Carbonised wrote: »

We are now halfway through the PTS cycle, and there are still pressing concerns for some housing and furniture issues.

While ZOS has been swift to respond to several bug issues, dungeon issues and balancing issues, much of these cosmetic and housing issues have largely been ignored.

Since I have made longer posts about this in the past, and since I have several issues, I am going to keep this as short as possible and break up the post in several parts:

Clam alchemy ingredients (powdered pearl/clam gall) in daily writ reward coffers
Concern: This should be a no brainer, on this PTS you added the 2 Summerset alchemy ingredients into the Tel Var bags. Of course they should then also be possible rewards for the alchemy daily writ reward coffers. If you are afraid of too many of these mats in the game, then make them drop only by doing the top level daily writs. May I remind you that it is -a lot- easier to get Tel Var for a huge amount of boxes, while you can only do 1 writ quest per day per char.

Suggested solution: Add the new alchemy mats to the reward boxes.

Culandas
Concern: While the Culanda changes on the PTS is a good start, the required Culandas will still be way more than the supply, especially once people stop doing the Summerset dailies and the new DLCs start coming.

Suggested solution: Change the Gryphon zone set in Summerset from Ancient Elf motif to Sapiarch motif. And/or sell Culandas at the mastercrafter vendor for about 3 vouchers each. 3 vouchers equals about 3k gold, which is a bit higher than the Culanda price, and 6 vouchers, enough for 1 purple item, is what you usually get from the smaller mastercrafter writs (5-7 vouchers). Selling Culandas at the mastercrafter vendor is -a lot- more sensible than requiring the Night Pumice mat for the new gold recipes, which brings us to the next issue.

New Mastercrafter gold furniture recipes
Concern: These Alinor and Psijic themed furnishings should -not- require Night Pumice mats to make. It makes no sense neither from a consistency/immersion perspective, and the voucher cost is too high. Let's look at the evidence:



This is one example, but all these new recipes require 2 Night Pumice mat, per item. That style mat is -only- obtained by paying 2 x 8 vouchers, that is, 16 vouchers at the vendor. 16 vouchers plus a gold mat plus regular mats is way too steep a price for furnishing items, plus it makes no sense from a consistency/immersion/lore perspective to require Ebony materials on Psijic/Alinor recipes.
Also, the name on the levitating bed should be changed from "Alinor bed" to "Psijic bed", as the bed is found in Ceporah Tower, and matches the levitating books which are also Psijic in nature, and not Alinor.

Suggested solution: Change the Night Pumice requirement on all these items to 2 Culandas instead (Molondo for the Psijic bed and Psijic safe), and sell Culandas at the mastercrafter vendor for 3 vouchers each. That's 6 voucher cost to make all these new items, on top of the gold mat and other mats. A more balanced solution than Night Pumice, and also keeps with the consistency of mat requirements for other Alinor and Psijic recipes.

Jewelrycrafting housing recipe costs
Concern: You now significantly lowered the upgrade temper cost of jewelry in this patch (which was a good thing), but left the jewelrycrafting housing recipes untouched, which makes them unduly costly to make, compared to upgrading jewelry.
While upgrading a ring to green will now only require a -single- green Terne temper, making a green simple goblet will take no less than -four- green terne platings. Let's look at the evidence:







Currently, it takes no less than -four- green plates to make a simple green item, -three- for a blue, and -two- for a purple. So while you can make 4 green jewelry rings and wear them, you can for the same materials make a single, plain green cup. Hardly fair. Also, do take note that this is my PC-EU ported character, I have done jewelry dailies on 5 characters every single day since Summerset, collected the surveys and refined all the mats, plus I have harvested a huge amount of jewelry mats and refined them as well, leaving me with easily a few thousand refined platinum ounces. As well as decon'ing a fair amount of jewelry for dust as well. And how many platings have I gotten out of this? Enough to make -five- green simple items, -four- blue and -four- purple ones, if I use up all my materials and have none left for actual jewelry upgrading. I doubt people have a lot more platings than this either, unless they bought them specifically in large numbers.
You realised that the current jewelry upgrading system is unduly punishing and unrewarding and changed it, you need to do the same for jewelry furnishing recipes.

Suggested solution: Change all green, blue and purple jewelrycrafting housing recipes to only require -one- full plating material to make. That is still -ten- normal tempers of all the other crafts, and those recipes usually call for only 3 purple or up to 4-5 lower level tempers to make. One full plating per jewelry housing is plenty enough to make this a grind, 4 is much too excessive.

Weapon enchanting effects
Concern: Persistent weapon enchants are ruining costly outfits. Evidence:



Look at how the stylish blue/silver Ordinator outfit is completely ruined by a -persistent- orangey blurry glow all across the staff that is there -all the time- whether the weapon is drawn or not. This started with Summerset, and you have not adressed this at all despite several threads complaining about it on the main forum. People paid -real life money- for the Crowns to buy outfit slots, and then paid lots of gold on top for the motifs and the use of the outfit system - only to have their outfits ruined by these enchant glows. This needs to be reverted or changed, and fast.

Suggested solution: Whichever way you decide to implement it, these enchant glows need to disappear. Either -remove them- completely, since only a few people will actually miss them, or make it a -toggle- so you can decide whether to show them or not, much like hide helm toggle and mount upgrades. Or make outfits work like regular equipment without an outfit, where the enchant shows briefly when drawing the weapin, and then fades away immediately instead of sticking around -permanently- like they do when you have an outfit on.

Eidetic memory bugged books
Concern: Several Summerset Eidetic Memory books are bugged, and thus unobtainable in your collection. Personally, I am affected by the following books:
- Night Runner Captain's Journal, unavailable after the quest has been done (also not obtainable at all if you pick one dialogue option in the quest)
- The Scaled Elves in Sea Keep, the area with the book is locked off after the quest in Sea Keep
- Writ of Valid Credentials from the quest Culture Clash, unavailable once you turn in the quest
- Pack of Archon's Grove - no one can even find this book at all?

Most of these are quest locked, that is, only readable during a quest, and not after you have finished the quest.

Suggested solution: Fix the books like you have fixed other bugged Eidetic Memory books in the past, so they are readable also -after- you have finished a story quest.

This is my list of concerns, much of it has been mentioned in the past, but I believe we are due a response or at least a "we're working on it" from the dev team. I am going to tag @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom and @ZOS_MSchroeder and hope you can direct this post to the right people. A PTS is for nothing bugs and issues, and these are the issues that have popped up for me so far. I get that balancing and combat changes is what gathers the most attention, and the majority of the discussions here on the PTS forum are about this, but for some of us, the housing, furnishing, crafting and outfit bugs and issues are just as important, if not more, and I would like to see the same kind of prioritising for this, as you do for the combat changes.