PTS Update 23 - Feedback Thread for Jewelry Crafting Master Writ Improvements

RaddlemanNumber7 · July 2019

Do you feel these writs are worth completing?
No, not for me.

Do you anticipate doing these once the update goes live?
No.

Do you have any other general feedback?
After more than a year of harvesting and refining I haven't collected enough blue platings even to provide my new toons with crafted blue jewellery while they are levelling. On the other hand I have far more writ vouchers than I can usefully spend. Blue platings are far too rare and far too precious to waste getting writ vouchers I don't need.

Jayne_Doe · July 2019

I don't think I'll be doing any of the blue master writs, either, if the reward is a paltry 28 or so vouchers. Esp. not the swift ones, which at 30 is stupid. I'm guessing they just didn't scale that one like they do with purple and gold versions, which seem to factor the voucher cost of the trait stone into the number of vouchers awarded.

I'm also in favor of the above proposal to reduce the drop rate of these master writs. For some reason, I get far more of these than any other master writ, and 99% of them aren't even worth doing. I've done exactly 2 JC MWs and they were over 400 and required the swift trait.

I don't get why they insist on even giving us JC master writs when they still want to maintain jewelry crafting's "specialness" which is to say it's high difficulty relative to the other crafts. If they want to keep the grains system, at least up the drop rate to double the others. With the grain system, that still means you don't get nearly as mainly platings as you do the other tempers, but it would be at least better while still maintaining the scarcity of materials.

And really, gold platings aren't the problem. I get enough from doing top-tier JC writs that I would do more legendary writs if they didn't also require zircon. I have twice as many chromium plates as I do zircon plates, and no matter how high the value of purple JC writs are, I will never do them, as it would be much better for me to just wait and do an even higher-value legendary writ, since zircon are required for those anyway.

This system really is bad for those of us who actually wanted to CRAFT jewelry. I get they wanted to maintain gold jewelry's rareness and maintain the value of the Golden, but if all you ever need to do is upgrade dropped jewelry, you're golden if you just do JC writs every day. But if you actually want to craft jewelry? Forget it. Yeah...I can craft a set of blue jewelry, maybe two, but purple? Nah, not gonna happen for a while. Well, I guess I would have enough if I hadn't done those 2 JC master writs.

Bevik · July 2019

kojou wrote: »

I was kinda hoping that eventually the drop rates for jewelry materials would increase, so that the master writs I already have would actually be worth doing one day...

It seems the solution is to give higher rewards for future master writs, so I can safely destroy all the ones I saved.

I have few with 150 or even 200+ voucher, seems like I need to destroy them all also cuz noone is gonna buy, they are just too expensive to do.

Panomania · July 2019

So far I have looted 1 blue, 2 purple and saw one gold linked. In every case the cost to craft per voucher was under 500 gold, which is currently lower than MANY masters in the other 3 gear trades. We'll see how it pans out, but so far its a major improvement. When it goes live people wont automatically destroy them, as they do now.

RedBull_IR · July 2019

kojou wrote: »

I was kinda hoping that eventually the drop rates for jewelry materials would increase, so that the master writs I already have would actually be worth doing one day...

It seems the solution is to give higher rewards for future master writs, so I can safely destroy all the ones I saved.

@kojou that's pretty much the same consensus we reached in RIP old Master Jewelry crafting writs

Arunei · July 2019

@ZOS_GinaBruno
If you guys really want to make JC Master Writs worth doing, you need to either get rid of the Grain nonsense and just drop Platings, or make Grains have a higher chance of dropping. Wanting JC to remain 'special' just feels like an excuse for making it as much as a grindy pita as possible. At the very least give us JC Hierlings if you don't want to drop Grains or make them easier to come by. Increasing the amount of vouchers any given Master Writ pays out won't do any good if the cost to make these things is still outrageous, since the cost of the mats would go up if more people are doing more Writs. Eventually we'd just plateau again at a point where the Writs aren't worth the cost of the mats to make them, and then what? You increase the worth again? It won't really solve the problem in the long run, whereas making the mats more readily available would alleviate the issue and you wouldn't even HAVE to bother with increasing the value of the Master Writs because then we could afford to actually make the ones we get now.

Ahnog · July 2019

Jewelry crafting is way to expensive to waste them on writs.

Finedaible · July 2019

heaven13 wrote: »

mustangmorgan31 wrote: »

Naolwyn wrote: »

Although I like the idea of blue tier master writs being introduced, I have a feeling the blue tier grains and platings are going to go up in price.

