Crafting table signatures - a way to instantly recognize crafting group from distance

Ek1 · February 2020

I have visited and used several homes with crafting stations and each time I am wondering what order is being used and in case if its alphabetical, in what point it cuts to next row. Its annoying even though you get to see the decor at the same time.

So I came up a way to figure out where that one cluster of tables is by glance. By placing a color fitting to the set bonuses and (preferably) a banner or something other related to the sets name on top of the cluster you can pinpoint its location straight from the door.
Golden color for sets giving all stats, green for stamina, blue for magicka, purple for stamina & magicka and red for tank/HP sets.

Easiest way to get hang of the idea is to see it. So You are more than welcome to see it out at my place. Easiest way is to get there is by using the add-on 'Go home' or simply copy&pasting the command

/script JumpToHouse("@Ek1")

on EU server. Owner of the house is nordic so please leave your shoes at the door.

I have been figuring out what signature would fit to each set (best would be also lore vise) and this is what i got this far:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PQvGlV6ko_fa6sHk_0dQxffNyt8M0HB38uu7zCOFwiw

I have tried to keep the signature items related (best to my knowledge) to the set and also not-so-expensive if possible. Also no crown items were used. Lights that color the tables are relatively cheap and mild so that they won't disrupt other lights except in the case of red. There is no subtle red light nor cheap. Luckily there are only 19 sets that use red.
The placing of the sets is not locked and the signature idea is indifferent to the order of tables. Be it alphabetical or grouped by set types, it still gives the instant recognition of location of the set to the user.

I would appreciate feedback, especially from lore/furniture aware people and of course from fellow crafters.

EDIT / TL; DR: The idea is the use of a signature (a unique identifier) on a cluster of crafting tables with type identifying color while being indifferent to the order of the clusters, being it alphabetical or not.

Edit2: Fixed the link that forums language filter butchered.

Ek1 · February 2020

/script JumpToHouse("@Ek1")

katanagirl1 · February 2020

I’m not quite sure I understand, you are grouping the sets by the types of bonuses and not alphabetically?

That would be cumbersome for me because the reason I go to a guildie’s house who has all transmutable crafting stations is when I have a master writ. The quickest way for me to find the right table would be alphabetically, and I have no problem finding it, and it takes only a few seconds.

Please let me know if there is something I’m missing or if I’m just not getting it.

Hotdog_23 · February 2020

katanagirl1 wrote: »

I’m not quite sure I understand, you are grouping the sets by the types of bonuses and not alphabetically?

That would be cumbersome for me because the reason I go to a guildie’s house who has all transmutable crafting stations is when I have a master writ. The quickest way for me to find the right table would be alphabetically, and I have no problem finding it, and it takes only a few seconds.

Please let me know if there is something I’m missing or if I’m just not getting it.

I agree. The only change I have thought about doing is putting all the tables together alphabetically. Like all blacksmith station, then clothing etc.. Generally when I do master writs I wait until I have around a 100 or so then do them. This way all the tables are grouped by type and alphabetically.

Ek1 · February 2020

katanagirl1 wrote: »

I’m not quite sure I understand, you are grouping the sets by the types of bonuses and not alphabetically?

No, the idea is to group one set with a signature item.
Then it does not matter what way you group that signatured set in relation with others as the set you are looking is recognised by signature instead of guessing in what point of alphabet the row breaks or if the sets are grouped by regions or by bonuses or whatever.
As they are signature marked, the order has little meaning and can be chosen to be whatever.

The idea is the signature, not order.

katanagirl1 · February 2020

I really can’t see how I would identify a set by this signature when I really just need the name.

I suppose you have some other use for it rather than master writs, then.

Ek1 · February 2020

katanagirl1 wrote: »

I really can’t see how I would identify a set by this signature when I really just need the name

And when you cant see its name?
Are you deliberately missing the point or how you missed the main point here of recognizing craft clusters from afar?

katanagirl1 · February 2020

Ek1 wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

I really can’t see how I would identify a set by this signature when I really just need the name

And when you cant see its name?
Are you deliberately missing the point or how you missed the main point here of recognizing craft clusters from afar?

My point is, I don’t look at the bonuses for the set I need to make a master writ for since I don’t care. I just find the name and craft it and turn it in.

