The Disappearance of Racial Motifs

AreoHotah · May 2014

This was a very bad idea. now the cheapest daedric motif you can find is 120k wich is just LOL

KerinKor · May 2014

SadisticSavior wrote: »

Vixenator wrote: »

Since the April 30 patch on the NA server, racial motifs have either disappeared altogether, or the drop rate is shredded into a tiny fraction of a drop rate that it once was.

LOL

I've gotten 2 since then. Got the Nords one over the weekend, and got my 2nd Orc one yesterday. Both via casual searching (meaning I did not go out of my way to grind it). I got the Nord one in the Daggerfall bank in a trunk for crissakes. The one right behind that betch who is always propagandizing money lenders.

People who are not getting them are either looking in the wrong places (have never seen one in a backpack or a normal sack for example) or are just not being persistent.

I have the same experience, since this alleged 'nerf' I've had 2 motifs simply doing what I've always done, running the bank nodes whenever I log in when switching characters as well as out leveling. This rate seems not noticeably different from what I've ha up till now.

Krohm · May 2014

What's funny is there trying to combat bots and gold sellers, well now you run a greater risk of people buying gold to pay for the crazy asking prices of the motifs.

I will say this, since making a new toon they seem to be allot rarer, think gosh my NB has them all minus the rare ones.

Eris · May 2014

Yesterday I played for about 4 hours (actually playing, not logging on/off over and over again running around the same room). During my adventures I got 2 motifs, 11 recipes, 3 purples items and 7 blue items. I was just doing normal missions in Alik'r Desert. I'm not sure why other's aren't getting cool stuff too, but I really just don't see it.

Malediktus · May 2014

There is also a problem with the value of gold in this game. Its much easier to make gold than to spend it as soon as you have your horse and inventory space upgrades. Now they nerfed cod fees and guild store fees. Great inflation incoming.
What does this mean for motifs? Since they are pretty much the rarest and most desireable items you can get in this game at the moment, the prices will skyrocket over the next few weeks.
Zenimax needs to think of new gold sinks like housing, prestige horses, prestige motifs you can only buy from npcs,...

rynth · May 2014

You guys have heard of supply and demand correct???? We don't need the market flooded with motifs then they lose their value. Motifs shouldn't be easy to find, they should be harder to find. That way when you do find one it means more or when you purchase one for a good deal. Heck the beginning motifs are only like 800 to 1k for each, I've even seen some lower. STOP COMPLAINING, lol and I can't believe you sent five emails. Oh my gosh I'm not getting what I want right now in every container I must spam the mail until I get what I want lol. You act like the game is falling apart and no one cares about it.

Malediktus · May 2014

People who sell them for 1k or something are just impatient, you can sell them for 2k on zone chat. Even sold them as high as 3k.

ZOS_GinaBruno · May 2014

Hey guys, we're going to investigate this issue and let you know what we find out. Thanks for the reports!

SadisticSavior · May 2014

Vixenator wrote: »

Lol,you clearly do not know what you are talking about.

Yeah, I only have a dozen motifs. What do I know about finding them? LOL

Vixenator wrote: »

Looking in the wrong places? Oh right,because i knew that furniture and backpacks in buildings were the highest chance since before launch

Well, it's not like that now. Sorry. Never seen anything in backpacks other than food crap. Same thing with crates and cupboards. Only places I have ever seen them drop are trunks and wardrobes and desks and nightstands.

Vixenator wrote: »

Just because you are in the small % of people who got lucky after this patch

Yeah, "lucky" 12 times...twice in the the last few days. And only from casual searching. I did not even put real effort into it.

If you are that unlucky, well, you are pretty screwed then. Sorry. Save up your coins and buy those motifs in chat.

Buy the motifs are still dropping in game, even if you personally are insanely unlucky at finding them.

Vixenator wrote: »

By the way,this post mostly pertains to the disappearance of veteran motifs:barbaric,primal,daedric,ancient elf etc. Not the common ones such as nord and orc. However,even the common ones ARE affected.

Not from what I have seen. And I'm not the only one...I see tons of them for sale in chat constantly in Glenumbra. And by constantly I mean like every other line in the chat window. It's ridiculous.

SadisticSavior · May 2014

Abigail wrote: »

Too bad

How is it too bad for me? I got all the ones I wanted.

Abigail wrote: »

I have three Altmer motifs in my bank atm (all collected before the patch). What I cannot find is Orsimer

I have an Orc one. Will trade you if you want it.

Drachenfier · May 2014

Gisgo wrote: »

I think they should be rare, crafters arent supposed to know all styles unless they played for a very long time (years).

Why should standard motifs be rare? Daedric and Ancient Elf and what not, yea, I can see the point of those being rare, but why should Nord or khajit motifs, etc, be rare? These are crafting styles that any level 1 character can make.

