Request to remove diminishing returns on loot.

Avogadro · May 2014

Xithian wrote: »

Having motifs drop from containers means that anyone who has no plans to do provisioning is forced to gather provisioning mats for hours upon hours.

As far as I've seen, being both a provisioner and a player looking for motif books, the books (and recipes) don't drop from sacks, crates, barrels, cupboards, or baskets. Motifs do drop from nightstands, desks, dressers, wardrobes, trunks, tall cabinets, and backpacks. You can find provisioning ingredients in backpacks as well. You can simply avoid the former list if you have no want for cooking materials.

Another thing to note is that if you leave auto-loot off, you can take the ingredients, recipes, or motifs you want and leave the rest. For instance, I only want food ingredients, not ones used for making beverages, so I leave those as well as recipes I already have. Containers that you leave with unwanted things inside seem to "reroll" or change their loot for you faster than containers you've emptied, but I might be wrong about that.

ChairGraveyard · May 2014

bwilson.homeb16_ESO wrote: »

Problem: Bots were industrialising provision material farming, automating large scale looting and reloading. Mats were then used to create food/drink and sold to vendors. This provided an infinitely scalable, largely unattended, stream of clean gold for selling

Simple solution: Food & drink sell to vendors for nothing. Impacts practically no one except the farmers

Chosen solution: Nerf drops significantly for everyone, including those playing the game as originally intended

Of course the irony is, by restricting supply, they've made prices for certain items shoot through the roof overnight, massively increasing the value of both the 'stock' already farmed and the gold all the bots/farmers got before the nerf. So even when they lose, they sorta win. We can't farm for ourselves any more, so if we want something, we have to have over our money

Seems to be their MO at ZOS - fight bots using anti-player nerfs, which almost solely affect players and NOT bots.

The first was the public dungeon/world boss global loot lockout timer. Now this diminishing returns garbage.

Boneheaded "fixes" that don't address the core problem and simply make the game worse for players, and hardly affect bots at all (bots have infinite time to wait to reset the DR timer - unlike players).

Given all the newbies that don't understand the issue at all clamoring for MORE of this type of anti-fun anti-player bandaid fix, I'm sure we'll see more.

Xnemesis · May 2014

Find a port city and loot the docks you should find a good amount of mats

Chryos · May 2014

A good point was mentioned, when it comes to crafting styles, there no point into making them a rare find as everyone wants different types of armors. You can keep the drops in different level zones, just not make them so rare. In the game you have sorts of merchants that would sell all sorts of styles of armor anyway. If anything the one exception could be Daedric Armor. People want crafting styles and botters are just trying to just make money off that anyway. Or make crafting styles a skill to be learned instead of a motif.

EQBallzz · May 2014

I have to agree that this sort of sucks. Going hand in hand with this is the fact that certain provisioning mats are exceedingly rare to come by regardless of diminishing returns. I have all these recipes but can't make anything because there is no mudcrab meat, oats, horker meat, honey comb etc...

I'm in 3 large trading guilds and there is never *any* of these mats for sale at any price. I have checked the TESO Elite marketplace forum and can't find any there, either. What is the point of provisioning if you can't craft anything due to excessive scarcity. I don't get it.

zhevon · May 2014

Real problem - at least for motifs and recipes is that they RARELY drop from mobs or in chest requiring pickable locks. Its also rather lame that containers in the uncivilized areas have the same drop rates as those in the cities. ZoS started wrong by having good stuff available in the city containers; good stuff should be available when you actually doing adventuring. Cannot speak to high level provisioning materials issues; because I am not there.

Ausare · May 2014

Well, after all this loot timers I am changing my sub to 1 month only and will not continue it after that.

curlyqloub14_ESO · May 2014

Can someone please provide a link to where this statement on diminishing returns was made? I don't see any info in patch notes or anything, and am really confused as to what exactly people are talking about in this thread.

But I am a crafter and provisioner, and would very much like to know the original source, or what exactly this "nerf" is.

Morrawind · May 2014

I've put skill points in provisioning. They nerf the vendor value.
No AH.
I like to explore and loot crates and barrels. They wreck it.

