the set collections system is just awesome

CoronHR · January 2021

we rant and rage about all things wrong with eso (i'm guilty) but i have to say, set collections rocks. never having to farm a single item again after spending hours upon hours upon days farming it is such a relief -- once you actually find it. i do think there's a bit of an issue with sprinters in the random normals now, who are just in it for the crystals, but all in all, set collections is a huge success for me. just wanted to share

Faiza · January 2021

I like it too. I've been watching people run around with these gear sets with the floating orbs, and I really want the red one for my vampire. Someone said the red orbs were a rare drop from CoH, and I got sad because I hate farming dungeons, but then I looked in collections and realized that at some point between now and whenever collections got released, I've already obtained all of the armor and several of the weapons. Don't even have to go out of my way for crystals because they just sit and collect dust in my currencies.

Starlight_Whisper · January 2021

I appreciate it more and more as time goes by.

thorwyn · January 2021

I'm not a big fan to be honest. It is another fundamental change from classical MMO to today's casual gaming.
Farming your equipment and trying to complete your chars used to mean something. Now even my crafter alts are running around in perfected False God and perfected vMA staves.

Sarannah · January 2021

thorwyn wrote: »

I'm not a big fan to be honest. It is another fundamental change from classical MMO to today's casual gaing.
Farming your equipment and trying to complete your chars used to mean something. Now even my crafter alts are running around in perfected False God and perfected vMA staves.

I sort of agree with this. Though I do not mind players using better equipment, I do fear that once everyone has collected everything, I do expect the MMO world to become very empty. Which for an MMO is never a pretty sight.
And yeah, farming belongs to MMO's as well, to keep players engaged.

The ones rushing dungeons for crystals are just weird, there is plenty of time to gather crystals in a relaxing way. Not to mention they are causing others grief while doing so.

tsaescishoeshiner · January 2021

thorwyn wrote: »

I'm not a big fan to be honest. It is another fundamental change from classical MMO to today's casual gaing.
Farming your equipment and trying to complete your chars used to mean something. Now even my crafter alts are running around in perfected False God and perfected vMA staves.

While I appreciate that farming should still be rewarding, RNG farming is much less fun than actually playing the game to many people. I finally got my first (and only) Burning Spellweave Inferno Staff today, having played since beta. I'm so excited for all the new possibilities — trying it on different characters, different builds — without having to just transfer it through the bank constantly or farm another year for a second staff. I'd rather spend that time improving and experimenting

Locking reconstruction behind Transmute Stones, which lets you farm your preference of PvE or PvP, seems more engaging and freeing than grinding months for a single legendary item, like other MMOs have. To me, the idea that Set Collections is pandering to "casuals" makes ESO sound like work, not play

Not to say that the opinion you shared is like wrong. Just another perspective. People enjoy very different things in ESO, and I see where you're coming from in wanting a rewarding grind. I wouldn't want things to become too simplified or instantly gratifying

thorwyn · January 2021

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

To me, the idea that Set Collections is pandering to "casuals" makes ESO sound like work, not play

I think we both agree to a certain extend. It is indeed all about perspective and expectations.
However, let me add a comment on this particular sentence, although it might be a little off topic. In almost every similar discussion, this "work vs. play" comes up sooner or later and it is puzzling me. People are usually bringing up the word with a bad connotation - work - as an excuse for not wanting to put effort into an activity. But working and playing are not excluding each other. If someone is plonking away on the piano and calls it "playing", then fine. But if somone wants to learn how to play the piano properly, he neeeds to invest some time into the topic. It is still playing the piano, it is still enjoying the activity, just on another level. Or another example: I'm playing tournament chess for many decades now and I have spent YEARS of my life studying, practicing, reading about it and I still love PLAYING the game.
In my opinion, the same applies to games like ESO and that's why I think that this work vs. play card is being played way too quickly sometimes.

