ZoS, can we have an official statement on the Tide-Glass Beads Lead?

redlink1979 · June 2021

TheForFeeF wrote: »

(...) I have spent 19 hours trying to find just this lead (it only took me 16 hours to find all the leads for the Mount). I am also not the only person who has spent 10+ hours on just this lead, in fact, there are a fair few who have spent 20+ hours. (...)

Yeah RNG...
PS - Mount's leads: I only ran Darkshade Caverns II more than 60 times, non-consectutive because it's very frustrating and annoying, before I got the lead from there...

Eldartar · June 2021

I'm thinking I was lucky, it only took me around 6 hours to get the lead.

p4l4mu7 · June 2021

I don't know who tought this is a good idea, but I ask devs to go to Shadowfen and read zone chat for 10 min. Everybody is annoyed and fighting eachother there. How is this fun. I know grind is neccessary but this is just terrible lead spot. Whith mythic items, people are gathered in same places, community is together but this doesn't help people have fun together instead because of some lazy devs great lead spot people are fighting eachother.

DinoZavr · June 2021

I am roaming Shadowfen at 4..5am GMT, which is, definitely, off-peak hours for PC EU.
Still, more than half of water plants nodes are camped by players stupidly standing on top of a node, waiting for respawn.
It’s no surprise, players are quite frustrated and angry as drop chances are abysmal, so zone chat instead of just party talking turned into something toxic and the most common whisper I get is kind of: GTFO from my node!
So I roam the zone in question with “Offline” status.

In my understanding, this design decision might be intentional. Otherwise why causing to quarrel?
ESO Guilds are not connecting players to collaborate and never were, PVP is not about competition, but about domination (otherwise why no “below 50” IC? tournament arenas?), even trading model prefer price flippers (as it is too hard for newbies to pay huge dues for the trading guilds to sell theirs stuff, so they forced to sale low to marketeers). If you are new, inexperienced and not top-geared most of PUGs kick you on sight, this somehow became normal in ESO, as well as bow/bow tanks with 16K health.

Of course, any MMO is PVP this way or another, but game-makers attitude towards connecting or confronting players does matter a lot.

The second “M” in MMO stands for “multiplayer” and it IS possible to unite many players, to create friendships and the group play accomplishments.
Many things might be implemented like Guilds achievements and rewards, PVP tournament arenas and Official tournaments with unique outfits/mounts rewards from Zenimax.
Match-making could seriously help if implemented properly, random activities finder has a lot of room for improvement.
Sorry, Zenimax, I cannot imagine a good friendship emerging when people meet each other with a sincere GTFO.

imho: placing highly demanded item into heavily contested nodes is not a wise MMO design decision.
It is still possible to re-think & fix this, if the impact was not intentional from the very start.

Rachaelphoto · June 2021

jssriot wrote: »

Ezhh wrote: »

It being "new" and therefore currently highly farmed doesn't excuse what seems to be an extremely low drop chance, and doesn't invalidate the OP's points.

For me at least, it's going to make me less likely to ever want to go back to Shadowfen again, because there was nothing engaging or interesting about obtaining this lead. It was boredom and frustration, and it's actually left me less interested in playing.

I never want to go back to Bad Man Hollows and that's only after 2-3 hours of unsuccessful farming on the Pale Order lead there. But I keep saying this on this forum and it doesn't seem to be getting across to a lot of people: ZOS doesn't care if you're happy or enjoying your time in ESO as long as you are spending your time (and money) on the game. If they can convince you that suffering through hours of mental health-risking and cardiovascular health-impairing grinding in the hopes of getting this one thing that you think will make the game better for you, they don't care what the cost to you is. They just want you to be engaged with the game, as long as they can make you stay engaged. This is why I've backed away from mythic farming. I've played this game for years without mythic items. They're not even a thing anyone ever asked for. It's just something ZOS came up with to make us want to buy Greymoor and now Blackwood with the promise that this magic thing is going to make a perfect build as we chase after the ever moving goalposts of the latest meta, even though if we as a community wanted to do things differently, instead of meta chasing like MMO sheeple, we could make that choice and ZOS who eventually have to reconsider how they make content to fuel this never-ending meta madness. Moreover ZOS can and will change the stats of those items whenever they want, so for all you know, all those hours you put into farming this one thing will be wasted in the near future because that item will be rendered useless by later patches. Are there mythics I'd like to have? Sure. But if all of this is price ZOS demands for me to get one, giving up hours I could be using to play content I would rather play and not knowing for how long that item will be useful to me, I will have to pass.