I feel like the blue platings are already super expensive now. Sigh. Zos please just get rid of grains and give us straight platings. That would help.

Or at least give a full plating back on decon, similar to how deconning gear using style mats that drop in fragmented pieces gives back a full style mat. It would definitely alleviate some of the issues.

^This to infinity.

Dusk_Coven · July 2019

@ZOS_GinaBruno

TL;DR version: IF cost-per-voucher is solved, voucher rewards need to be examined and maybe lowered

SUPPOSING that the problem of cost-per-voucher is resolved ( https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/6195653/#Comment_6195653 ) such that the cost makes most jewelry writs desirable to do,
I feel we need to look carefully then at the maximum number of vouchers that are rewarded.

Right now on the live server, a top-reward Legendary writ might give 450 vouchers and still cost 900 per voucher, or slightly under.
I actually feel that is an acceptable cost, because Jewelry Crafting has a number of substantial advantages over the nearest competitor crafts of Blacksmithing, Clothing, and Woodworking:
- You need a lot less research. If you only researched two lines in any of those other crafts your chances of being able to complete any master writ there is probably zero.
- You do not need motifs for Jewelry crafting. If you only had a few motifs, again your chances are next to zero. Motifs cost either gold or time, and you need a substantial investment to have a decent chance of doing any particular writ that comes your way either in the guild store or from a daily writ drop.
- You can completely circumvent the need to do the wide variety of game content by simply buying the required trait material from guild stores. This bypasses the supposed drawback of jewelry trait materials being sprinkled over a wide variety of content.

PRESUPPOSING that the issue of cost-per-writ is under control,
and we have thereby achieved the goal of players wanting to do most of the Jewelry master writs that drop for them because of the acceptable cost-per-voucher,
THEN I think we need to LOWER the maximum possible voucher reward to help make the other crafts still competitive.
Otherwise Jewelry might become too much of a go-to craft for getting vouchers and thereby upset the ecology of vouchers as a gatekeeper for "exclusive content".

Simply widening the range of voucher rewards will not work as that would make lower-reward writs not desirable due to cost-per-voucher ( https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/6199483/#Comment_6199483 )

Neither will reducing the drop rate of writs excessively, because that would just create a Guild Store market of writs at an unacceptable price, resulting in a cost-per-voucher problem again.

Therefore, I propose we either:
(1) leave the maximum possible reward as is, reduce the range, and reduce the drop rate somewhat ( https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/6199483/#Comment_6199483 ), OR

(2) halve the maximum possible reward, reduce the range of rewards so that the lowest possible is 80% of the maximum possible, and leave the drop rate alone

Zulera301 · July 2019

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

Therefore, I propose we either:
(1) leave the maximum possible reward as is, reduce the range, and reduce the drop rate somewhat ( https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/6199483/#Comment_6199483 ), OR

(2) halve the maximum possible reward, reduce the range of rewards so that the lowest possible is 80% of the maximum possible, and leave the drop rate alone

how about 658 kinds of no, heck no, absolutely no, and really, truly, most definitely NO NO NO.

if JC writs did become a "go-to" craft for easy vouchers or levelling, that would not only up the demand for the writs themselves (a hilarious counterbalance to how things are now). And of course, that would up the cost of jewelry mats because that means everyone and their dog would be wanting to do them, and given their already existing rarity, that would make prices of mats go back up in turn, which would jeopardize JC writs all over again by cranking up the cost too much.

Dusk_Coven · July 2019

.

mustangmorgan31 · July 2019

redlink1979 wrote: »

mustangmorgan31 wrote: »

I feel like the blue platings are already super expensive now.

No they aren't.

Well buy me some Daddy Warbucks

CelticStones · July 2019

Hirelings for JC...please.

MyNameIsElias · July 2019

I dont feel like these new jewelry master writs are worth doing. I just want to add my voice and say please give us hirelings.

Arunei · July 2019

@Dusk_Coven
You do realize that JC Master Writs, even the 400+ ones, are often not seen as worth doing because of how ridiculously rare the drop rates on the tempering mats are, right? It's the easiest thing to understand. A full single Chromium Plating costs roughly 75-80k even after all this time. A single Tempering Alloy is, I believe, now around 5k or so on PC NA. Let's compare some prices on just gold tempers.

A gold piece of Jewelry would cost around 300k to make, only counting the four Chromium Platings needs and not the other mats. A gold BSing piece would cost around roughly 20k to make, again only counting the eight Tempering Alloys. This assumes in both cases you've maxed out the passive for reducing the amount of tempers it takes to increase the tier of any given piece of gear. Generally a WWing or Clothing piece of gear would cost even less to gold, as I believe the respective tempers, Rosin and Dreugh Wax, sell for about 3-4k a each.