Mindcr0w · January 2021

thorwyn wrote: »

I'm not a big fan to be honest. It is another fundamental change from classical MMO to today's casual gaming.
Farming your equipment and trying to complete your chars used to mean something. Now even my crafter alts are running around in perfected False God and perfected vMA staves.

But you still had to legitimately earn those PFG and vMA pieces at least once to be able to reconstruct them. Did it not "mean something" those first times? Is the experience really lessened by not having to repeat it for your alts?

thorwyn · January 2021

But you still had to legitimately earn those PFG and vMA pieces at least once to be able to reconstruct them. Did it not "mean something" those first times? Is the experience really lessened by not having to repeat it for your alts?

To an extend, yes, the experience is lessened in my books. Every rare drop used to be .. well.. a valuable rare good. Now popping out a new one it is just a reward for "I've been there once." I can't even be bothered to run vSS or vCR anymore because it's pointless.
Just to make this clear, this is just my subjective opinion. The sticker book is not a big deal, it is not the end of the world, I can cope with it.

gatekeeper13 · January 2021

True but you still have to make the items drop first. RNG is as bad as it was before and no matter what, there are items I cannot get at all.

Starlock · January 2021

It's OK. The problem with it is they made a system that's universally useful without improving access to transmute crystals for all players. To actually use the system, you still have to participate in group content - which not everyone is interested in - or very hard single player content that not everyone can complete. When they fix the problems with transmute crystal sourcing, it'll be good. Until then, it's pretty meh.

Narvuntien · January 2021

I like it because it has made me go back and experience some great old content to get old gear.

relentless_turnip · January 2021

Yes there were some great additions this year, set collection included 👍

Rukia541 · January 2021

This is a huge boon to players that don't sub to the game, just use bank for mats and at least buy portable banker. Being a usual year long subber I honestly don't see the point anymore, except to die outfits or whatever. Good change tho I'm not complaining, pretty impressive ..

Taleof2Cities · January 2021

Starlock wrote: »

It's OK. The problem with it is they made a system that's universally useful without improving access to transmute crystals for all players. To actually use the system, you still have to participate in group content - which not everyone is interested in - or very hard single player content that not everyone can complete. When they fix the problems with transmute crystal sourcing, it'll be good. Until then, it's pretty meh.

Solo players choosing not to participate in group content (in an MMO genre) isn't anyone else's problem ... especially not ZOS's.

Eedat · January 2021

Starlock wrote: »

It's OK. The problem with it is they made a system that's universally useful without improving access to transmute crystals for all players. To actually use the system, you still have to participate in group content - which not everyone is interested in - or very hard single player content that not everyone can complete. When they fix the problems with transmute crystal sourcing, it'll be good. Until then, it's pretty meh.

Not trying to be mean but people who refuse to do any group content in an MMO shouldn't be pandered to at all really. If people go out of their way to avoid a very fundamental core principle of a game, one shouldn't be surprised that things don't work out properly for them.

Transmute crystals are super easy to get now and the dungeon sprinter issue is crazy blown out of proportion. Like it was bad during the undaunted event, but I rarely ever see people legit sprinting ahead through multiple trash packs anymore. I've leveled three characters from 10-50 via random normals in the past month and not a single time has someone flamed me for my low damage and I've maybe encounter two sprinters.

lillybit · January 2021

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

Starlock wrote: »

It's OK. The problem with it is they made a system that's universally useful without improving access to transmute crystals for all players. To actually use the system, you still have to participate in group content - which not everyone is interested in - or very hard single player content that not everyone can complete. When they fix the problems with transmute crystal sourcing, it'll be good. Until then, it's pretty meh.

Solo players choosing not to participate in group content (in an MMO genre) isn't anyone else's problem ... especially not ZOS's.

I have to agree with this. Not saying people shouldn't solo. I played solo for a couple of years after I started playing. But I didn't complain that I'd never have those fancy monster sets or skins or whatever, I just accepted they were rewards for a part of the game I wasn't interested in.