/boggle

SadisticSavior · May 2014

Malediktus wrote: »

Why should standard motifs be rare?

To create a demand for buying gear from other players?

Not a lot of reason to buy stuff from other players if you can already make everything yourself.

Vuron · May 2014

Hey, look on the bright side. You all probably have stacks and stacks of lockpicks, now.

I can understand the racial motifs being somewhat rare. I played through months of beta and months of PTS and didn't find that many. I have found some of the rare ones in live before the latest patches.

What I find really strange is that I haven't even found any recipes the last few days. I used to find many duplicates of these every session.

mcatchlovb16_ESO · May 2014

I haven't seen one drop in at least a week or so

ChairGraveyard · May 2014

Krohm wrote: »

What's funny is there trying to combat bots and gold sellers, well now you run a greater risk of people buying gold to pay for the crazy asking prices of the motifs.

I will say this, since making a new toon they seem to be allot rarer, think gosh my NB has them all minus the rare ones.

Yep. In addition to the fact that botters have unlimited accounts (via stolen CC #s), and so just add extra bots if these types of nerfs happen, it also massively drives up demand for their product (gold from external websites).

So not only is it 1) ineffective at stopping bots, 2) great at making real players mad, it 3) drives up demand for gold sellers through the roof.

The complete opposite of the intended effect, and precisely why I loathe diminishing returns/lockout timers on loot.

Ashlynne · May 2014

ChairGraveyard wrote: »

Balamir wrote: »

I completely agree. This is outrageous. The drop chances of any purple or blue provisioning recipes is also affected. I dont understand what they are trying to achieve with this.

Ostensibly it's to combat bots, but as anyone that has played these sorts of games know, this type of anti-fun anti-player change just pisses off players and makes them leave over time.

Sadly I don't expect this to change until it gets so bad that they start losing subs in droves - no one wants to listen.

Meanwhile we have players clamoring for global lockout timers on nodes, regular loot, and quests, all because they mistakenly think those things affect bots at all, which they don't and never have (given botters just add more bots or move on to more lucrative areas, which then also get nerfed, hurting players even more).

I don't see an end in sight until every system in this game has a global lockout timer - questing, bosses, looting, etc.

Maybe when everyone realizes that these types of bandaid "fixes" make the game less fun for legit players and don't affect bots, we'll see some real fixes.

Until then, expect the game to have more and more global lockout timers, diminishing returns, and in general anti-fun anti-player changes.

Nothing like using a sledgehammer to fix an issue that requires a small, precision tool. /facepalm

ZOS... wake up. Please.

Viblo · May 2014

DDOOOOOMMMMM!! Jesus Christ there is so much crying in these forums. Sometimes I wonder if I'm reading a game's forums or stumbled into a daycare by accident.

If you people were half as qualified as you believe you are in your fantasy world, you would not be on this side looking in.

For those people.. http://www.animationcareerreview.com/articles/2013-top-50-schools-us-game-design-and-development pick one and begin your journey.

Biding_My_Time · May 2014

Silly me. I was playing the game instead of farming nightstands in town when it was first out. Now I'm paying 500g a pop for these before the ones in circulation dry up and the price shoots back up to 1k a piece.

Soliduparrow · May 2014

You can't lower the drop rate and then put in a lockout at the same time. All that will do is cause real players to stop looting dressers(because they never get anything from them), which makes them even rarer than your intended drop rate decrease.

Bots dont care about loot lockouts but players do. A bot only has to make money within the game economy. So if all players get less loot, then the bot will not be impacted because relative to others, he is still getting more loot.

You guys messed up when you made the dresser/cabinet loot system. But now new players will never be able to get them at all unless they buy gold. So you actually helped the farmers you are trying to stop because you made their stock of farmed items shoot up in price 10x.

Don't you have somebody reasonable working near you that you can just run these ideas by before you implement them? Next time you are in starbucks just asks the barista if your idea makes sense and then tip them well. It will be worth it.

Kuratla · May 2014

What burns me is that I got into VR areas the day after they applied the nerf. I heard that they would be nerfing motif drop rates with Craglorn's patch so I figured I had lots of time to get the lower VR area motifs for my blacksmith before the patch. But it happened early. And, yes, one week in VR areas and opening every single dresser/chest/wardrobe/etc I can find, no motif books. No purple or even blue recipes. Even the 9 gold green recipes drop at a low rate.

Allyah · May 2014

None of the more rare motifs are worth buying anyway. Frankly, most of them are quite ugly or only have a couple of nice looking items. If you get one from a drop, that's great but it's seriously not worth having unless you can find someone desperate enough to buy it. IMO, anyway.

kreekitb16_ESO · May 2014

Moonchilde wrote: »

The people who farmed these the most are the gold sellers,

Nice of you to assume that i am a goldseller... ist the other way just for your info, Players farmed them and sold them, People who could afford the rare ones (Daedric/Ancient Elf/Primal/Barbaric) at lower Levels are presumably Gold-BUYERS, because having 75k Gold at lvl 12? ehhh yepp...

