Making it easier to Mass Produce does not make a better game. Or, a better Economy.

Do a zone or two a day, the backlog will go away.

I agree with some of the replies here.

I used to do a lot of writs and always hated doing Surveys. Now I mostly just let them stack and them grab the ones with the most repetition when I need mats.

I would love for an auto survey assistant but this would definitely break the economy. I know several high earners do writs but just let them stack because they are so boring. If something like this came along, it would have an avalanche of mats in the game.

One good compromise is about the stacking, though. Say if you have 10 of the same one, you could spend some gold to "glue" them together. You would lose some money but would get a more powerful node. Something like that.

With a solution like that, you would still need to take time to gather the survey and you would pay for the convenience, losing either some gold, some mats, etc, to stack them, but it would decrease the annoyance.

For now, all my storage containers are basically survey containers now (and will likely remain so with Item Set Collection).

As a console player, I want the survey added to my map once I've found it once. PC has add-ons that make find the survey easy so I'd like something similar for console.

I enjoy doing the surveys but there’s no reason why they couldn’t be stackable

I would prefer a system that just accounts for the stacked resource surveys. It's fine to make us go out to the area to grab the nodes, that lets us relive a part of the zone experience that we often don't have much of a reason to engage with again. It's not fine to have hundreds of different surveys, all of which stack, but make you run away from the nodes and then run back just to get through a single stack of them. That's annoying and grindy and bad, and reduces any positive sentiment you might have for a zone. It'd be better to consume the full stack of a particular survey upon arriving at the site, and just multiply the amount you get per node by the stack size.

Also, any argument that part of a quest reward should be an optional bonus is invalid. Quest rewards should have an immediacy and determinism to them, meaning they should have some predetermined value range which can be actioned on readily. There are no "bonus" rewards, there are just rewards. Having to do a ton of extra work to get that value isn't a reward, it's just a second quest. Having to do mental gymnastics to justify that is just more proof that it's not a good reward design.

And don't get me started on worrying about how the game economy will be affected. If you're relying on people to not get the rewards from their quests in order to keep the economy balanced, then that's once again a bad design choice or bad economic management, but probably more the first one. After all, if the price of goods falls because of massive supply coming in from people's legitimately-gained surveys, then that's just normal market forces. Nobody here is entitled to be selling their stacks of materials for a particular price. I don't care if tempering alloy drops to 500 gold a piece, even though that's one of my primary ways of making money. That's the risk we take as producers. I do mind when quest rewards are bad and take up hundreds of inventory spaces because they're too tedious to do most of the time.

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

Recremen wrote: »

I would prefer a system that just accounts for the stacked resource surveys. It's fine to make us go out to the area to grab the nodes, that lets us relive a part of the zone experience that we often don't have much of a reason to engage with again. It's not fine to have hundreds of different surveys, all of which stack, but make you run away from the nodes and then run back just to get through a single stack of them. That's annoying and grindy and bad, and reduces any positive sentiment you might have for a zone. It'd be better to consume the full stack of a particular survey upon arriving at the site, and just multiply the amount you get per node by the stack size.

Also, any argument that part of a quest reward should be an optional bonus is invalid. Quest rewards should have an immediacy and determinism to them, meaning they should have some predetermined value range which can be actioned on readily. There are no "bonus" rewards, there are just rewards. Having to do a ton of extra work to get that value isn't a reward, it's just a second quest. Having to do mental gymnastics to justify that is just more proof that it's not a good reward design.

And don't get me started on worrying about how the game economy will be affected. If you're relying on people to not get the rewards from their quests in order to keep the economy balanced, then that's once again a bad design choice or bad economic management, but probably more the first one. After all, if the price of goods falls because of massive supply coming in from people's legitimately-gained surveys, then that's just normal market forces. Nobody here is entitled to be selling their stacks of materials for a particular price. I don't care if tempering alloy drops to 500 gold a piece, even though that's one of my primary ways of making money. That's the risk we take as producers. I do mind when quest rewards are bad and take up hundreds of inventory spaces because they're too tedious to do most of the time.

Having a writ survey assistant (or consuming the full survey stack) wouldn't be fair to those players who are actually spending the time to retrieve the rewards, @Recremen.

Too tedious?

No problem.

Just destroy the ones you don't have time for (aren't going to retrieve).

@tmbrinks does a lot of writs and gave good reasons why this should not be implemented (see above in the thread).

@Taleof2Cities

Your complaint is incongruous with my suggestion, as I specifically said I would prefer a different system. If, however, they were to add the system under review, it would simply be a convenience feature, something they've already called out as being monetizable. It would be completely fair to the people who actually take the time to retrieve them manually. Perhaps you or the theoretical other who actually does these surveys should value your time more?

And no, I don't think I'd destroy them since there's still the possibility that they'll just improve the system, or do something like what OP said. Why would I foolishly destroy my hard-earned quest rewards when the devs are reasonable and willing to improve the systems? Even taking the time to destroy them is too tedious. I'd rather keep banking them like a normal person.

As for tmbrinks' comment, I also do a lot of writs and simply disagree with the assessment. Most of my previous post goes to addressing the content under question, and doesn't need repeating.

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Recremen wrote: »

Perhaps you or the theoretical other who actually does these surveys should value your time more?

I value my time enough to spend it doing what I find enjoyable. And I find doing surveys enjoyable.

Same.

Put in the time ... get the rewards.

That's a lot simpler than three paragraphs on how to change the game to get around the current mechanic.