This is a beautiful game. World is full of life. Design is good. Quests are interesting. Story is nice and sound is wonderful.

Gameplay sucks.

I will return when you have made up your mind ZOS, and maybe fixed this game. Maybe after a few months.

So long!

Perseas · May 2014

I always find green recipes and allot of provisioning, but i always destroy them or sell them to vendors, because I havent touched this prof at all, so it takes allot of bag space. I only do wood, black and cloth... thats it. I ve already have full bank, 3 lvl 1 characters as bank as well... and bank space needs to be upgraded!! I am 110 and nope ....

They have event to decrease the amount of refine goods we get (when we refine ore, cloth and wood) or to increase the stacks from 100, up to 200-300 per stuck!!! Or else its a problem

If i refine 50 woods and I get 30-40 refined wood, its a problem for the bank space! They have to increase the stuck number... 100 refined stuck, is just 30 min farm.

Its not like other mmos, that u must get 80 woods to get 8 refined woods, if you get 80 wood in ESO, you get about 40-60 refined! I dont know if its allot, I believe it is, but the stuck limitation to 100, it is, for that amount of gains

So they have to even decrease the amount of refined goods we receive, or increase the gap number of its stuck. I am avoiding to collect stuff now, because I am full and I get allot of stuff by deconstructing armors and weapons, for my proff.

Turkeysammich · May 2014

Cacus wrote: »

I agree I'm trying to loot some Honey Comb after 3 days searching for it, I haven't looted 1, all i want is to make my V5 health and magika food, revert it back to the old way till you find a solution then fix it the farmers never bothered me and let me find my Honey.

I've found some in Cyrodiil, in a tavern, but not a lot, as the diminishing returns kicked in almost immediately.

Turkeysammich wrote: »

What's the difference of taking advantage of the instanced containers by logging out and resetting them, versus choosing and area radius and harvesting nodes? It's basically the same thing, except you don't have to log out for the nodes to respawn. You can choose a route to harvest ore, and have a full stack of 100 in 10 to 20 minutes. You can do the same thing collecting hide, and have a full stack even faster. Yet, provisioning ingredient drop rate was nerfed.

Hate to quote myself, but if you think about it, Provisioning levels up the fastest, but it's harder to level up because you have to actually go out and find recipes, and then multiple ingredients for those said recipes, even before diminishing returns, if you didn't farm those ingredients, you wouldn't have enough to level it up just casually collecting as you go, certain ingredients are ONLY found in certain level areas, so you are forced to stay in those areas to get those ingredients you need. Blacksmiths can collect as much ore as they want, where ever they want, but since they don't have to log in and out to get ore nodes to respawn, they're not considered "exploiters." You really don't have to go far to collect a lot of ore, you can choose a route of 3 nodes and just run in a circle and by the time you finish collecting the 3rd node, the 1st has respawned, and not to mention, there are caves with tons of ore nodes where you can collect full stacks or ore in just a matter of minutes, if you're in there by yourself. You get 3-4 of an ore from a node, those caves spawn about 10-15 nodes, all you have to do is run around 2.5 times and you've got a full stack. The other trade skills might be a lot slower to level up, but slow doesn't equal more difficult. You get tons of armor and weapon drops casually exploring or doing quests, which is the majority of blacksmith exp. If logging in and out to reset loot containers is considered an "exploit" then trading weapons and armor you've made for weapons and armor someone else has made for a greater exp gain should be considered an exploit too, as should running in a set route to collect ore.

If motifs really are the issue, I'd go along with everyone else, and say, simply take them out of the loot tables and add them as quest rewards.

Zershar_Vemod · May 2014

I'm very happy I found this thread, it reminded me to not bother having my alt spec into provisioning yet until loot tables are restored.

I'm really just shaking my head at these decisions lately. Zenimax is clearly showing how they have no idea how to handle most things in TEOS without reverting to unneeded nerfs and timers, instead of going at the problems themselves.

There isn't even any official responses on the threads about the hundreds of bots entering Coldharbor everyday...it's like Zenimax chooses what's a "problem" to them..

Jankstar · May 2014

I do not like this change. The work to cut down on RMT via bots and gold sellers is applaudable, but I feel like these changes cut into my play experience. Please remove the recently added cool down timers and focus on the gold buyers instead.