If you're determined to go it alone, work on soloing dungeons for pledges. That'll give you a supply of crystals, even if it's quite a small one.

But honestly, if you're not already doing that for gear, overland sets aren't that hard to farm at all compared to dungeon/trial sets. I completed every quest in the game (at the time!) in useless crafted gear with awful traits, no food or pots, totally the wrong skills and no idea about what a rotation was, so if all you want to do is solo, gear isn't really a big concern and I wouldn't worry about crystals

Starlock · January 2021

Eedat wrote: »

Starlock wrote: »

It's OK. The problem with it is they made a system that's universally useful without improving access to transmute crystals for all players. To actually use the system, you still have to participate in group content - which not everyone is interested in - or very hard single player content that not everyone can complete. When they fix the problems with transmute crystal sourcing, it'll be good. Until then, it's pretty meh.

Not trying to be mean but people who refuse to do any group content in an MMO shouldn't be pandered to at all really. If people go out of their way to avoid a very fundamental core principle of a game, one shouldn't be surprised that things don't work out properly for them.

You'd be right if this was an MMO that heavily emphasized group content. This isn't that game - this game is an MMORPG. The overwhelming majority of it can be played solo, and a large number of players treat this like a single-player RPG. The developers themselves know this and "pander" to this demographic heavily. Why else do you think they consistently release story-driven chapters and DLCs each and every year? Remember that before you or others claim that taking this large demographic into consideration is "pandering." That's just a ridiculous counter argument that holds about as much water as a pasta strainer.

Eedat wrote: »

Transmute crystals are super easy to get now and the dungeon sprinter issue is crazy blown out of proportion. Like it was bad during the undaunted event, but I rarely ever see people legit sprinting ahead through multiple trash packs anymore. I've leveled three characters from 10-50 via random normals in the past month and not a single time has someone flamed me for my low damage and I've maybe encounter two sprinters.

It's easy if you don't have ESO+ and haven't bought any of the DLC dungeons. Otherwise, you get DLC dungeons in your randoms and for that population of players who focuses on story-driven RPG aspects of the game, that's a no-go. ZoS needs to address this one way or another and I'm hardly alone in this concern. They're going to lose sub money from the poor sourcing and it baffles me that they didn't at least add transmutes to world bosses, dolmens, and stuff like that.

Taleof2Cities · January 2021

My point still stands, @Starlock ... I'll even highlight the rest of MMORPG for you (Massively Multiplayer Online).

If players don't want to branch out (in a genre that obviously caters to group content), ZOS isn't going to reward that choice.

peacenote · January 2021

Starlock wrote: »

You'd be right if this was an MMO that heavily emphasized group content. This isn't that game - this game is an MMORPG. The overwhelming majority of it can be played solo, and a large number of players treat this like a single-player RPG....

It's easy if you don't have ESO+ and haven't bought any of the DLC dungeons. Otherwise, you get DLC dungeons in your randoms and for that population of players who focuses on story-driven RPG aspects of the game, that's a no-go. ZoS needs to address this one way or another and I'm hardly alone in this concern. They're going to lose sub money from the poor sourcing and it baffles me that they didn't at least add transmutes to world bosses, dolmens, and stuff like that.

It seems to me that for true solo players, the majority of the gear accessible to them is easily obtainable without needing the "sticker book," and its purpose is to reduce RNG for drops in group content which you're not using anyway because you're.. playing solo. There are plenty of decent craftable sets and in order to best use the new functionality one has to level crafting, anyway, so that newly created pieces can have the right traits.

That said, I wouldn't turn down crystals from other sources, although given what we've seen with normals I wouldn't want the drop rate to be so high that the whole open world becomes one Alik'r dolmen route. My vote would be to have them pop up in hireling deliveries.