The current mechanic is bad, though, being in the club of 3 people that somehow enjoy it doesn't change the fact that it's a bad reward design that doesn't do anything for the vast majority of crafters. Being resistant to change just because you're fine with the status quo isn't a noble position, it's just mindless stagnation. Also, we already put in the time. That's how quests work, as already stated.

tmbrinks wrote: »

Recremen wrote: »

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Recremen wrote: »

Perhaps you or the theoretical other who actually does these surveys should value your time more?

I value my time enough to spend it doing what I find enjoyable. And I find doing surveys enjoyable.

Same.

Put in the time ... get the rewards.

That's a lot simpler than three paragraphs on how to change the game to get around the current mechanic.

The current mechanic is bad, though, being in the club of 3 people that somehow enjoy it doesn't change the fact that it's a bad reward design that doesn't do anything for the vast majority of crafters. Being resistant to change just because you're fine with the status quo isn't a noble position, it's just mindless stagnation. Also, we already put in the time. That's how quests work, as already stated.

You're allowed to speak for the "vast majority of crafters"

Yet when somebody else says something similar, you demean their opinion...

hmmm...



If you collect your surveys immediately, you'll NEVER get a repeat, since it's impossible. The reward work in a way, that when you turn in the items, somebody gives you a "hint" about a nice cache of resources somewhere.

The only issue is people like us who do writs on dozens of characters (because they are so very profitable), and allow them to stack up, and then (some of us) complain about them stacking up.

If you don't to do surveys, don't do them, it's fine, writs are still more than profitable if you buy materials (probably still the best thing for profit in a given time frame). They're just more profitable if you make the choice to collect your surveys.

It's up to you.

As I said in my original post. Why even make the suggested change if you want to make survey collection automatic? Just change the drops from the writs themselves (which ZoS has already done previously to make them even better than before)

It's not intended to be demeaning, and I offered plenty of rationale for it. To expound on it further, what if we kept extending the "do more work to get the full reward"? If it's not bad in principle the first time, then where exactly is the limit? What if instead of a survey map, you got a map let led you to an NPC that you had to do some more work for so that they would point you to the real survey location? That sounds a bit ridiculous, right? But it's just the same reward principle you're defending extended out a single step further. My argument is that it's bad at any level of extension. You already did the work for the quest, and should not need to do an additional fetch quest to get the full reward. At that point, you should just design a second quest with the rewards you were trying to attach to the first one.

This thing where you're couching it as a choice to go do that second quest to get the full reward is the mindless stagnation I was talking about. Would you say the same for any other quest reward if you had to do Second Work to get it? What if the gold reward at the end of a quest had a fetch component? What about the XP? What about the parting dialogue from the NPCs? That's all immediately recognizable as ridiculous, but you're willing to not only accept the status quo on another quest reward with that same controversial mechanic, but actively go to bat for it as if the people who are suggesting it be changed to achieve parity with other quest rewards are wrong.

And so what if doing writs is currently (allegedly) the best way to make gold right now? The surveys are still part of the reward offering for the quest. I'm much more willing to believe that it was a well-intended feature that simply doesn't work at the mass-production scale we 18+character writ runners have going, than that they intentionally designed a huge part of the quest rewards to be so tedious that the vast majority of crafters don't even engage with it.

Why even make the suggested change if you want to make survey collection automatic? Just change the drops from the writs themselves (which ZoS has already done previously to make them even better than before)

Quoting this again here for emphasis, but I didn't even originally suggest that. I don't think it's good design or player-friendly to have some cash way to get around a mechanic that isn't good design in the first place. While that is one of those "convenience" things that they've monetized in the past, it doesn't sit right with my in principle. My suggestion (just one among many viable options for change) was simply to let you collect all nodes from a particular survey type at once. So if you have a stack of 76 [Alchemist Survey: Coldharbour II], for example, then when you go to the site each flower you pick would be x76 the value it would normally give, and consume the full stack of surveys.

I am curious why you'd be against any s it just the exclusiveness of the club, or change, though, especially a change from which you could also benefit.

My main problem with surveys is that I let them pile up in the bank and end up with stacks of 20+ to do. Basically I'm lazy.

DaveMoeDee wrote: »

Hapexamendios wrote: »

My main problem with surveys is that I let them pile up in the bank and end up with stacks of 20+ to do. Basically I'm lazy.

That isn't lazy. That is just not wanting to waste game time on tedium.

Not everyone finds them tedious.

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

I would propose an alternative plan. The points are valid about the issues with the hireling. I am not opposed to it in theory, but I do think there would need to be some sort of convenience tax. Perhaps the hireling keep 25-50% of the materials.

My solution would come down to stacking. Yes they stack in the bank, but they dont stack in the wild. If I have 4 of the same survey, make the survey node 4x as powerful (or maybe slightly less, again, convenience cost). It makes zero sense from an immersion standpoint that I can go collect a node, run 15 feet away, come back and it is there. It certainly makes sense that if you are getting leads from multiple sources that said node might be extra juicy.

Another obvious solution. Make them tradeable. The products are generally fairly predictable, and they are all tradable commodities. There would absolutely be a market for them. Sure mat prices would fall in the short term as hoarders like myself unloaded them, but things would stabilize. Some people love collecting surveys, some hate it, some didnt mind at first, but have been over it for years now (looks in mirror).

Honestly at this point, I will never do all my surveys, I have well over 2k of them. I have done every node in this games dozens and dozens of times in the past, it just isn't worth it me any longer.

I like this suggestion, I would be o with them being tradeable and also ok with a hireling keeping x% of the mats harvested