I just use the dirty cheap Alliance pots that give Major Brutality/Sorcery; They last a fairly decent length of time and it's not like Tri Pots are required for the majority of content either that you can easily get away with using them for pretty much everyting.

Anyone can earn AP just being a healbot or capturing resources/keeps and even if PvP isn't your thing, town quests grant AP to buy the potions too.

Carbonised wrote: »

Twohothardware wrote: »

Carbonised wrote: »

Twohothardware wrote: »

Erraln wrote: »

I don't know what server you're playing on, but on PC-NA nearly every alchemy ingredient has gone down 10-30% in price since Summerset dropped. Crafted pots are down to match... for just one example, at one point last year Spellpower potions were at 170-200g each, and now they're at 130-150. Improvement mats and other base materials are also down a good deal. If I had to guess why, I'd say that a large amount of invested, endgame players all needed lots of gold at the same time to level their jewelry crafting with. Selling their unneeded mats provided liquidity, and supply for crafting items of all types went up as those subscriber craftbags got emptied out.

So, what epoch are you comparing today's prices to? Because unless you want to cook with Pearl Powder, most combinations are cheaper to craft this month than any time this year so far. At least on my server.

And as for 80k Corn Flower stacks, That's not common at all:

I'm on PS4 and the economy on console isn't like it is on PC, trader pricing runs higher for everything and theres no mods that helps you find deals.

Then it's a console problem and not an alchemy mat problem, you see.

This also goes for pretty much everything else on console, regarding prices and traders.

Yeah but you can't base whether or not something should be adjusted on external factors like the number of people currently farming for something on PC is high so it therefore drives down the price in PC Traders. You also can't base it on the ease of getting Alchemy mats through farming Tel Var from IC district bosses which is a separate DLC that's barely even active any more on console.

Yes I can. Several furniture recipes do not exist on PC EU due to lower playerbase, yet they are for sale in guild stores on PC NA. There are population differences, and that's just how it is.

Also, I suspect the issue is not population, but rather the lack of pricing addons. On PC we have heavy use of MM and TTC which drives down prices due to easy competition, whereas console prices have always been higher due to less transparency of the market.

That's just how it is, have always been, and that is the console problem I was referring to. Putting more alchemy mats into circulation does not in any way or form adress this console problem, it's just a small band aid on this very small aspect of a larger problem.

And as has been said multiple times, if you don't want to pay prices you think are too high, then you can either farm mats yourself in Coldharb or elsewhere, you can farm TV stones and buy them, or you can do writs and harvest from surveys, and you can use the Dark Brotherhood daily alchemy option.
That's plenty of options already. Like two people have already mentioned, prices have been cut in half or more on both PC EU and NA, so no, we do not want the market flooded with even more alchemy mats and lower prices, just because they are more expensive on consoles, just like everything is more expensive on consoles.

And like I have said like 4 times already, why do you simply not use the extremely cheap dropped potions? What kind of content do you really need to do with tripots and spellpower pots? The vast majority of the players can stick to dropped pots with no notable difference.

You sound like you're more worried about how much you personally are making selling Alchemy mats to others vs whether or not the general eso population would benefit from increasing Alchemy drops through getting more from nodes, adding a Hireling, etc.

Kind of like the same arguments made against being able to transmute gear which lowered prices on the best traits or how just now they're reducing the cost to upgrade Jewelry by half as well as adding Jewelry mats to Rubedite nodes all things that will drive down Jewelry mat prices on all platforms.

On one hand you can't say you don't want the market flooded with more Alchemy mats and lower prices and at the same time say putting more Alchemy mats into circulation in no way addresses the console problem. Because I ncreasing the drop per node in all overland zones would absolutely make it easier for the average ESO player to farm Alchemy allowing them to use the better potions more often like those that can afford to just buy them.

Beamer_Miasma wrote: »

Twohothardware wrote: »

... it makes it so that you're only able to use the better potions sparingly.

