It's a (very crummy) way of extending the life of content, would be my guess. Kind of like how they don't release new Motifs with the Chapters/DLC they're tied to until like 3 months after the content has released. It's to drag people back to the zone. All it does is frustrate people and encourage them not to engage with the system, though. There's absolutely no need for any Lead to have such abysmal drop rates.

Some leads sourcing deserves much better.

Motif prices at Guild Traders are the good indicator of motif rarity, and
- Ancient Daedric pages are now about 200K a page at PC EU
- Ancestral Breton like 70K a page
- Ancestral Akaviri like 60K a page
(Ancestral Reach is more common than abovementioned ones)

Last ones are on par with the Buoyant Armiger pages (also around 80k a page)
Ancient Daedric is, indeed, very hard to obtain. i wonder if this was a conscious decision of game-designers?

I aslo have questions to @ZOS regarding the Barkroot Blessing Skin lead from Galen treasure maps chests.
Galen Treasure Maps at PC EU are like 300K gold nowadays just for a chance (and this is a low chance - i used 10 maps - no lead) of drop

There were huge outrages regarding Shadowfen Harpooner’s Wading Kilt lead,
then about Oakensoul ring Murkmire safeboxes lead..
Galen skin is not that much demanded like these best-in-slot mythics, but, in my humble opinion, some leads sourcing require serious re-thinking.
If developers ever check theirs decisions by testing them playing the game, or were reading the feedback, the situation could be not that dire.

TL/DR; Game-makers could use tradeable items market price as the rarity indicator (there are rumors EVE Online AI automatically corrects drop rates based on average market price of items). Non-tradeable drops rarity items might be pinpointed with the counting of the desperate posts on the Forums (whether they are wiped by Mods or not).

@CGPsaint whatever is the situation with Q&A - the players feedback is always at the Forums.
i guess, the very purpose of the Forums is providing the reasonable feedback for the issues detected by players.
Unfortunately, players virtually don't have two-ways communication with Developers and lack the certainty that Forum posts are read by decision taking game-makers.

Communications with Developers is another pressure point nowadays. But, at least, we are trying to be heard.
The ball is in the Zeni's court.

@ZOS_Kevin
Hi, Kevin
i m very hesitant on tagging you and bringing this certain question (how comes Ancient Daedric or Galen skin lead drop rates are not in-line with other "grinding" activities?) to a much broader topic: what are the grinding limits, from ZOS point of view.
But, well.. why not.

There are dozens (no joke!) scientific researches devoted to the grinding in modern MMOs
(like this one: "Grinding from a Player’s and Game Designer’s Point of View"
https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1564771/FULLTEXT02)
Surprisingly enough, they are mostly theory, and considering vast players demography (students and school students normally have a plenty of time to devote to their favorite games and may spend 5-10 hours a day, while older players who have jobs and families to care about are more limited in theirs playing time) there are no even approximate figures: how many hours after repeating tedious activity players burn out. On average.

I may speculate this red line lies at 500..800 hours, but i am not game-maker and not a psychologist.

Kevin, what is your estimation of time after which the grind becomes unreasonable? Of course if you would like/allowed to discuss this.
Grinding for some certain lead/motif has no progress - you stop the grind after you get the desired item.
(If the item in question is tradeable, then farming gold solves the issue, but what if not?)
Here i am doing by best to hint about:
- scarab pet leads in Bthar-Zel
- poor watchlings of Mora's Whispers
- Firescourge Band from Deadlands Daily Reward Coffer
- now: this Galen skin lead from expensive Treasure Maps

As far as i might notice, desperate posts like "Fix them leads" start to appear at Forums after players spend more than 70..80 hours (though some may exaggerate) devoted to hunting of a specific lead.
What is the reasonable grind time (putting aside really "lottery" drops like War Torte) for leads from your perception?
Not everyone is the Master Angler, isn't they?

Tony, this is not the first discussion about awkward Treasure Maps sourcing.
You can get a random Treasure map from a Treasure Chest, but the drop rate is like 1:8..1:16
More chances are from Greymoor/The Reach Harrowstorm satchel, but outside events not many teams roam The Reach for Harrowstorms. Soloing is remotely possible on a tanky character with insane AoE, but this could take like 20..30 minutes, it is faster to roam Deshaan or Bal Foyen for Treasure chests.