Making JC Master Writs drop less often would do...what exactly to alleviate this? Reducing the voucher value would help in what conceivable way? All of your points about how JC takes less time to research and all are completely moot because they have nothing to do with the core problem; JC Master Wris are far too expensive to make because the mats cost such a ridiculous amount of of money. And this:

THEN I think we need to LOWER the maximum possible voucher reward to help make the other crafts still competitive.
Otherwise Jewelry might become too much of a go-to craft for getting vouchers and thereby upset the ecology of vouchers as a gatekeeper for "exclusive content".

In what world does this help at all? JC Master Writs are already not worth doing. How in the everloving heck is reducing the voucher value going to incentivize people to do them if they're already not doing them for the current amount? I can't understand the reasoning here.

And ZOS increasing the number of vouchers any given Writ is worth will do nothing about this in the long-term. As soon as purple and gold JC Master Writs go up in value and people start buying up all the JC crafting mats, people are going to start charging more for them. It's simple supply and demand. After a certain point, the mats would become too expensive to justify using them on the Master Writs, and we're going to be in the same boat we are now.

What ZOS needs to do is make the JC mats more accessible in some way. Get rid of Grains and just have Platings drop from refining and deconstruction, like every other Equipment crafting tree. Give us a Hierling for JC, like every other Equipment crafting tree. Do anything to address the actual root of the issue. This is supposed to be some be-all end-all balance patch, right? Why not bring JC mats in line with all the other Equipment crafting trees like they're claiming to do with skills and stuff?

kirgeo · July 2019

its not worth it, can't gather enough upgrade materials. Please remove the refine grain to plating mechanics.
JC is already a year old it doesn't need to be special anymore.
Also add hirelings.

Dusk_Coven · July 2019

Arunei wrote: »

blah blah blah

You didn't read the other two articles which were necessary as the one you are responding to (very clearly) stated assumptions which needed to be in place.

So none of what you said was at all relevant to what you quoted out of context.

Dusk_Coven · July 2019

Zulera301 wrote: »

blah blah blah

Quoting me out of context does not make your points relevant.

luen79rwb17_ESO · July 2019

Ah well another disfunctional system for the sake of mindless grind. Veteran Ranks were not enough of a lesson it seems...

BringerOfOmens · July 2019

Jewelry Crafting seriously needs a hireling. I agree with the original position of ZOS not to trivialize the value of the golden vendor or gold jewelry by making the gold platings plentiful. That position; however, made the sealed master writs too expensive to complete and thereby worthless. We now have addons that add in the destroying of those master writs.

That said, a hireling for jewelry which dropped normal mats and a good chance of blue and purple materials, rare chance of gold, and decent chance of traiting materials (including swift and triune) makes these proposed changes to jewelry master writs viable in my opinion.

Dark_Lord_Kuro · July 2019

Just give us a jewelerie assitant(and the mail story that come with it), its the crafting skill line with the less passive

With more free mats entering the market the price woul go down at leas by a bit

And while you are at it have remain silent mail us the mats, potion, poisonor armor by mail(no story since its remain silent)

Aeslief · July 2019

Master writ rewards have been in need of additional buffs for a year now. I liked the idea of blue writs and hopped on the PTS to see if I could check some of the new ones out.

After 12 writs on max mastery, fully researched toons, my results were 9 shipments and 3 surveys with one Master Writ dropped.

Superior, Swift neck, Hist Bark (4 trait) - 28 vouchers.

So, a 28 voucher reward for a writ which requires a trait material that costs 20 vouchers, in addition to the platings.

'Is this worth doing,' seriously? No, no, and NO. I will continue to destroy all jewelry crafting writs and continue to regard jewelrycrafting with deep disgust.

phileunderx2 · July 2019

tmbrinks wrote: »

So, I lied... I decided to quickly do some JC writs... Got this.

This is probably the maximum that a blue jewelry master writ would be worth. 9-trait to craft, rare trait (swift and infused are the highest on LIVE).

The Gilding wax to make a swift ring costs 20 vouchers.

So, a net of 10 vouchers... at a cost of still over 10k to complete (at PC/NA prices)... so this one is a definite "NO" (This is like doing Epic Prismatic or Legendary Provisioning... not worth it)

Now, if Infused or some of the other "rare" traits are also 30 vouchers for this.. then those (at a cost of about 12k for the 30 vouchers), those would be plausible to do.