That's exactly how they are meant to be used, so I don't really see the problem. If you are popping potions all the time, you either need to examine and upgrade your gear and skills so you don't need to, or possibly you are a player who is focusing exclusively on the hardest content in the game, in which case it is to be expected that you will need to use every trick in the toolbox, including the expensive ones.

Food is meant to be used all the time, but pots are either a panic button or an overdrive mode and only to be used in more difficult situations. If you are in overdrive mode all the time, you'll burn out (your wallet in this case). Makes good sense to me.

I fully understand that but the point I'm trying to make is that especially in the case of PVP the best potions have a big impact on sustain, healing, speed, CC immunity, etc and the players that can afford it are using those pots at all times and we even have builds now post Summerset that rely on Infused Jewelry with potion cooldown glyphs where u can get the buffs from two different pots going at the same time.

Now if this type of usage that comes with those advanges is just meant for the ESO rich and those that invest a lot of time into farming how does that square with them making it so that upgrading gear from purple to gold nets you very minimal gains while being incredibly expensive especially in the case of Jewelry? They want all gold gear to be like a 2% advantage over those in purple but ignore all the advantages from chugging expensive pots?

Erraln wrote: »

Twohothardware wrote: »

You sound like you're more worried about how much you personally are making selling Alchemy mats to others vs whether or not the general eso population would benefit from increasing Alchemy drops through getting more from nodes, adding a Hireling, etc.

In turn, this topic seems to be a plea by you to the developers to allow you to easily access a system that you don't personally have the time to use. You've brushed off the suggested farming methods people have given you, and are trying to paint the people who don't believe the current system needs changes as driven by greed. You're also indirectly asking for the entire game's herb value to be debased in order to convenience yourself. Yes, more supply means less value in each item.

This topic has nothing to do with me beyond being annoyed at the need to stand at an Alchemy station for 15 minutes pressing Square. I have over 10 million gold and thousands of Alchemy mats and as I stated in my original post am one of the ones that can afford to buy all of my mats. But I also farm them and the time spent in order to craft enough of the popular pots is excessive for the average ESO player and results in the majority of players having to rely on those trash pots while playing against players all using expensive pots.

Erraln wrote: »

Pots are accessible in every city's kiosks, a player just needs to farm up the gold.

Humbug. 150g for something that covers less than a minute of gameplay is not "accessible".

I know a lot of people who don't have the time to do writs or farm gold. They only have 3-4 hours of time to play. They'll log on, raid for 3 hours, and not have much time left. Are you suggesting that they run laps around Coldharbor for the remainder of their time?

But vet trials drop plunder, you say. First, the plunder from vet trials isn't that much--you get enough gold for maybe 100 potions, a good chunk of which is used running the trial itself. If you are reliably clearing, it's a bit better than break-even. But what if you're not reliably clearing? Progression raiding is extremely expensive--you're wiping for 3 hours a night, consuming hundreds of potions (which are not optional for vet trials), and getting no plunder to help pay for it all.

There are those in the endgame community who have the time to do writs and participate in other economic activity. I'm one of those people, and I never worry about my potion supply. But I know a lot of my peers don't have that luxury. They have the time to either raid or farm, but not both.

And that's the problem with potion accessibility--it's making people choose between doing the content that they want and doing what essentially amounts to work. A game is supposed to be an escape from work, not an extension of it.

Mystrius_Archaion wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

There are those in the endgame community who have the time to do writs and participate in other economic activity. I'm one of those people, and I never worry about my potion supply. But I know a lot of my peers don't have that luxury. They have the time to either raid or farm, but not both.

And that's the problem with potion accessibility--it's making people choose between doing the content that they want and doing what essentially amounts to work. A game is supposed to be an escape from work, not an extension of it.

That's the problem with the entire game. Everything is not exactly "quick" to do while the list of those "not quick things" is growing larger and larger every day.
Newer players are screwed, even without including slower veterans or limited time.

This is the real problem. 4 years accruing mats and gold v 4 months makes a huge difference when doing PvP or trials.

I have everything i need to supply my 4 month old warden with enough pots to do vet trial progression runs once or twice a week. She uses tripots/tri spell damage potions every 45 secs in boss fights. I also keep a pvp templar playing the rest of the time. She uses 40 immovables a day... But i have been farming mats for 3 years and could not have afforded this a year ago.