Currently, there are 190 Treasure Maps in the game (not counting CE maps)
Base Game:
AD: Khenarti's 4 5 zones (Auridon, Grathwood, Greenshade, Malabal Tor, Reapers March) 6 maps each
DC: Stros M'Kay 2, Bethikh 2, 5 zones (Alik'r, Bangkorai, Glenumbra, Rivenspire, Stormhaven) 6 maps each
EP: Bal Foyen 2, Bleakrock 2, 5 zones (Deshaan, Eastmarch, The Rift, Shadowfen, Stonefalls) 6 maps each
Colharbour: 6 maps
Craglorn: 6 maps
Cyrodiil: 18 maps

Big zones normaly provide with 6 maps each
(Wrothgar, Vvardenfell, Summerset, N.Elsweyr, Blackwood, High Isle)
W.Skyrim + Blackreach Greymoor also give 6 maps

Smaller zones normally have 2 maps
(Gold Coast, Hew's Bane, CWC, Murkmire, S.Elsweyr, Deadlands, Galen)
The Reach + Blackreach Arkthzand also give 2 maps

Only 2 belong to Galen, so when player gets a Treasure Map drop - only 1% (2/190) this is a Galen Treasure map.
Only 2 belong to The Deadlands, thus the horrible drop chances for the Ancient Daedric Style leads

Requires some improvement, in my humble opinion.

edit: forgot TL\DR;

TL\DR; Dear Zenimax, please increase motif lead drop from smaller zones Treasure maps to get in-line with other antiquity styles drop rate
Also, please, make skin lead from Galen Treasure map a guaranteed drop from the first used Treasure map. The skin is not tradeable, so why not to alleviate grinding.
Thanks in advance.

OK, Tony. I can see your point.

tonyblack wrote: »

I know how rare those maps are, i got maybe around 10-12 deadlands maps since its release with only 4 motif pages and i played a lot, especially during chapter launch. But my point was that i’m fine with how uncommon they are. Seeing deadlands map to drop is usually pleasant surprise as I know it means decent extra gold and if it would remain expensive then the look of the motif remained exclusive and sought after by those who have gold to spend.

Still, the question "how long does it take grinding player to burn out?" worries me (and, i guess, not only me).
There are untradeable items, like mythics and other non-furnishing antiquities. Some of them require too much time to get.
I can say - i gave up with farming scarab pet leads in Bthar-Zel as the drop rate is, frankly, too low.
But i'd like to get Galen skin, though, i guess, this will cost me many millions of gold or many months - because just one awkwardly sourced lead. This is quite discouraging for me.
Thus, i am trying to summon Kevin into this discussion. He does an excellent job communicating via this Forums,
and this gives hope Developers might re-evaluate potential grind time and make fixes (like they did with Kilt and Oakensoul),

as i might guess, Developers simply copied the existing drop rates, but forgot the fact, that newer maps refer to smaller zones, not the bigger ones, and, therefore, drop rate is roughly three times lower (Ancient Daedric pages prices are the clear indicator of these 3x), and this crosses the border of grinding fatigue for many players. This, of no doubts, can be fixed.

edit: typos

CGPsaint wrote: »

tonyblack wrote: »

Going for full codexes is mostly a waste of time and gold for absolute completionists (which is pointless but if you engaging in pointless grinds you can only have yourself to blame). It’s better to stop at 6-7 pages and buy remaining from traders.

Those console prices looks like a bargain tbh. If they’d cost so low on pc I would buy them with gold from writs, dungeons or even thieving. Just wait till Blackwood/deadlands celebration next year, the prices should drop to a level those maps become common trash as all others (which shouldn’t be a thing as every event completely kill zones because value of everything from them drops to worthless afterwards).

1.) Stopping at 6-7 pages from leads is 100% not the answer to a poorly implemented feature.

2.) To the best of my knowledge there isn't or hasn't been a Deadlands event yet where map drop rate will be or have been increased.

There is no way to farm just Deadlands maps, and purchasing them at 30K-40K each is a complete waste of gold due to the ridiculously low drop rate of the leads. Why add something to the game that only a very small small percentage of players (crafters at that) will ever get without spending millions on the pages and just bypassing the source completely?

1) Why not? Do you farm all other motifs by yourself or sell your own duplicates and other stuff to buy missing pieces from traders? I think the latter is how most people complete the motif, because obtaining all 14 pages of any motif by yourself is insane grind be it dungeons, trials or overland dailies.

2) yes, there wasn’t yet, that’s why this motif still holds some value. It most likely to happen sometime next year.

The drop rate should be around 25-50 % though i’m not sure if any of the motifs follow the pattern of dropping once per day or have any decreased odds, i know ancestral high elf, orc, nord isn’t but not sure about the rest. I usually dig them when i have 3-5 maps collected and always get at least one.

Rare items are needed to incentivize trading between players, to give gold more purpose.