Although I would expect the prices of the green/blue/purple materials to actually go up in cost since there will now be more usage of them, without any increase in drops, since there is no jewelry hireling like there is for the other crafts.

This master writ would get immediately deystroyed just like every other jewelery master writ I get now. A gliding wax is too expensive to waste on a master writ.

Lord_Eomer · July 2019

Aeslief wrote: »

Master writ rewards have been in need of additional buffs for a year now. I liked the idea of blue writs and hopped on the PTS to see if I could check some of the new ones out.

After 12 writs on max mastery, fully researched toons, my results were 9 shipments and 3 surveys with one Master Writ dropped.

Superior, Swift neck, Hist Bark (4 trait) - 28 vouchers.

So, a 28 voucher reward for a writ which requires a trait material that costs 20 vouchers, in addition to the platings.

'Is this worth doing,' seriously? No, no, and NO. I will continue to destroy all jewelry crafting writs and continue to regard jewelrycrafting with deep disgust.

It surely worth doing when dropping in cheap traits (its just RNG) so lets stop complaining and this change is another good step towards resolving JC writs issue

Arunei · July 2019

@Dusk_Coven
No, I didn't read the other things, because there's no need to. Literally the only thing that can really be done to make JC Master Writs worth doing is reducing the cost on the mats it takes to make them, and the only real way to do that is to make the mats (the tempers specifically) drop more often or to give us a JC Hierling to supplement the current drop rate.

Now if you were saying if JC Master Writs ever actually become worth doing and are brought in line with other writs in terms of what the voucher value is worth compared to the tier of the item being asked for, that they then need to have their payouts in vouchers be lowered, then yeah, I could agree with that. As it is I don't have any qualms doing a Legendary Master Writ for BSing, WWing, or Clothing for like 70 vouchers, because to me it's worth it since I tend to have plenty of mats for those (I hoard a bunch of stuff). If a gold JC Master Writ for 70 vouchers costed roughly the same in mats that the other things do, I would do it. I mean obviously if the mats were more readily available ZOS could lower the voucher value and it'd be fine.

The problem is, though, ZOS clearly doesn't seem interested in making these mats more abundant, since they're going the opposite direction and making the writs worth more vouchers (or claim to, since people posting here aren't seeing any actual increase in the worth of purple/gold Master Writs). They could make gold JC Master Writs worth 1k vouchers and people still wouldn't use them if it costs 1m in the mats to complete the thing (for a fraction of that price you could buy several other Master Writs for other Equipment lines that equal about 1k, buy the mats needed for them, and not come nearly as close to spending that much as you would for 1 JC Master Writ).

So in the end, if we want JC Master Writs to ever be in line with the other Equipment things, ZOS needs to make the mats more readily available so the price on them comes down, thus making it worth spending the mats to do the JC writs in the first place.

AzraelAcid · July 2019

@ZOS_GinaBruno

I purchased the Summerset chapter Physical Pre-Order because I was so excited about JC.

Any Master of crafts was pretty stoked for that. As a Master of all crafts, and personal experience in several trade guilds, I can tell you that this is not what we were expecting.

I love crafting and do it for the joy of it, while making some gold on the side from my skills.
Trading and crafting are pretty much my go to activities for ESO. Not everyone is like me, but there are some.

I echo the sentiments in this thread. I will not be doing any JC writs, ever, until the price of mats comes down, or the rewards for JC go up. Whichever comes first. Many have explained possible theories on how this can be made possible, so I won't go into that. I'll just say that if a Master writ doesn't include over a 100 vouchers I won't even look at it.

I sell or destroy most. I always destroy JC writs. Always. I must've tried to sell over a hundred of them, but people will not buy them because of the current player economy.

Since Summerset I've gotten this from JC:

The ability to craft jewelry
x10 Chromium Platings (most of which I've sold)
x7 Zircon Platings (all of which I've sold)
Enough Iridum and lower tier platings that I've kept for upgrading jewelry for alts.
And a never ending supply of JC writs that are worthless.

I've been thinking of saving any Chromium and Zircon I might come across so that I can upgrade a single piece of jewelry for the dye. Then I'm pretty much done with it, except to collect surveys and refine for selling purposes. That is, if things remain unchanged and not profitable. I'm sorry to be so critical, but it's just the way it is.

I really hope you guys can do something with it to make it shine.

I'll hop on PTS this week when I have time to see if anything has changed.