A player with only 4 months accrued gold and mats does not have the same resources. This limits their ability to do the actual end game content much more than many longer term players realise.

The divide caused by the 'grinding and hording gear over time' multiplier is mitigated somewhat by designing new sets to grind for each release but the equality divide amongst alchemy etc crafters is not. Until jewellery. They tried to reduce the great grind and hoard divide by design. The implementation kinda sucked. Which is a pity. But zos has recognised this fundamental disparity

@OP Oh and yeah, crafting multiples would be excellent. A real QOL improvement

Mystrius_Archaion wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

There are those in the endgame community who have the time to do writs and participate in other economic activity. I'm one of those people, and I never worry about my potion supply. But I know a lot of my peers don't have that luxury. They have the time to either raid or farm, but not both.

And that's the problem with potion accessibility--it's making people choose between doing the content that they want and doing what essentially amounts to work. A game is supposed to be an escape from work, not an extension of it.

That's the problem with the entire game. Everything is not exactly "quick" to do while the list of those "not quick things" is growing larger and larger every day.
Newer players are screwed, even without including slower veterans or limited time.

But why should everything be quick to do? There is casual content and then there is harder content. It's called progression. Content becomes accessible when players have put in the work. ESO is an MMO, not Call of Duty. If that's the kind of experience players want then they chose the wrong game. I haven't farmed alchemy pots in a year and I still have at least a stack of everything. And I play 14 different characters, all built for solo/small scale PvP where pot choice makes the biggest difference and I play for at least 2 hours a day minimum. Saving pots has more to do with knowing what to use and when. Trash pots worked perfectly fine for me up until I needed to do Vet Trials and by the time I felt the need to use anything beyond that in PvP I already had a steady flow of resources.

I'm largely a solo PvP player. Anybody who says they need to chug tri-pots on cooldown is flat out wrong. Half of allplay-time is horse simulator and if you're constantly engaged in combat, you're zerg surfing of part of the zerg and therefore you don't need BiS potions. On console, the only legit large scale groups (still active) would be Gooch or Nesquick. Everyone else is really just a zerg lord.

@Twohothardware I've fought you 1v1 on console. I'd consider myself bottom tier of the (non-zerg surfing) solo/small scale community and you weren't exactly what I'd call a hardcore PvP player so I'm assuming you're overstating due to a lack of experience/mechanical understanding. The people I play with can consistently 1v+4 and usually dominate dueling spots and almost everyone mixes in alliance pots, I went from winning every duel in my old guild to lasting less than 20 seconds vs the people I run with now--they are all very good players. Watch some of Miami's videos and you'll see him using trash/alliance pots here and there and he does not ALWAYS proc them on cooldown. You also have to consider that he only posts his best fights. I've seen him 1v4 plenty of times and I doubt he used anything beyond an alliance draught--assumption based off his build and the duration/intensity of fight.

@Carbonised It's partially that. Has more to do with gold farmers though, which are rampant on console. Plenty of people are walking around with +20mil that they bought. I know of a fair amount of prominent players that have been banned for this. You can sell a body pc of impen necropotence for 120k because 120k is just a credit card swipe away.

code65536 wrote: »

Erraln wrote: »

Pots are accessible in every city's kiosks, a player just needs to farm up the gold.

Humbug. 150g for something that covers less than a minute of gameplay is not "accessible".

I know a lot of people who don't have the time to do writs or farm gold. They only have 3-4 hours of time to play. They'll log on, raid for 3 hours, and not have much time left. Are you suggesting that they run laps around Coldharbor for the remainder of their time?

But vet trials drop plunder, you say. First, the plunder from vet trials isn't that much--you get enough gold for maybe 100 potions, a good chunk of which is used running the trial itself. If you are reliably clearing, it's a bit better than break-even. But what if you're not reliably clearing? Progression raiding is extremely expensive--you're wiping for 3 hours a night, consuming hundreds of potions (which are not optional for vet trials), and getting no plunder to help pay for it all.