I'm usually against functionality that essentially reduces group play incentives, but I think the set collection system strikes a good balance. It doesn't reduce farming so much as make it so that you can play any content you want to work towards repeat set pieces, and I think the flexibility is nice so far. Hopefully it doesn't result in a deserted Tamriel but I don't think it will. You still need to obtain the piece at least once, and now there's an incentive to collect pieces in the sets that otherwise would be ignored, encouraging relay-ability from a different angle. So far I really have been happy with the change.

Starlock · January 2021

peacenote wrote: »

Starlock wrote: »

You'd be right if this was an MMO that heavily emphasized group content. This isn't that game - this game is an MMORPG. The overwhelming majority of it can be played solo, and a large number of players treat this like a single-player RPG....

It's easy if you don't have ESO+ and haven't bought any of the DLC dungeons. Otherwise, you get DLC dungeons in your randoms and for that population of players who focuses on story-driven RPG aspects of the game, that's a no-go. ZoS needs to address this one way or another and I'm hardly alone in this concern. They're going to lose sub money from the poor sourcing and it baffles me that they didn't at least add transmutes to world bosses, dolmens, and stuff like that.

It seems to me that for true solo players, the majority of the gear accessible to them is easily obtainable without needing the "sticker book," and its purpose is to reduce RNG for drops in group content which you're not using anyway because you're.. playing solo.

If the purpose of this system was to reduce RNG for drops in group content, why are overland sets in the collections system? That doesn't make much sense. In any case, detractors can come up with any meanie rationale they want to dismiss the needs and desires of other players. It doesn't change that the need is there. It'd be nice to have that respected, but that's probably far too big of an ask for these forums, unfortunately. You're being pretty respectful though, so thanks for that.

Icy_Waffles · January 2021

I’m really quite happy with it- it can be frustrating to get a “rare” item aka fire staff from city of ash... only to not need it because there are better sets out there.

With this system, you collect things it can mean something if a patch buffs a set and makes it desirable it just costs stones- which are fairly easy to acquire even if you aren’t going hardcore farming them.

SgtWinnie · January 2022

How's everyone going with the set collection?

Im almost 5700. It has been great to get back into some of the older dungeons.

16 missing from dungeons..all shoulders lol
500 ish left in dlc dungeons. Working on those currently.
Most of mine are from trials. Collected all the overland sets except those few tied to the thieves guild heists.

I'd be interested to see how everyone else is battling with it all.

OnThaLoose · January 2022

I like it…. but (and this may have been me tioned already) one thing I do no like is that for most sets only body pieces drop until final boss, leaving jewelry, weapons, and shields all from final boss. This means after I get the body pieces in two to four runs, I still have to run the dungeon 45+ more times to get weapons, etc. (3 sets, 15 items each)

Farming kinras daggers wasn’t bad because I had a Rando give it to me In a random normal, but farming tzogvins daggers? Literally took me almost 50 runs. Daggers we’re like second to last thing to drop.

I know this isn’t an issue cause by collections, it’s just collection made it more apparent.

To be clear I’m not suggesting they make it super easy, The way I’d do it is put jewels on final boss only but body pieces and weapons can drop from all bosses, that way you evenly fill out collections, instead of adding one piece per run.

Sorry for wall of text 🤷‍♂️

CoronHR · January 2022

it's great that the final drops are curated, but yeah, it'll still take a lot of runs to fill out the weapons portions of the collections. but hey, it keeps the dungeons alive, so that's probably a good thing

Tyrion87 · January 2022

thorwyn wrote: »

I'm not a big fan to be honest. It is another fundamental change from classical MMO to today's casual gaming.
Farming your equipment and trying to complete your chars used to mean something. Now even my crafter alts are running around in perfected False God and perfected vMA staves.