Lord_Eomer · July 2019

Why everyone want Jewellery Upgrades mats current state to be nerf remember if they did then Golden will have no value or no one will be amused each week!

It will have different implications on economy.

I appreciate ZOS for increasing rewards via Master Writs. Right way to go!

Dusk_Coven · July 2019

BringerOfOmens wrote: »

Jewelry Crafting seriously needs a hireling.

This is certainly a potential solution to lower the market cost of gold or other platings.
However, in the long term, with people having 8 or even 18 Jewelry Crafters... unless ZOS is careful with the gold mat drop rate in such a Hireling, we might eventually arrive at a situation where Jewelry Writs become too cheap because the market is glutted.

But let us assume that if that side effect happens, ZOS would be willing to tolerate such a situation.
There would then still be the issue of Jewelry Writs being too good -- too much of a burst of vouchers in comparison to Blacksmithing, Clothing, and Woodworking, and suddenly very much worth doing.

However you manage cost per voucher, competitiveness of other crafts needs to be taken into account.
Simply giving out more materials at a cost of 1-3 skill point, or simply raising the voucher reward as so many people have asked for, is not as simple a solution as it sounds and we need to consider the longer game lest we just manufacture a new problem.

(1) stabilize cost https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/6195653/#Comment_6195653
(2) dump useless writs https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/6199483/#Comment_6199483
(3) compare with other crafts https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/6200102/#Comment_6200102

Lilly_Elessa · July 2019

These aren't exactly something testable on the PTS past just making sure they work without bugging.... But here's some otherwise feedback.

Do you feel these writs are worth completing?
In general, gold writs will never be worth completing to me. I don't care how many vouchers they're worth, chromium plating is far, far too valuable to either upgrade my jewelry or make some absurdly priced but swanky stuff for my house.
The purple writs, if they were worth a truckload I might complete. But they would be in strong competition with upgrading some of my gear. Even as a long time player and avid crafter, I enjoy playing a lot of alts, so I have a lot of dungeon/trial jewelry and less Zircon plating than I would like. Also, there's a few nice pieces of furniture.
For the blue writs, that's some serious possibility assuming they're worth enough. I never need to upgrade jewelry to blue (since crafted sets are infrequent in PvE), and I already generate a sufficient amount iridium plating for all the really nice furnishings that want it.
Regardless of quality tier, I would never complete a Swift master writ unless the reward fully compensated for the gilding wax compared to other writs of the same tier. I would be extremely unlikely to complete a Triune master writ period, dawn-prisms cost quite a bit more than the other materials which tends to mean a higher cost per voucher to complete.

Do you anticipate doing these once the update goes live?
Honestly? No. I kinda doubt the blue and purple ones will be close enough to the completion cost per voucher of the other gear crafting (not consumable) master writs. I would like to be pleasantly surprised, but I don't expect it.

Do you have any other general feedback?
I like the general idea of increasing availability of plating that others are talking about, don't much care which of their methods - be it just removing grains, reducing grains per plating, having a hireling, or actually getting platings back on decon instead of grains. But this would increase the use of jewelry crafting (since most people I know avoid crafting jewelry like it's a gift from Peryite), rather than prompt most of us to complete jewelry writs.

baratron · July 2019

Has anyone actually received a purple or gold Jewelry Crafting Master Writ yet?

@Wicked_Shifty and I have been doing Jewelry Crafting Writs on PTS daily (me with two characters, him with one character) and so far we've received one blue Master Writ each. Mine was worth 29 writ vouchers and his was worth 28.

Right now, I'm not sure whether this would be worth doing. According to Tamriel Trade Centre today, the average cost of the materials on PC-NA today is as follows:
Triune stones (Dawn-Prism) - 22,236 gold
Iridium Platings - 4,722 gold
Terne Platings - 1,240 gold
Platinum Ounces - 10.76 gold

Therefore the value of the materials needed to make that writ (1 Dawn-Prism + 2 Iridium Platings + 1 Terne Plating + 10 Platinum Ounces) would be 33,027.6 gold. This works out at 1,138.9 gold per writ voucher. This does not encourage me to want to do it, especially as I have done purple Jewelry Crafting Writs on Live which were only around 900 gold per writ voucher.

Basically, writs which involve the style stones which have to be bought, i.e. Triune (Dawn-Prism) and Swift (Gilding Wax), need to be increased in writ voucher value relative to writs which involve style stones which drop for free. I personally have had more Antimony, Cobalt, Zinc, Dibellium, Slaughterstones and Titanium than I will ever use - and it isn't very hard to find Aurbic Amber from Psijic portals.