Salix_alba · February 2020

almost all of the guild houses are going to be mostly alphabetical in their arrangement can you imagine how annoying to an ocd person if their was also a color aspect to it viewed from a distance it would be maddening. and I can tell you all the guild house owners I know are very ocd about their set ups

katanagirl1 · February 2020

Salix_alba wrote: »

almost all of the guild houses are going to be mostly alphabetical in their arrangement can you imagine how annoying to an ocd person if their was also a color aspect to it viewed from a distance it would be maddening. and I can tell you all the guild house owners I know are very ocd about their set ups

I don’t think the OP wants it alphabetical with colored pennants, he seems to want to group the sets with similar stats so you would have to look at all of the stats and try to figure out what color it was, then go to that group. I don’t know how to deal with that.

It would work if you were crafting a whole set and knew what stats you wanted. I don’t do that much anymore.

Sturmfaenger · February 2020

The downside of an alphabetic order is that you will need to know the language of the house owner, because the setnames start with different letters depending on the language. If you use english for example, any non-native speaker will have to research the english name of the set they want to craft.

I love to visit a certain crafting home with the crafting stations ordered by zone. No matter what alliance you are, there's always the same three crafting stations in stonefalls, glenumbra, auridon and so on.
Thats international.
The order in that crafting house is first zone, second zone...and so on, and onwards in the order of dlc/chapter release.
It would be easy to mark the aisles with achievement furniture of these zones to recognize it, although it is not done that way in the house I mostly use for crafting master writs. Kudos to @Olibär76

!!!

This method works best for me - of course I play this game for +5 years now, and I have a good memory of what crafting station is in each zone.

Alinhbo_Tyaka · February 2020

To me this is another justification for creating master crafting tables where you could teach a single station for each crafting skill all of the available sets. While rows and rows of tables take up valuable item slots they also make it hard to find the tables for the style you want to craft. Having master tables would allow a player to use a menu driven process and stop playing hide and go seek when they need to craft a piece of gear.

Tigerseye · February 2020

Alinhbo_Tyaka wrote: »

To me this is another justification for creating master crafting tables where you could teach a single station for each crafting skill all of the available sets. While rows and rows of tables take up valuable item slots they also make it hard to find the tables for the style you want to craft. Having master tables would allow a player to use a menu driven process and stop playing hide and go seek when they need to craft a piece of gear.

This.

Although, if we do have to be permanently stuck with hundreds of tables, it would at least help if they were labelled with their set names, so you could see them from a relative distance.

Rather than having to run past them all - which, even if they are placed in alphabetical order, is a bit of a pain and if they are not, is borderline impossible.

Ek1 · February 2020

katanagirl1 wrote: »

My point is, I don’t look at the bonuses for the set I need to make a master writ for since I don’t care.

No one is suggesting or talking about set bonuses.

katanagirl1 wrote: »

I just find the name and craft it and turn it in.

So mind telling me what is the set names in this picture?

Kinda hard when you are not close enough to see the name?

As you are bringing up colors again even though it has been made clear for several times now that it is not the idea nor point, I humor this derailing and demoed a scenario that idea would have been it, so what about the set names be in this picture? They are now grouped in colors or types as you speculate instead of the OP the idea that was clearly said to be "By placing a color fitting to the set bonuses and (preferably) a banner or something other related to the sets name on top of the cluster you can pinpoint its location straight from the door.".

Kinda hard still as the names are still hidden but hey at least you would have idea what section to look if you know what the sets in the game do.

As you are talking so much about alphabetic order can you tell us what is the second set in this picture? Even the first set?

Shoot, still no names shown. Gee, if there just would be a way to recognize the crafting pods from afar. Like a sign or such that could be easily replicated to other houses and easily recognized. Like a list of signatures for the sets.
Or is this a language/term barrier you keep bumping? Wikipedia describes signature "[..] is also used to mean the characteristics that give an object, or a piece of information, its identity".
Because OP lists their signatures in all three cases and those that have tried to understand the idea would spot easily the sets. Granted, there is some learning curve and not all signatures are ready (hence the other reason for this thread) but all sets are recognizable in night and day without the use of any add-ons.

Salix_alba wrote: »

almost all of the guild houses are going to be mostly alphabetical in their arrangement can you imagine how annoying to an ocd person if their was also a color aspect to it viewed from a distance it would be maddening. and I can tell you all the guild house owners I know are very ocd about their set ups

Again, this idea takes no sides about the order. This is third time it is said and there will be no more.

Tigerseye wrote: »

Although, if we do have to be permanently stuck with hundreds of tables, it would at least help if they were labelled with their set names, so you could see them from a relative distance.

