The Cartel behind Morrowind and CWC furnishing plan

I_killed_Vivec · November 2017

itreboiz wrote: »

Unlikely_Ghostbuster wrote: »

Kahina wrote: »

newtinmpls wrote: »

I admit, OP lost me after "I spent 15 mil gold". Cripes, I worked my patootie off for a month to scrape and afford the witches house.

15 million?

Really really hard to be sympathetic.

It should make it easy, not hard. A player who can spend 15 million (not much once you get into trading at the high end) laments the drop rates of furniture recipes. AKA, the availability.

If they can't satisfy themselves, what hope does a casual player have?

Ain't that the truth?

15m is definitely the high-end of the spectrum. I was a bit off-put by the figure, too. But that just adds more weight to the point, here: what hope is there for those of us who have been steadily acquiring furniture recipes, casually?

I understand ZOS wants people to buy furniture with Crowns. But if someone with 15m can't get all the recipes in-game, then perhaps the drop rate is a bit too low.

I blame the drop rate, yes. That drives prices up, certainly.

But prices have also been getting more inflated due to the unchanged limitations of guild traders. A player can only be in five guilds, and can only sell 30 items in each store (if that guild has trading enabled). To my knowledge, it's been 30 slots ever since guild stores were implemented in 2014. Now, it's three years later, and the number of items in the game that can be sold through guild traders has dramatically increased, but there hasn't been a corresponding increase in "output" nodes for these additional items.

Sure, we get five or six new guild traders in each new DLC zone, and each Outlaws Refuge has one, but the rate at which new guild stores come out is a far cry from the rate at which ZOS adds new items to the game. The economy is far too restricted, so it's very easy for prices to be astronomical; not because of limited supply, because of limited distribution.

Let's say you're a semi-casual, semi-serious player and you're fortunate enough to be in three guilds with three active traders, maybe one in a major quest hub if you're very lucky. You can only sell 90 items at a time, and you're going to put your best loot into the guild store with the most-trafficked trader. That's not much. If you play 10-20 hours a week, unless all of your drops are BOP, you're going to be selling a lot of stuff as trash to merchants.

The economy would be a lot healthier, prices would go down, and players would be happier if ZOS increased the limit on items sold through a guild store from 30 to 50, each. People like the author of this thread would be able to find the recipes they want for a fair price because there would be sufficient availability for price competition to emerge.

As it stands, depending on what you're looking for, there's no guarantee it's for sale someplace (let alone that you can afford it). I was stunned the first time I saw a recipe for sale for $2.8m because I knew it wasn't the intrinsic value of the recipe -- it was the rarity of the drop, the visibility of the guild trader, and THEN the value of the actual item.

Some of the rules in ESO's economy are either stupidly arbitrary or transparently motivated. I can't decide whether it's more likely the 30-items limitation is stupidly arbitrary or if they truly believe it pressures players to buy items with Crowns.

Bringing up slots for 30 to 50 will not change anithing. If you know what to farm and the right price u need only 1 trade guild and 30 slots to make millions...

the points are:

- or drastically increment the drop rate
- or update rolis hlaalu random recipe drop

Time ago in homestead the more rares recipe were the redguard ones. But was affordable even at 75-100k/each purple recipe. Now at 450k+ it's crazy. I can't spend my life farmign for buying furnishing recipe....

I think the point was that the limitation reduces the variety of goods people put up for sale.

From my own experience, about half of what I put up for sale goes very quickly, the rest will be more niche items that take some time to be sold. If I had more slots I might put more of the niche items up for sale more often (a lot get vendor trashed).

And if everyone did that then the chances of finding a particular item will go up.

Probably not by much though.

The real problem that I'm experiencing is the grind to get the new sets when I haven't even got the Morrowind ones complete yet. I like to take my time over new DLC (I know, my fault) but it is a bit overwhelming to see all the new motifs on top of the previous ones... makes me wonder if I can be bothered any more...

Wraithscream · November 2017

I've started threads about this. I have email and sent personal messages to every dev I could find. Zero replies.