Ausare · May 2014

Don't worry, a lot of people are burned after playing in boring VR content with loot timers making game-play even more umplayable.
In 1 month a lot of people will not continue playing if nothing changes.
That's just as simple as that.
I have Diablo 3 and FF 14 to return to.

Phantax · May 2014

ZOS_TristanK wrote: »

In order to ensure continued constructive and meaningful discussion on our forums, we ask that you please refrain from creating petition and protest organization threads on our forums. Neither allows for open, constructive discussion or exchange of ideas since most posts consist of “/signed.” Instead, we ask that you offer recommendations, suggestions, or requests about topics you feel need change. In order to continue making improvements to our game, it's important that we get details from you regarding why you like or dislike something.

I agree with the 'protest' part, save them for specific forums or CS mails.

However the 'petition' bit should be a valid solution. If enough people sign a petition surely that's a strong indication of how the majority are feeling?
Another option would be to allow posters to add a POLL to their posts.
(this is one of the only MMO forum I can think of that doesn't allow POLLS, which kinda sounds like avoidance)

Knottypine · May 2014

Does the diminishing returns also effect overworld bosses (the skull and cross bones)? I had 2 on my map that were not cleared yet. I killed one with a few others around, and received loot. Within 5-10 minutes I was at another boss to clear it, and only received a couple of gold from it. Both bosses where now showing as cleared, but I only received loot from one of them.

Turkeysammich · May 2014

Knottypine wrote: »

Does the diminishing returns also effect overworld bosses (the skull and cross bones)? I had 2 on my map that were not cleared yet. I killed one with a few others around, and received loot. Within 5-10 minutes I was at another boss to clear it, and only received a couple of gold from it. Both bosses where now showing as cleared, but I only received loot from one of them.

I'm not sure, but there have been times where I've killed a world boss and not received anything.

Now that I think about it, before FF14 was redone, they had almost this same thing, but to deter people from playing long periods at a time due to health concerns. After a certain amount of time playing, while harvesting you wouldn't be able to get anything except trash items. Like fishing, you either got nothing, or a boot. They even halted exp gain after a certain amount of time, but enough people quit and complained, that they took it out.

tipper709ub17_ESO · May 2014

I understand the reasons for the changes however put in place the ability to add modifiers to gear that are not a cake walk to get yet doable to increase the chance to loot motifs and for people that are dedicated to crafting.

Add some value, a few gold per stack of 20 aged meat, mash, grapes and pork etc... It's not get rich quick and gives people that aren't into provisioning a reason to still check containers. As someone earlier pointed out. empty empty lock pick empty empty empty lock pick..... not fun

I am also noticing that what I'm getting from containers is based on provisioning level not actual character level and is allowing for cooking beyond my ability to use whats crafted. That would be fun if there was a place to sell them for more than a hand full of coins.

Associate the motif and recipe drops with a combination of level and secondary skill set levels. Or put them into chests.. This would make it more problematic for the bots to abuse the game mechanics without stepping on the players fun at the same time.

I don't want it handed to me, I want to have fun pursuing it. Not that I would turn down a million dollars....

bluntobjnub18_ESO · May 2014

There is a couple of points I don't understand here:

1. In regard to provisioning mats, I find most of my level 50 primary and secondary ingredients in Bankorai. I have not yet been to coldharbor, and I'm only level 45. I'm swimming in these ingredients because I take the time to loot every barrel, sack, or crate I come across, and I also find lots of vr5 primary ingredients. What I have not found yet are VR5 secondary ingredients, which I expect I will find in coldharbor. How are people not finding enough? They seem to be zone dependant, not level dependant. I will take people at their word that there are not enough urns/trunks/crates in coldharbor for this purpose until I can get there.

2. Because I look in ALL the sacks, barrels, crates, etc. I have a nice stock of
tier 2 and 3 ingredients. I've found them since the start, and I've saved them up.
Oats and tomatoes you can only get from a hireling. Is this an issue that they are rare?