Yes! Labeling with letters eats huge number of furnishing slots as creating text is not furnishings forte. Hey what about if we would have one item instead that would tell by its lore, shape or origin what that set would be? Like a ...signature? Welcome to the OP.

Pheefs · February 2020

Ek1 wrote: »

Kinda hard still as the names are still hidden but hey at least you would have idea what section to look if you know what the sets in the game do.

I don't know what they all do, so I'd have to look that up out of game for the color-coding method to be helpful.

Royaji · February 2020

So your method relies on a (entirely arbitrary) coding (or signature, whatever you want to call it) system which is not intuitive and require the user to go find your coding (signature) system in a google doc list? You might as well just make an excel table with the layout of your crafting area with full set names written down if they have to go outside the game to find out where their set is anyway.

Unlike your system, alphabetic order is intuitive. I don't need to know (or go look it up on your docs file) that DC shield means the set I'm looking for. I can just run into the row and know that if I'm at "F" and my set starts with an "O" I should be looking further down the row. Especially if you align the sets in just a couple of rows and mark those rows with their letter range (like "A-G" and so on). And just making three-four letter signs takes significantly less item slots than adding a "signature" furnishing to every single set. It also looks much tidier without a hundred or so random giant statues and banners floating in the middle of everything.

I'd stick with the alphabetic, thank you very much.

Tigerseye · February 2020

I'm sure most people would agree with me that what you have done looks (visually) great.

However, I think you are missing the point, in terms of what people are trying to say re. the way they use set tables?

They are saying they use set tables, almost exclusively, for crafting writs (rather than to make gear for use on their characters) and that they have no real knowledge of most of the sets and what they do.

Therefore (especially assuming they are an English speaker), it is far easier for them to use a house where all the sets are placed in alphabetical order.

As that only requires them to know the name of the set and the alphabet.

As opposed to your system, which may work very well for people who already know what all the sets do and/or want to craft sets to use on a particular character, but won't work so well for those who don't and just want to craft sets for writs.

Although I would have to agree with you that the unlabelled, alphabetical system is far from ideal, it's still going to be the best option (of the ones available) for most people.

Tigerseye · February 2020

I mean, even if they added signs, so people could place a sign with A, B, C, D, E etc., at the point where each letter started, that would be an improvement.

Also, would be nice to be able to add customisable signs for other things.

So you could place a sign with the name of a house, restaurant, hotel, or shop; or a sign pointing in the direction of the vendor, bank, or crafting area.

RobotSparkles · February 2020

It's really pretty - I love visually how you have it set up.
But in terms of function, absolutely would not work for me - alphabetizing all the way.

I use my guild hall's tables to do tons of master writs. I don't know and don't care to know what most of the sets are for or do, I'm just here to craft my Ashen Grip sword and get outta there. I need the tables to be in some form of alphabetical order so I can quickly find the table I need.
Using your method, I'd have to have some sort of cheat sheet for EVERY set, and there's getting to be quite a few of them.

Not saying the existing method is perfect; I've been setting up my own guild hall with multiple crafting tables and realizing how frustrating organizing them can be, but I couldn't work with a set up like this.

Sordidfairytale · February 2020

I use an addon called Homestation Marker by Ziggr that works with Writworthy (also by Ziggr) that helps navigate the crafting stations.

Until ZoS consolidates to one station, I agree 100% that alphabetical is the way to go, though I do wish that there were alphabet pennants available so that you could delineate the breaks for letters so you know how far to run down to get to New Moon Acolyte if you're not doing it for a Master Writ.

Also alphabetical does have the problem of languages and some sets like "Law of Julianos" that is so often referred to as Julianos, and then Armor of the Seducer, that is so often referred to by Seducer, so much so that the stations are called Seducer. But the stations for Julianos are called Law of Julianos. So that causes a lot of confusion.

Ek1 · February 2020

Pheefs wrote: »

I don't know what they all do, so I'd have to look that up out of game for the color-coding method to be helpful.

Indeed but after a while it gets quite intuitive. Even when i was changing the the order of clusters for the pictures people found the sets without first face checking them.

Royaji wrote: »

So your method relies on a (entirely arbitrary) coding (or signature, whatever you want to call it) system which is not intuitive and require the user to go find your coding (signature) system in a google doc list?

Yes, quite same as using names on people except it is intuitive as...

Ek1 wrote: »

I have tried to keep the signature items related (best to my knowledge) to the set and also not-so-expensive if possible

e.g. Ancient dragonguard cluster uses the Ancient dragonguard banner, new moon uses new moon and so on, as related as possible.