My friend hasn't been back since we spent hours farming the Thrassian Stranglers, only to have them nerfed. I miss playing with him but can see his point.

jacktalkthai · June 2021

I really wish we could trade these. I got the drop a day or two ago and wasn't even looking for it. I'd love to be able to trade these to those who actually need and want them.

kargen27 · June 2021

AinSoph wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

LadyNalcarya wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

It's new, people are going to farm it. The players that want it right now of course are going to concentrate on that only and ignore the rest of the zone. A couple of weeks down the line we will begin seeing players doing other stuff as they more casually search for the lead.
Hard to judge player behavior two days after a content drop.

It's not possible to "casually" search for a lead that has such a low drop chance and such specific drop locations. How many nirnroots would you pick daily when just questing or whatnot? You won't get it just by playing the game normally unless you're insanely lucky, that's the problem.
Another problem is that camping spawns/leaving a macro to spam E is not even gameplay. It's much worse that farming dungeons or bosses, it doesn't require anything and doesn't reward you with anything, it's just a pointless waste of time.
And no, it's not a "you're not entitled of getting in on day1" problem. The camping thing will be the same regardless with this drop rate, and waiting wouldnt change it. Besides, ZOS has a habit of nerfing popular items so it's not that difficult to understand people who want to use mythics while they're still good.

Sure it is. Save up treasure maps, surveys and other stuff then just spend some time in the zone grabbing every node you see. I always pick up every node I see unless I'm in Cyrodiil with a group. Knowing where the lead drops I might spend a bit of time running a loop a couple of times a week or so once the rush crowd has died down some. Eventually I will get it or I will not.

I'm still working on getting all the trophy achievements on my main character. Took me several months of maybe four hours a week to get the Ogre Toe Ring for that achievement. Was the last thing I needed. Thing about being casual is there is no real rush.

That aside we still can't judge future behaviors on what players are doing only two days after a content drop.

This specific lead can only be found from water nodes and water plant nodes. People are literally claiming single spots just to have a chance at it so those alternatives don't apply.

Yes I know. That is because they want to get the item as quickly as possible. Doesn't change anything I said. I didn't say there were alternative ways to get the lead. I said in a few weeks when the players that want the drop immediately have gone the zone will get back to normal and you can find the water nodes as you do other things. The camping will not last long.

Red_Feather · June 2021

I asked in ESO Live chat "please consider looking into reworking lead drop rates" and got a message that they won't post it in chat due to it not being approved. 😐

And at around the same time as this there was someone in game asking how come nobody in stream was mentioning the lead fiasco.
Was it actively being avoided?

MrGhosty · June 2021

If they want to make it grindy, that's okay. The easy fix is just to stop making harvest nodes shared instance. Let everyone be able to harvest every node and then the zone chat can be about people calling out node spots or shooting the breeze while in between clicks. It's not the best solution by any stretch, but it seems like it would be one of the easier solutions.

I'm not currently farming the lead, I only finished ring of the pale order and wild hunt mythics a couple days before Blackwood dropped. It bums out to see Shadowfen zone chat turn so toxic as usually it's a pretty chill, quiet zone with people telling jokes and generally being good natured. Since blackwood dropped it's just a stream of complaints and arguing. Harvest nodes should not be adversarial, it's outdated game design.

WrathOfInnos · June 2021

Has something failed in the generation of new zone instances? My understanding is that a parallel instance of the same zone would be created if too many players were there simultaneously. That player cap seems to be lower than the number of water plants in Shadowfen, so why is every node claimed? Is there a cap to how many parallel instances can exist? Seems like there is a system in place to prevent this problem of overcrowding, but for unknown reasons it’s not kicking in.