There are those in the endgame community who have the time to do writs and participate in other economic activity. I'm one of those people, and I never worry about my potion supply. But I know a lot of my peers don't have that luxury. They have the time to either raid or farm, but not both.

And that's the problem with potion accessibility--it's making people choose between doing the content that they want and doing what essentially amounts to work. A game is supposed to be an escape from work, not an extension of it.

Valid points, Trial rewards by themselves don't really cover consumable costs... but do you know how this problem gets solved in my raid group?
"Hey Erraln, can I have / buy some (insert pots of choice)?"
And then they're prepped, because I have the time and materials to make sure of it. I'm not the only person like this in our group, either. I'm sure this is also going on in Nightfighters and all over the place, my group's not special in wanting our friends to be at their best when trying to take on the hard content.

There's a great variety of ways to monetize the content you enjoy, so that you can have fun doing one thing which then translates into empowering your character in a different mode. You know that very well. Making gold shouldn't be a job in a videogame, it's entertainment. If a person cannot find a single game mode which nets them some money for pots, gear, or whatever else that they can have fun with... that's not a problem with Alchemy. That means they don't like playing ESO.

I can't answer what to do when you only have time to run content which requires fully empowered characters, or work to empower your character, but not both. It sounds to me like those people don't have enough time to really be prepped to run Trials, so I hope their friends are helping to meet their needs.

BNOC wrote: »

You can kill all 6 IC district bosses in ~20-30m for 90k stones..

I'm so sad.

I remember when it was "the sweeper is coming - don't attract attention!"

@Mystrius_Archaion
I'm well aware that ZoS wants to lower the ceiling and raise the floor. But that doesn't mean make them the same. May as well just remove the levelling system and CP system and just unlock every passive and skill. The only time that potions really makes a difference i you're trying to compete with the top 1%. Most casuals won't even know there is a difference.

And do you want to know why most of the original players quit? It's because of poor balance. ZoS keeps catering to people that don't understand how to play and it creates all these imbalances. Sypher and Fengrush quit due to the poor balancing, based on too many proc sets and ez mode healing--accessibility to safeties that removed player skill from the game. By removing depth from an MMO you are killings its longevity. Top tier players feel that all their effort is wasted and leave whereas casuals come in thinking they are good, get bored because the game lacks depth and leave as well. The only difference is those casuals had minimal impact on the game whereas Sypher and Feng had a huge following and actively shaped the community. Leave instant accessibility to games like CoD.

Twohothardware wrote: »

I wasn't trying to insult you, as I said I didn't even remember fighting you. I was simply talking about some of the ones I know you were referring to when you said the solo/small scale club. Dovetheangry is one of the few I'll give props to for solo'ing groups. He's the only one I've seen still playing the game that can take on sizeable numbers by himself. It takes a lot less skill to run in groups of 3-4+ because 3-4 timed Ults when you're communicating with each other will kill even a decent size zerg.

"small scale" groups of +4 is more a response to the increased zerg mentality. You just simply aren't going to consistently pull 4-6 players anymore. They come in droves or don't fight until their Crown and their whole zerg is there, and zergs tend to run in pairs in Vivec. Despite that most people don't like going over 4 in a group anyways and even in those groups, its mostly solo play up until you have a group of healer, defile and snare bots all zerging one person. 4 co-ordinated people killing a co-ordinated zerg is still impressive. Nobody cares about a 2v8 or a 2v12. Everyone's chasing that 2v22 ever since miami and abdi did it on eu.

Anyways, that was a pretty big tangent. My original point was--based on my experience I thought you lacked the necessary PvP experience to make that kind of statement.

Moving away from that, myself and many I know use alliance draughts quite extensively, both in duels and open world. They only make a difference in the extreme cases, i.e. a 1v+4. Even in duels against players of your same skill level, it is not necessary to chug BiS pots off cooldown. It really only makes a difference for the players that are min-maxing and those are the types of players that will put the time in to farm anyways.

That feeling of progression is a positive. Players should not enter cyrodil and expect to compete with top tier players. This isn't that type of game.