3. Motifs. I'll run a route with alts in daggerfall, wayrest, etc. and check desks/wardrobes/chests. I'll find a motif or two, although I know that I'm not going to see a rare motif until I'm VR+ and have a crafting skill of the appropriate level. I've got all the basic ones I want, several times over, and I expect I'll get all the rares over time. It's not like I plan to PL to VR10 overnight. So, why is there an expectation that there should not be diminishing returns on these kind of things?

4. Recipes. I haven't had difficulty finding them, beyond the RNG for blues/purples. I've got blues, but no purples yet. I expect that I will find them in time, and I've been able to buy blues fairly reasonably through the merchant. Again, why is there an expectation that this should be easy?

TL;DR Loot everything, and if it takes a little longer to find those rares that's ok to avoid bot swarms in every location.

tipper709ub17_ESO · May 2014

bluntobjnub18_ESO wrote: »

There is a couple of points I don't understand here:

1. In regard to provisioning mats, I find most of my level 50 primary and secondary ingredients in Bankorai. I have not yet been to coldharbor, and I'm only level 45. I'm swimming in these ingredients because I take the time to loot every barrel, sack, or crate I come across, and I also find lots of vr5 primary ingredients. What I have not found yet are VR5 secondary ingredients, which I expect I will find in coldharbor. How are people not finding enough? They seem to be zone dependant, not level dependant. I will take people at their word that there are not enough urns/trunks/crates in coldharbor for this purpose until I can get there.

2. Because I look in ALL the sacks, barrels, crates, etc. I have a nice stock of
tier 2 and 3 ingredients. I've found them since the start, and I've saved them up.
Oats and tomatoes you can only get from a hireling. Is this an issue that they are rare?

3. Motifs. I'll run a route with alts in daggerfall, wayrest, etc. and check desks/wardrobes/chests. I'll find a motif or two, although I know that I'm not going to see a rare motif until I'm VR+ and have a crafting skill of the appropriate level. I've got all the basic ones I want, several times over, and I expect I'll get all the rares over time. It's not like I plan to PL to VR10 overnight. So, why is there an expectation that there should not be diminishing returns on these kind of things?

4. Recipes. I haven't had difficulty finding them, beyond the RNG for blues/purples. I've got blues, but no purples yet. I expect that I will find them in time, and I've been able to buy blues fairly reasonably through the merchant. Again, why is there an expectation that this should be easy?

TL;DR Loot everything, and if it takes a little longer to find those rares that's ok to avoid bot swarms in every location.

You make good points. How do these compare for you after the latest patch?

Orizuru · May 2014

Sorry I'm coming to the party a little late... but is this why I sometimes go to loot a dresser and get no loot and it changes into an empty dresser as soon as I click on it? Simply because I received loot from a different urn or dresser previously and have to wait for an internal cooldown of unknown length before I can be awarded loot again?

Turkeysammich · May 2014

bluntobjnub18_ESO wrote: »

There is a couple of points I don't understand here:

1. In regard to provisioning mats, I find most of my level 50 primary and secondary ingredients in Bankorai. I have not yet been to coldharbor, and I'm only level 45. I'm swimming in these ingredients because I take the time to loot every barrel, sack, or crate I come across, and I also find lots of vr5 primary ingredients. What I have not found yet are VR5 secondary ingredients, which I expect I will find in coldharbor. How are people not finding enough? They seem to be zone dependant, not level dependant. I will take people at their word that there are not enough urns/trunks/crates in coldharbor for this purpose until I can get there.

2. Because I look in ALL the sacks, barrels, crates, etc. I have a nice stock of
tier 2 and 3 ingredients. I've found them since the start, and I've saved them up.
Oats and tomatoes you can only get from a hireling. Is this an issue that they are rare?

3. Motifs. I'll run a route with alts in daggerfall, wayrest, etc. and check desks/wardrobes/chests. I'll find a motif or two, although I know that I'm not going to see a rare motif until I'm VR+ and have a crafting skill of the appropriate level. I've got all the basic ones I want, several times over, and I expect I'll get all the rares over time. It's not like I plan to PL to VR10 overnight. So, why is there an expectation that there should not be diminishing returns on these kind of things?