Some quick points:
Let's say you buy the big Morrowind House. It's easily attainable and the price is reasonable. Now you get to decorate it but the patterns have a drop rate so low that they are the rarest items in the game. So you go check out the crown furniture store. I wrote down how much it would cost to decorate a house buying the furniture. Over $300. They are not thinking this strategy through at all and seem to be shooting themselves in the foot. People will buy a few pieces. Not 400.

Now there are two solutions here.

1: Make the patterns have a better drop rate. This is the most straight forward. I know 5 purple Morrowind patterns since the xpac dropped. That is over 1000 urn runs and tons of hours of gameplay. NOBODY gets enjoyment out of making 5 items. The reason Homestead was so popular was they added so many items and the recipes are attainable.

2: Make certain items exclusive to the crown store. Don't tease us with knowing there is a pattern out there but knowing it's completely out of reach. There are already items in the crown store that you cannot make. They can expand this. But they need to at least give people enough recipes to actually decorate a portion of their homes. Who the hell could decorate the new clockwork house? The purple patterns are nonexistent. So it would take a person with a huge disposable income to buy the home and decorate it.

I'm so tired of talking about this issue.

Katahdin · November 2017

@Wraithscream

I agree with you 100%

Sadly, it doesn't seem like it will ever change.
They dont care. They are woefully silent.
They want us to buy it in the crown store and thats it, period.

I guess my Morrowind house will be relegated to storage only since I can't find those patterns either. Just glad I bought it with gold instead of crowns, just wish I'd saved myself the 1.2 million and not bought it at all.

So because they have to nickel and dime us for these furnishings, they will lose a sale for the CWC house. I won't buy it if I can't find the patterns in game and my only options are to spend every gold coin I can manage to farm for a year or spend $$$ in the crown store.

Ill say it again. Penny wise, dollar foolish.

Wreuntzylla · November 2017

Wraithscream wrote: »

I've started threads about this. I have email and sent personal messages to every dev I could find. Zero replies.

Some quick points:
Let's say you buy the big Morrowind House. It's easily attainable and the price is reasonable. Now you get to decorate it but the patterns have a drop rate so low that they are the rarest items in the game. So you go check out the crown furniture store. I wrote down how much it would cost to decorate a house buying the furniture. Over $300. They are not thinking this strategy through at all and seem to be shooting themselves in the foot. People will buy a few pieces. Not 400.

Now there are two solutions here.

1: Make the patterns have a better drop rate. This is the most straight forward. I know 5 purple Morrowind patterns since the xpac dropped. That is over 1000 urn runs and tons of hours of gameplay. NOBODY gets enjoyment out of making 5 items. The reason Homestead was so popular was they added so many items and the recipes are attainable.

2: Make certain items exclusive to the crown store. Don't tease us with knowing there is a pattern out there but knowing it's completely out of reach. There are already items in the crown store that you cannot make. They can expand this. But they need to at least give people enough recipes to actually decorate a portion of their homes. Who the hell could decorate the new clockwork house? The purple patterns are nonexistent. So it would take a person with a huge disposable income to buy the home and decorate it.

I'm so tired of talking about this issue.

Not thinking the strategy through? I beg to differ.

"Chris' behavior during this time is how people in the video game industry would describe a "whale"-- someone who spends large amounts on free-to-play games, and essentially makes the business model viable by balancing out the 99 percent of players who don't ever fork out a dime."

"It got so bad that at one point Steam actually blocked my credit card, thinking I was some sort of account scammer, and I had to open a support ticket to tell them, 'No, that really is me spending whatever savings I have on this stupid game with fake hats.'" he says. "And like any addicted user, my social element didn't help -- most of my outside-of-work contacts were people I just played TF2 with. At work I just wanted to be uncrating things, and when I was uncrating things I just wanted to see better results."

"The average casino will earn 80% of its yearly profits from whales[.]"