Arunei wrote: »

tonyblack wrote: »

Going for full codexes is mostly a waste of time and gold for absolute completionists (which is pointless but if you engaging in pointless grinds you can only have yourself to blame). It’s better to stop at 6-7 pages and buy remaining from traders.

Those console prices looks like a bargain tbh. If they’d cost so low on pc I would buy them with gold from writs, dungeons or even thieving. Just wait till Blackwood/deadlands celebration next year, the prices should drop to a level those maps become common trash as all others (which shouldn’t be a thing as every event completely kill zones because value of everything from them drops to worthless afterwards).

Imho some items rarity is a good thing for the game as it incentivize trading and extend life of the content. If you could have everything outright for little effort then you have fewer goals and motivation to play the game. Personally, I would never step in zones like western Skyrim/Reach anymore for how unrewarding everything that drops from them and it feels like a waste of time to even do something there, thanks to two previous events.

So let's see here. Because YOU don't care about achievements and filling the codex, then it's a waste of time for people who like completing things to do so.

Because YOU think it's a good deal, everyone else should be able to easily afford paying that much for those Chapters.

Because YOU think the rarity for these Chapters to obtain is okay, the many people who have an issue with the sheer amount of RNG to complete a Motif shouldn't have any problems with it.

Because YOU have "millions of gold" everyone else shouldn't care about high prices.

There are already enough things that require ridiculous grinds in this game to get. There don't constantly need to be more added. It discourages people and frustrates them when they do decide to try getting things. The fact that Ancestral/Ancient Motifs are locked behind several layers to collect just makes them that much more frustrating for a number of people to get.

And not everyone just conveniently has "millions" of gold they're sitting on, so let's not act like paying 60k+ is a viable option for a lot of people, because it's not.

Let's also not sit here and claim that the way other people enjoy playing the game is "pointless", especially when there's a system in place specifically TO facilitate that playstyle. As was already asked, what would be the point of the codex if ZOS didn't expect people to want to complete it? The codex LITERALLY exists to encourage people to go after Leads to fill it out. And yet it's peoples' "own fault" for playing the game not only the way they enjoy, but also the way it was intended?

I didn’t design this system so I don’t get why you take my opinion on it so emotionally. And it’s not me who have any problems with it, for me it’s fine the way it is.

As explained above, I simply agree with that design decision because in grand scheme of things it does provide something to work forward, insensitive to participate in trading and add some value to gold which is already inflated and for the most part meaningless. If everything is easy and cheap to get then there is little point to spend much time in game.

Codex provide no value other than small flavor text you can google and motif itself isn’t bound and tradeable so I don’t see the issue there other than the want to get everything instantly by doing close to nothing.

Yeah, the ancestral lead sourcing in this game is terrible. It's too many layers of RNG behind maps that are less and less farmable with each new zone.

Yes, you can buy the motif pages themselves. But there's no way to grind for a specific page if you're only missing one. It's all compounded by the fact that the maps only drop leads at about a 20% or so rate, so that's a lot of wasted time/money.

In the original Ancestral series with Greymoor, each basegame zone dropped 2 leads from maps (except Khenarthi, which dropped 4). That meant if you were only missing something like Ancestral Nord shields, you'd know to get the maps for Eastmarch. That's 6 possible maps, which each could drop either shields or Legs. So you farm (or buy, let's face it) one or more of 6 possible maps to get a 20% chance to get a lead, and that has a 50% chance of being the one you need.

Now Ancestral Reach comes from a total of 8 maps, but all 14 pages are possible from each. There's no way to farm for a specific one, so when you're at 13/14, you better hope RNG likes you. And then Akaviri and Breton are 14 pages from 6 maps, and Daedric is 14 from only 2.

I did a quick (and expensive) test, and I can almost confirm that the lead is decided when you dig up the map. That means you can't try to be clever and just keep a bunch of leads unscried to increase the chance of the one you want dropping. In that case you just stop getting leads because, when it picks which lead to give you, it sees you already have it so you don't get anything. It's actually a lot more cost effective to dig as you go just to be able to sell the second (or third, or fifth...) of each you get until you finally manage to get the last one you need. If you manage to get it.

...and after that test I did, I'm still sitting at 13/14 for one of mine. I've gotten like 5 maces among other things and I still don't have the [self snip] belt page. I ended up getting a dupe (or more) of almost every one of the other 13 pages at least once, but not the first one of the one I need.

I wish there was some curation here to go along with this RNG (a 20% chance to get a lead at all, * a 1/14 change to get the page you need = about a 1.4% chance of it working out). If it only favored giving you a page that you're missing from your codex, then it'd be way nicer to be able to get the codex results here. And if it goes based on your codex, people can't exactly farm the chest page (because once you dig it up, you have it in your codex)