4. Recipes. I haven't had difficulty finding them, beyond the RNG for blues/purples. I've got blues, but no purples yet. I expect that I will find them in time, and I've been able to buy blues fairly reasonably through the merchant. Again, why is there an expectation that this should be easy?

TL;DR Loot everything, and if it takes a little longer to find those rares that's ok to avoid bot swarms in every location.

You've most likely gotten your stuff before the diminishing returns was put into affect. Try making a new character and see if you get the same outcome. Most of us are lucky if we even find a single green recipe now.

NaciremaDiputs wrote: »

Sorry I'm coming to the party a little late... but is this why I sometimes go to loot a dresser and get no loot and it changes into an empty dresser as soon as I click on it? Simply because I received loot from a different urn or dresser previously and have to wait for an internal cooldown of unknown length before I can be awarded loot again?

I'm hearing different things about it, but basically yes, for me, if I loot a spot of it's containers, say a tavern, when I leave that tavern the diminishing returns is in effect, this is why I think my account is bugged, as other people say changing areas resets it to that area, but for me, after looting about 20 containers, 80% of anything I loot after is empty or a lock pick, no matter if I go to new zones/areas or not.

starkerealm · May 2014

A little off topic, but: why the hell is isn't it possible to just buy the provisioning materials from vendors in game? Are you telling me Tamriel has no grocers? I mean we know that's not true from the other games. Why can't we just buy the supplies we need for this, and not be dependent on pilfering other people's stuff for our cooking supplies?

Having to loot for blue and purple recipes, I get, but the rest of this stuff should be easily accessible. It'd even make the recipes as your drop restriction make sense, because the rest of it would just be gated by what you could spend on groceries.

As it is, a bunch of players are: "I'm the greatest chef Tamriel has ever seen, but, I still need to steal food to survive."

bluntobjnub18_ESO · May 2014

Turkey -

I'll check to see tonight.

ChairGraveyard · May 2014

Knottypine wrote: »

Does the diminishing returns also effect overworld bosses (the skull and cross bones)? I had 2 on my map that were not cleared yet. I killed one with a few others around, and received loot. Within 5-10 minutes I was at another boss to clear it, and only received a couple of gold from it. Both bosses where now showing as cleared, but I only received loot from one of them.

Yes, it does. In the patch notes for 1.0.6 it said blah blah blah, "frequency of loot from public dungeon and world bosses".

As if it weren't dumb enough when applied only to the public dungeon bosses, it locks players out of doing overworld bosses as well.

Worst, laziest, most ineffective "fix" ever.

Stickbow · May 2014

Trying to figure out how farming mats that usually have little or no sale value (unless cooked) is worthwhile to gold farmers.... I haven't seen bots advertising "Salt and Pepper for sale - git yer Mudcrab meat here". Heck, I was hoping someone would bring up the fact most mats have zero worth, so you can't even sell them (racial motif mats too); have to dump them when you're ready to leave town.

My answer to the "you shouldn't farm these mats" is A) Make your own food and

maybe the same should be true of any other "nodes". How many ingots or sanded planks would you have if that were the case? That would make all the stuff I've collected as I leveled worth a lot more...

kurstein · May 2014

look at this post and you see no feedback
http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/89351/veteran-lvl-container-loot#latest

Gillysan · May 2014

Only L38 but wanted to report that I seem to be getting more blue drops on a particular mobs first kill. This is occurring everywhere. I don't recall seeing this many blues dropping.

Ospoon · May 2014

This thread is just one of the many, many reasons people are or have departed this game. If you don't think that's true just take a look around any zone over level 30. Zenimax doesn't seem to be thinking beyond the immediate solution to any problem they've encountered, yet. Maybe in six months to a year, after their team has some more seasoning, this game will be worth another look; but, i'd wager by that point so many will have left it'll be either on its way, or already, F2P.

Nerfing entire skill lines is not a valid reaction to a poor design choice made by ZOS in the first place. I encourage you to give your feedback for sure, but myself, i'm done shouting to the heavens. Things will either get fixed when they lose enough subs, or it won't. I don't care to stick around during the interim, there's far better and more stable AAA titles that deserve a subscription fee.

michaelpatrickjonesnub18_ESO · May 2014

Eliminate vet ranks. Problem solved.