And the droprate is *** up. Since the last week i have not found a single Rare motif... NOT a single one, whereas i found several each day before.

So i pity the poor "Completionists" who want those rare motifs, it is either wait and be incredibly lucky or pay an insane Price for it.

Btw i am Holding back my Daedric Motifs to sell as soon as People WTB them for 150k , you can thank me later that i saved one for YOU

Musonius · May 2014

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hey guys, we're going to investigate this issue and let you know what we find out. Thanks for the reports!

My guess is the investigation will find there was an undocumented change to the drop rate due to gold farmers taking advantage of the relog container exploit. The problem with this change is two fold; one, the gold farmers already had built up a nice inventory of motifs before the change and now you have made their exploit gotten gains even more valuable (good job) and two, lowering the drop rate does not solve the problem of the relog container exploit, since YOU CAN STILL DO IT and so the lowered drop rate just punishes the regular player (again, good job). I'm going to assume the reason you did not just fix the relog container exploit is because doing so is very difficult given your instancing megaserver architecture somehow not tracking container states across instances per character (and yet again, good job).

As a side note I do believe the drop rate was just greatly lowered as since patch 1.05, I think, don't really remember for sure, I have gotten 1 blue provis recipe and 2 barbaric motifs, but then again I am a compulsive container checker. Before that patch I was still in the pre vet areas and found several blue recipes and motifs. I also did a few runs of the relog container exploit in the pre vet areas after I made VR1 and got only a few green recipes and no motifs. I only spent maybe 15 mins of relogging and checking and may have been on the short end of the RNG stick, but it sure seemed that the drop rate nerf hammer had been brought down.

beravinprb19_ESO · May 2014

I have been playing since early access, and I have more than 20 days played on my main. I have found 3 racial motifs, none of which were "rare", and I bought the Primal motif when I saw someone selling it for a low price. At this rate, I'm better off buying them all...

maharao_ESO · May 2014

Yes, they seem to have vanished (as have recipes). Another collateral damage by-product of going after the gold farmers? Most unfortunate.

Vanathi · May 2014

Yesterday I started to see outrageous prices in chat for motif's. Someone was asking 55k each.

twev · May 2014

I'm kinda thinking that if one takes into consideration the fact that:

-> Other established MMOs haven't managed to put a serious hurt on gold farmers with whatever money they've spent on programed subroutines for the last few years, that have to be continuously (infinitely?) re-written to hit the moving target that is gold farming, mayhaps they ought just bite the bullet and hire a few GMs who just crawl through the game forever banning bot-mobs and bot-trains.

Sure, they'd miss individual bots, but the bot-mobs we're all seeing shouldn't be too hard to spot.

And I can't believe that it'd be that much more expensive than the ongoing technology that cumulatively hasn't worked combined with the subscription income from the people who rage-quit over nerfed game play.

All that 'anti-bot code' has GOT to be expensive in terms of coding time that produces ineffective or counterproductive results when you consider that the bot-farmer code writers are probably getting paid buckets of cash more than the white-hats.
I'd be surprised if the bot-farmers don't generate an order of magnitude more actual revenue than the company running the game, and yes, I know the bots use somebody-elses money to buy accounts with stolen credit cards. But the bot-programmers aren't free.

Edited for an obvious speeling error.... damned fat fingers

Phadin · May 2014

I still remember in the Beta when the racial motifs were dropping like hotcakes from the containers in the starting Coldharbor areas. They needed to tone them down over the weeks. In beta people were able to get out of Coldharbor to the starter island with half or all of the racial motifs already learned.

Alephen · May 2014

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hey guys, we're going to investigate this issue and let you know what we find out. Thanks for the reports!

this leads me to believe that if there was a drop nerf, it was accident, maybe the result of some of the anti bot changes for example.

to add my numbers: about 40 common motifs found before the last week. none since, although my search rate was lower, i would have expected 2-3 drops according to the drop rate from before last week.

also, motifs do indeed drop from backpacks, i've gotten one there. as well as furniture/trunks.

personally i like the idea of them being rarer EXCEPT the cat is already out of the bag, and it simply drives up the prices bots and dupers get. this is a punishment to anyone who didnt powerlevel, just as the boss loot drop was. powerlevelers got real easy crafting by farming and deconning high level drops, and get motifs easily as well. anyone that joins the game now will actually have to effort a bit, not much but some.

while it is easy to say stop crying about it, should they delete stored motifs and 'unlearn' say 80% of currently learned motifs because the drops were far too common?

arrowzagub17_ESO · May 2014

I have found 2 primal and 1 imperial motif in the last 4 days. I must be real lucky.