with the treadmill would be the least they can do. Right now, even the most hardcore of farmers are reporting that they aren't even remotely close to being able to keep up. And that's just wrong.

This problem is also compounded by ZOS intentionally not updating the envelopes the writ vendor sells. This has been done on purpose, many threads made about it and tagging @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom has yielded 0 results on if ZOS are intentionally doing this, they forgot, or it is bugged.

Some things should be held rare, i agree. Hardly purple furnishing plans for people to dress houses that are purchased with crowns, on a DLC that was purchased for crowns, in a game that was paid for and people subscribe to.

kevlarto_ESO · October 2017

Sounds like a new item soon in the crown store LOL yea zos has a way to suck the fun out of most things they touch these days.

Stormahawk · October 2017

code65536 wrote: »

Stormahawk wrote: »

The question is, what drop rate is good for making plans feel rewarding, rare, and exciting, but without making them impossible or too common?

And to answer your question, if a dedicated player can complete the plans before the next major update adds to the treadmill, then that would be reasonable. Completionism in this case would be out of reach of the mainstream player and of new players who are starting years behind the treadmill. But allowing a dedicated player to keep up with the treadmill would be the least they can do. Right now, even the most hardcore of farmers are reporting that they aren't even remotely close to being able to keep up. And that's just wrong.

Number of sources is something to consider too without needing to change drop rates much. Ayleid bookshelves can only come from mobs killed in Ayleid ruins, which is pretty limited and you have to go out of your way for (and the drop rates are low). For Daedric Benches, Daedra can drop plans and aren't locked to a specific area, and are also commonly farmed in dolmens for XP.

For every mob killed in an Ayleid ruin, you may have 100 Daedra killed through normal player activity which significantly boosts the number of Daedric plans dropped (this is what I failed to explain by saying the Ayleid plan drop rate may not be hugely lower, maybe a factor of 10, but I am just guessing here.) However, the limited farming sources for Ayleid plans combined with low drop rates really hurt it. In fact, I bet that the recent Daedric plans (like the Daedric Doorway) have very similar drop rates to the Ayleid Bookcase, but because the Doorway comes from so many more sources you can find the Daedric Doorway plan for 150K on TTC vs 1.2 million for the Ayleid Bookcase.

It would be nice to see the sources of CWC plans go beyond stealing. Right now it seems the effective way to get the CWC plans is to steal from specific containers, which is not something most people do and the drop rate are abysmal. If the CWC plans are expanded to drop from more common player activity such delve or world bosses, it would help quite a bit without needing to change drop rates.

FLuFFyxMuFFiN · October 2017

Drummerx04 wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

MasterSpatula wrote: »

ZOS must be completely aware by now that the playerbase is largely fed up with atrocious-droprate RNG grinds, but they're utterly committed to this inherently bad mechanic. They have us chasing quasi-imagionary carrots because someone over there thinks it leads to a solid revenue stream. If anyone at ZOS were in touch with reality enough to know the effect that customer satisfaction has on revenue, they'd be putting a stop to this immediately.

This game is built from the ground up on RNG. They are not only committed to it, it is the main tool in thier toolbox. This is hardly surprising as this is an RPG.

The bottom line is that they use a low probability random drop because not everyone is intended to get one of these recipes. The time required is undefined and the effort only pays off as a statistical probability that cannot guarantee a reward within a certain amount of time. It is not an inherently bad mechanic, it is a deliberate, calculated, decision.

The first thing to know about chasing this carrot is that there is no carrot. A carrot implies a guaranteed reward. There is no guaranteed reward. You could play the game for the rest of your life and not get one of these recipes.

This isn't a problem for anyone who doesn't absolutely want one of these, which is probably the case for the majority of players in the game. Many are unaware that it is even an option that could drop. When they get it, they are pleasantly surprised, and that is what is really intended.

This is a problem for those who do absolutely want one. They are trying to guarantee a reward in a situation where the game itself does not. Now they are deliberately farming the item, and part of the deliberately calculated decision is to make sure that people who do farm these items do not flood the game with them.

From a design perspective, they can change the reward so that it is guaranteed for all who attempt it after a prescribed amount of work. They can make it a reward for a quest, or create a series of stages that must be completed in order to get the reward. This is assuming that they want to guarantee the reward for all who attempt it.

Another thing they can do is make it so that it is easier to get, but bind it to the player so that the player is the only one who benefits. BoP. This helps prevent rare drops from becoming too common. With recipes, that means that eventually the player gets these recipes and they are junk. They already know it and no one else can use it.

An excellent and honest deconstruction of why RNG can be a good thing.

Naturally it falls flat when you get into situations like,
"I can clear vMA in < 40 minutes with no deaths and have done so 200 times, but I've never seen a destruction staff in the weekly rewards or from the chest"

vs

"I struggled for hours in vMA across 32 play sessions and was rewarded with a sharpened (back when OP) lightning destruction staff as my first and only drop so I never have to run again lololololol!!"

Essentially, this game's rng does a very poor job of rewarding skill based accomplishments.

RNG is ZOS' only tool to keep people playing older content