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/195806/chasing_the_whale_examining_the_.php?page=1

https://www.casino.org/blog/meet-the-men-who-gambled-away-up-to-200-million/

Wraithscream · November 2017

I still think it's a dumb strategy in the long term. Catering to less than 1% of players while ignoring and pissing off another 20% (I know a lot of people who are pissed at housing problems but I'm not positive on numbers) of them does not seem to be the way to retain subscribers. Housing extends the playtime of a game. But if you make it a horrible horrible grind then people will get frustrated and leave. The furnishings recipes are getting rarer and rarer with each update. What's next? No more patterns and just the furniture crown store? Would not surprise me.

So yes, they can live off the whales but if you lose a large part of your player base can the whales keep you afloat?

Latonia · November 2017

A month on since the release of CWC and despite doing the dailies and having completed most if not all quests including the main quest line, not a single housing pattern has dropped. At the beginning i searched every single barrel and crate but they only give provisioning mats so given up on that now. It's pointless buying the CWC house if you don't have the plans for furnishing it and I refuse to buy from the Crown Store.

I 100% agree with the suggestions made that there could be a daily quest which gives furniture plans and Rolis Hlaalu. should be updated to give Wardenfell and CWC plans.

Jayne_Doe · November 2017

100% agree!

I just found my 6th purple MW furnishing plan after almost a month since the last one. And, it happened to be my first Telvanni plan.

But, you know what? I've already furnished my MW homes by purchasing from guild traders and making the few items I could make myself. So, now, I don't need any Telvanni Bookshelves, Organic. I could, of course, make some and put up for sale, but prices aren't near what they were at launch. Those who got lucky early made a good deal of bank. Those of us who got lucky later can't make nearly as much making the same things.

Also, I just don't want to waste my own mats on making furniture to sell when I have other houses I still want to decorate. I'm saving my mats for myself and selling other things to make money. I appreciate those who do make furniture, as I've purchased quite a bit from other players, but for me, it's not worth putting anything up for sale when I'd rather have the mats to use for my own decorating.

Just set up Rolis in the DLC areas and have him offer the DLC furniture plans for, say, 100 WVs. That would give many a reason to continue doing MWs.

Apache_Kid · November 2017

How are you guys fully resetting the urns in these tombs in Vvardenfell? I've decided to try and farm the urns for some furnishings and the first time I go in the tomb, tons of urns have stuff in them, then, I leave, log out and log back in and there are way less urns that aren't empty compared to the first time I go in. Am I not resetting it correctly or is this just how it is?

mareikeb16_ESO · November 2017

It need 10 mins or so till the dungeon resets.
The best way is to have two chars at the dungeon. Run with the first char and clear all urns, then log to the second char and do the same. Then log back to the first char and so on...

Feric51 · November 2017

mareikeb16_ESO wrote: »

It need 10 mins or so till the dungeon resets.
The best way is to have two chars at the dungeon. Run with the first char and clear all urns, then log to the second char and do the same. Then log back to the first char and so on...

^^ Basically this...

I currently have four of my alts parked in the tomb. At the beginning of each day I cycle through them, use my banker to deposit valuable finds and my merchant to clear out the trash before logging into my main for the evening. I always leave my main in a bank so I can log in, learn any recipes or plans that I don't have and list the remainder in my traders.

I've gotten so many green recipes and basic racial plans that I'm clogging up my guild bank and mailing them to random guild members just to get rid of them.

I was told there is a 30 minute cool-down on the tombs to reset, but I haven't actually confirmed a definitive time. @Apache_Kid my guess is the urns you're able to loot the second time you log in are only the ones that spawned "empty" the first time you went in.

I've been able to get my complete run down to about 6 minutes per character. That's hitting all three chambers, going outside to get the treasure chest to the NE and the backpack on the wagon outside, selling trash and banking valuables. One thing I've found beneficial is to switch to 1st-person view in the second chamber where the urns are stacked close together. This helps especially if other players are in there, and even more so to avoid getting line-of-sight blocked by pets.

Apache_Kid · November 2017

Ahhh understood. I was doing it all wrong I see.

Thanks guys @mareikeb16_ESO @Feric51

FloppyTouch · November 2017

Didn’t read any post I’m sure I’ll get hate but it’s nice for them to be super low. Hear me out on this. Crafting in games should be a social thing we need to work together to get the stuff we want. Even if you got just one of the rare blueprints you can use that to craft for someone else that has another one you want making this more of an mmorpg.