Ippokrates · June 2021

DinoZavr wrote: »

I am roaming Shadowfen at 4..5am GMT, which is, definitely, off-peak hours for PC EU.
Still, more than half of water plants nodes are camped by players stupidly standing on top of a node, waiting for respawn.
It’s no surprise, players are quite frustrated and angry as drop chances are abysmal, so zone chat instead of just party talking turned into something toxic and the most common whisper I get is kind of: GTFO from my node!
So I roam the zone in question with “Offline” status.

In my understanding, this design decision might be intentional. Otherwise why causing to quarrel?
ESO Guilds are not connecting players to collaborate and never were, PVP is not about competition, but about domination (otherwise why no “below 50” IC? tournament arenas?), even trading model prefer price flippers (as it is too hard for newbies to pay huge dues for the trading guilds to sell theirs stuff, so they forced to sale low to marketeers). If you are new, inexperienced and not top-geared most of PUGs kick you on sight, this somehow became normal in ESO, as well as bow/bow tanks with 16K health.

Of course, any MMO is PVP this way or another, but game-makers attitude towards connecting or confronting players does matter a lot.

The second “M” in MMO stands for “multiplayer” and it IS possible to unite many players, to create friendships and the group play accomplishments.
Many things might be implemented like Guilds achievements and rewards, PVP tournament arenas and Official tournaments with unique outfits/mounts rewards from Zenimax.
Match-making could seriously help if implemented properly, random activities finder has a lot of room for improvement.
Sorry, Zenimax, I cannot imagine a good friendship emerging when people meet each other with a sincere GTFO.

imho: placing highly demanded item into heavily contested nodes is not a wise MMO design decision.
It is still possible to re-think & fix this, if the impact was not intentional from the very start.

Yup, and only thing they could do is to make leads obtainable for all members of group/large group. Which btw would also solve quite [snip] situation where leads are dropped from dung bosses but only to some members.

Wouldn't you share a lead with your team mates? Especially you can find dozen of artifacts in the zone - assuming you will be breaking one excavation after another

[Edited for Censor Bypass]

hands0medevil · June 2021

what kind of the statement do you need? it drops, it requires patience (nothing really strange) and some luck. It's RNG. Stop expecting everything in ESO to be easy and with 90% drop chance.

It's OP super duper legendary mythic item and with sticker book you need to farm it ONLY ONCE. [snip]

[edited to remove rude comment]

Ryath_Waylander · June 2021

mzprx wrote: »

i went to Shadowfen on purpose yesterday. to see what the situation was like after seeing posts like this and actually running through Shadowfen two days ago to pick up the blacksmithing survey and noticing that it (Shadowfen) has become the most popular zone all of a sudden. what i saw has terrified me..

people have become zombies. mindless creatures staring into the water, one here, another one there. they are is a state of trance, oblivious to their surroundings, endlessly waiting for a node to spawn. when you come close they awake. they become aggressive, exactly like zombies in some kind of B horror movie. they start growling incomprehensive words in the zone chat. they are trying to type as fast as possible (to avoid the node actually spawning and them missing out on grabbing it because they're typing) to tell you to "f%$!k off, that is their spot!" the zombie apocalypse has arrived, folks..

i tried to warn them. i tried to tell them to remember the Thrassian Stranglers. that 2-3 patches later noone will ever use that Kilt because ZOS will take care of that. i tried. noone listened. they kept staring into the water..

the end is nigh, folks..

Mudballs, you forgot the mudballs

Heaven forbid you stop to read your map anywhere near them. I was in my map, looking for a wayshrine in Elsweyr when I got pelted. I would have left it there but this was followed by jumping, more mudballs, shooting with the staff and some creative and poorly spelled suggestions in the /say channel. Why anybody would think this is an effective deterrent, I'm not sure. If anything, it encourages a silly response.

Well alrighty then

I dusted off my mudball pouch and set to. End result was, while now fully engaged, the node spawned behind them and got poached. I still felt sorry for them and decided to leave after that, just in case they had a fit in real life.

Minnesinger · June 2021

This is beyond all rationality how people got sucked into this madness.

TheForFeeF · June 2021

hands0medevil wrote: »

what kind of the statement do you need? it drops, it requires patience (nothing really strange) and some luck. It's RNG. Stop expecting everything in ESO to be easy and with 90% drop chance.