You already have earned this perfected gear (legitimately I believe) so how the collection system diminishes your right to reproduce that gear and use it on other characters? Why anybody would like to waste time on things she/he doesn't enjoy (like grindring and farming the same place over and over again) instead of doing content that she/he does like. Gaming should provide you with fun and enjoyment in the first place, not irritation and frustration. If you want to waste your time, then you can always choose not to use the collection system and farm individual pieces again. But don't cheat - do not transmute and find the proper traits :P

Personally I love this new system and consider it as the most game changing feature (in a positive way). My only gripe is that if you get perfected version, you should automatically get the nonperfected one as well. In that case you won't use nonperf anyway but at least you can fill your sticker book.

Necrotech_Master · January 2022

Faiza wrote: »

I like it too. I've been watching people run around with these gear sets with the floating orbs, and I really want the red one for my vampire. Someone said the red orbs were a rare drop from CoH, and I got sad because I hate farming dungeons, but then I looked in collections and realized that at some point between now and whenever collections got released, I've already obtained all of the armor and several of the weapons. Don't even have to go out of my way for crystals because they just sit and collect dust in my currencies.

the "red orbs" are just the visual effect of the ebon armor set (its not any rarer than any other set from crypt of hearts)

i think worm cult set has "blue orbs" as a visual effect and the one stamina equivalent of worm cult from selene web dungeon (dont remember name of hand) has "green orbs"

Harvokaan · January 2022

SgtWinnie wrote: »

How's everyone going with the set collection?

Im almost 5700. It has been great to get back into some of the older dungeons.

16 missing from dungeons..all shoulders lol
500 ish left in dlc dungeons. Working on those currently.
Most of mine are from trials. Collected all the overland sets except those few tied to the thieves guild heists.

I'd be interested to see how everyone else is battling with it all.

Almost 6300. Most missing ones are from arenas and IC

joerginger · January 2022

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Faiza wrote: »

I like it too. I've been watching people run around with these gear sets with the floating orbs, and I really want the red one for my vampire. Someone said the red orbs were a rare drop from CoH, and I got sad because I hate farming dungeons, but then I looked in collections and realized that at some point between now and whenever collections got released, I've already obtained all of the armor and several of the weapons. Don't even have to go out of my way for crystals because they just sit and collect dust in my currencies.

the "red orbs" are just the visual effect of the ebon armor set (its not any rarer than any other set from crypt of hearts)

i think worm cult set has "blue orbs" as a visual effect and the one stamina equivalent of worm cult from selene web dungeon (dont remember name of hand) has "green orbs"

The Sanctuary set from Banished Cells has green orbs.

Jaimeh · January 2022

I love the system and not just because of the farming (which can be pretty brutal in this game, especially if one plays more than one role and/or pvps too), but also because we can empty some of our inventories without worrying if the deleted items will be meta in some future patch, and we might have to refarm them. I've been holding on to weapons and gear just because they took ages to drop, in the case they might become useful again for a build one day, and inventory management was a mess. Now I can decon some of them, and if I ever need to reconstruct them, I just need to use transmute stones. It's been a long while since the game's release, and most long-time players have gone through the pains of the gear grind, the collections system means they just won't have to do that for past items anymore, which is reasonable, given how many sets exist in the game, and they still will have to farm new gear with each update, so from that point of view, gear farming is still alive and well, just more balanced, and doesn't ruin the game lives anymore of those who have a lot of alt characters

SgtWinnie · January 2022

Harvokaan wrote: »

SgtWinnie wrote: »

How's everyone going with the set collection?

Im almost 5700. It has been great to get back into some of the older dungeons.

16 missing from dungeons..all shoulders lol
500 ish left in dlc dungeons. Working on those currently.
Most of mine are from trials. Collected all the overland sets except those few tied to the thieves guild heists.

I'd be interested to see how everyone else is battling with it all.

Almost 6300. Most missing ones are from arenas and IC

Thats awesome mate!!

I do agree with the fact it's keeping a lot of the older content populated and relevant, for collectors anyway.
Hopefully it will be a great way for new folks doing the content for the first time to mix with veterans collecting for set completion. Such a bonding would be good for the community as a whole. Well in a perfect world...