I know everyone wants to have all the things so they don’t need anyone and can just do everything urself but the defeats the purpose of playing a social game. Plenty of crafting guilds and housing guilds around join one and help each other out.

I also know that I’m sure the low drop rate was to sell more crown store stuff but it also works as a way for us to play together.

I also like that I can sell my rare blueprint already crafted items and they sell in guild traders bc it cheaper then buying the blueprint. I mean how many beds do you need? So people just want to buy a bed for 15k instead of buying the plans for 100k.

helediron · November 2017

FloppyTouch wrote: »

Didn’t read any post I’m sure I’ll get hate but it’s nice for them to be super low.
...snip...

DO read before posting. This is about major parts of game moving behind microtransactions by making in-game alternatives virtually impossible.

Apache_Kid · November 2017

FloppyTouch wrote: »

Didn’t read any post I’m sure I’ll get hate but it’s nice for them to be super low. Hear me out on this. Crafting in games should be a social thing we need to work together to get the stuff we want. Even if you got just one of the rare blueprints you can use that to craft for someone else that has another one you want making this more of an mmorpg.

I know everyone wants to have all the things so they don’t need anyone and can just do everything urself but the defeats the purpose of playing a social game. Plenty of crafting guilds and housing guilds around join one and help each other out.

I also know that I’m sure the low drop rate was to sell more crown store stuff but it also works as a way for us to play together.

I also like that I can sell my rare blueprint already crafted items and they sell in guild traders bc it cheaper then buying the blueprint. I mean how many beds do you need? So people just want to buy a bed for 15k instead of buying the plans for 100k.

If you read before posting you'd find a lot of constructive arguments against your point.

Also i've played for a long time almost every day and I have never ever seen a "crafting or housing guild" recruiting in zone-chat a single time on Xbox NA.

These low-drop rates have nothing to do with making crafting a social activity. It is entirely about driving people to the crown store to buy the furniture instead. This is a disgusting tactic to push micro-transactions in my opinion and the opinion of many others.

victoriana-blue · December 2017

FloppyTouch wrote: »

Didn’t read any post I’m sure I’ll get hate but it’s nice for them to be super low. Hear me out on this. Crafting in games should be a social thing we need to work together to get the stuff we want. Even if you got just one of the rare blueprints you can use that to craft for someone else that has another one you want making this more of an mmorpg.

I know everyone wants to have all the things so they don’t need anyone and can just do everything urself but the defeats the purpose of playing a social game. Plenty of crafting guilds and housing guilds around join one and help each other out.

I also know that I’m sure the low drop rate was to sell more crown store stuff but it also works as a way for us to play together.

I also like that I can sell my rare blueprint already crafted items and they sell in guild traders bc it cheaper then buying the blueprint. I mean how many beds do you need? So people just want to buy a bed for 15k instead of buying the plans for 100k.

That "rare plans result in social crafting" plan has a fatal flaw: I use my plan collection to craft for guildies. So do many other people in this discussion. Few people were ever going to get 'em all because there are over two thousand furnishing plans in the game, and collecting them takes time & effort; even if the MW & CWC drop rates were the same as base game plans, most players would ask around for a crafter because furniture crafting takes time and skill points.

I'll never use all my plans myself, but if someone needed one I could make it for them. Up until Morrowind, anyway, when the low plan drop rate made the recipes ridiculously difficult to get hold of even for completionist millionaires like me. (I'd like to be on your server, if you can get MW & CWC purples for only 100k! I usually see them at 250k+.) Then people stopped caring as much about decorating because they couldn't get all the items they needed at a reasonable price.. if they were for sale at all. My furniture crafting requests have gone from a couple a week to one or two a month, and even then I have to pass on a lot of them because I'm still at zero non-Daedric purple MW or CWC plans.

Besides which. When a candle costs 10-14k to pay for the style items alone, the prices aren't reasonable, and the margins are stupidly small for the seller. I'm glad you're making a profit but I'm better off selling mats than assembled furniture, and that's a sign that the market is borked.