It's OP super duper legendary mythic item and with sticker book you need to farm it ONLY ONCE. Quit whining on the forum and go farm nirnroots goddamit.

I mean, its very clearly bugged. Or, the drop rate is lower than 1%. ZoS need to let us know that it is either working as intended or it is bugged and working on a fix.

I, for one, don't actually mind a grind and wish they added some stuff to drop tables that were super rare. However, the way this node has been implemented is one of the worst ways to add a grind to the game. It isn't reviving any content at all.

I don't expect everything in ESO to be easy with a 90% drop chance, however, farming 20+ hours for a lead is stupid. It shouldn't take this long for any lead to drop at all.

You only need to farm it once if you only care about stickerbook and having it. However, if you're a completionist, you need to farm it a total for 3 times.

[snip]

[edited quoted content and response to removed content]

Misamati · June 2021

I’ve been at this lead for about 18 hours now. Wanted to get this out of the way first. I have collected about 400 water hyacints, 100 nirnroots, and 700 lorkhans tears. Still no lead. To change things up, went to Bal Foyen, first covenant enemy i killed dropped the other lead. Second world boss in Blackwood dropped the other lead. How can the droprate of this lead be SO LOW?

alanmatillab16_ESO · June 2021

This is all a plot to turn Al'ikr into a tourist holiday destination by flooding the area with the tears of min-maxers. First they harvest the tears thanks to a low drop rate of the lead and then the main harvest when they nerf the item made in a couple of months.

Buy your beachfront property now, its gonna be deep

tim99 · June 2021

it's the Mazzatun lead i still need to complete the codex

the water lead was easy and fast...

hundergrn · June 2021

I doubt zeni is going to address this issue. Most likely by their statistics, the drop is performing normally to the rate set. Farming a single node, subjecting yourself to just water plants.... is not going to help your rng to spawn this lead quicker.

Its not about nodes being shared instance, its about how we are going about this lead. From asking in zone, there seems to be the idea that it only drops from water plant nodes. In which there are not many of. Going through the zone, it looks like people are camping just water plant nodes. No one is camping pure water sources or water skins. Those that have taking farming loops may pick them up but they are largely being ignored.

The lead has a chance to drop from WATER PLANT NODES, PURE WATER SOURCES, AND WATER SKINS!

Most likely lucky rng... but I got the lead from a water skin in a delve. Not a soul in there but me. It is possible to casually farm this lead, by playing the zone normally. Hell, the only reason I was in the zone was for running skyshards on a newer toon. You know, come into the zone, make a loop, hit every delve and skyshard point on the map, pick every node I see, maybe hit a few overland bosses on the way. Base progression for a new toon.

Point being,... the artificial inflation of the zone is more on us than zeni. We want the flavor of the patch. We are subjecting ourselves to standing at a plant node with a 4-min spawn timer (some of you are even ignoring the pure water source/water skin 10m away in fear of losing your spot) for a chance at a low drop. Try different methods, experiment, maybe actually play the zone. Subject yourself to the waiting game after you made a few laps in the zone or want something mindless to do. Think of the time it took many of use to farm a Mothers Sorrow Staff in the right trait, that last piece of BSW needed from CoA... why are we thinking that spawn camping is the only solution to getting this lead right now?

PigofSteel · June 2021

Share nodes...

HumbleThaumaturge · June 2021

ThePlayer wrote: »

I took 10 water nodes and 10 Nirnroot in 1 hour, nothing!

On test server (PTS), I went looking for this lead twice: both times took just over 200 nodes before the lead dropped. So getting the lead after only 20 nodes (as you describe) would be quite good luck. Now on test server, with no competing players, harvesting the 200 nodes took less than an hour. Obviously, with Shadowfen overrun with node-farmers, it can take quite a lot longer to harvest the required number of nodes. Now after Update 30 went "live," I got the lead in just 15 minutes (after I completed running skyshards and delves in the zone). I know from guildmates and Forum posts that I was extremely (extremely) fortunate. However, after completion of the first kilt, I went out to get leads again for a second kilt. So far, I have farmed over 300 nodes, and no lead has dropped. Some players are saying the drop-rate is 1-in-a-100. I think it's closer to 1-in-200. Maybe higher.