Royaji wrote: »

You might as well just make an excel table with the layout of your crafting area with full set names written down if they have to go outside the game to find out where their set is anyway.

Except the idea can be applied to any crafting house and to any order. The idea is not about me, the OP is not 'come use my house, here is a map'. If this would be only for me, why would I bother posting it to a forum where opening post clearly states that it works in any order of cluster and yet the commenters keep clinging on the order time after time after time? I need to edit the OP more as either my written output is really, really bad or there some reading comprehension checks that keep failing.

Royaji wrote: »

I'd stick with the alphabetic, thank you very much.

Sordidfairytale wrote: »

Until ZoS consolidates to one station, I agree 100% that alphabetical is the way to go, though I do wish that there were alphabet pennants available so that you could delineate the breaks for letters so you know how far to run down to get to New Moon Acolyte if you're not doing it for a Master Writ.

RobotSparkles wrote: »

But in terms of function, absolutely would not work for me - alphabetizing all the way.

Not random and the lettering still does not solve the identifying issue as described couple times already. Building 'A' that costs three item slots points the direction for seven sets but still does not identify them. With four more items each of them is also identified. For next rows the situation gets only worse item count vise.

Please, quote the part in OP that says they should not or could not be in alphabetic order.

RobotSparkles wrote: »

It's really pretty - I love visually how you have it set up.

Thank you, I think it works and looks best in dark. Only if you could freeze time in homes :-)

Sordidfairytale wrote: »

I use an addon called Homestation Marker by Ziggr that works with Writworthy (also by Ziggr) that helps navigate the crafting stations.

It is great add-on, sadly it needs some auto learning thus running through a crafting place first and it is another add-on to be installed for those oh so skeptical people or those that can't use 'em.

Sordidfairytale wrote: »

Also alphabetical does have the problem of languages and some sets like "Law of Julianos" that is so often referred to as Julianos, and then Armor of the Seducer, that is so often referred to by Seducer, so much so that the stations are called Seducer. But the stations for Julianos are called Law of Julianos. So that causes a lot of confusion.

Yeppers, signatures or 'unique set identifiers' answers to that too. With all love to our french, japanese and german friends or those that use most significant word from the set, it really does not help in figuring out the order :-) ...and BOOM, this idea solves that too no matter what kind of order is used.

Sordidfairytale · February 2020

Ek1 wrote: »

...and BOOM, this idea solves that too no matter what kind of order is used.

For you, but as many in this thread have already mentioned your suggested method is no better than any other already being utilized.

For instance regarding the homestationmarker addon; In your own house, or any house in which you are trusted enough to have "Decorator" access, you can use one command: /hsm scanlocs to immediately teach HomeStationMarker the location of every crafting station in the house. Far simpler than trying to remember novel info about the stations.

Ek1 · February 2020

My good lore friends have come up with the easy icons for maybe third of sets but there are some silly hard ones to label. So those lore/furniture lovers, ideas for the empty spots like Redistributor? Or better ones for the existing ones!

Sordidfairytale wrote: »

For you, but as many in this thread have already mentioned your suggested method is no better than any other already being utilized.

I write really really really slowly this time so those many in the end of the room also gets it.
This system, this idea, this method compliments whatever system is already used or it can be used as a stand alone. It does not exclude or include _any_ other methods thus it can be used in parallel with anything.

The topic is not 'you should scatter your clusters thus break alphabetic order and mark them like this!' no matter how hard you try to misunderstand it. In any case, this is the last offtopic comment about the order and possible following ones will be reported for offtopic/trolling. Because that is what they are. Seriously, back to topic.

Sordidfairytale wrote: »

For instance regarding the homestationmarker addon; In your own house, or any house in which you are trusted enough to have "Decorator" access, you can use one command: /hsm scanlocs to immediately teach HomeStationMarker the location of every crafting station in the house. Far simpler than trying to remember novel info about the stations.

That is grand and like earlier said, it needs an add-on that also needs to learns the spots for each of house. And like again said above, signature system does not exclude use of add-ons but it can be used without them.
No need to remember a novel and 53 icons creating a image is quite easy to remember when it is consistent. Would be even faster to get hang of it if would be used in other crafting houses. Users at my place have got the idea at least and start homing to right set without need of add-on or face checking them. Or they are really lucky in uncompleted craft house and just happen to hit the right table each time.