Really would feel guilty enslaving Sharp to do my surveys after what he's already been through.

Now a hireling that maybe took a cut of the mats I'd be fine with.

I hear y'all. I wish this game was more methodical about certain things. Our companions can do surveys for us. I don't see any issues with it.

Good idea. Sending companions on basic job quests has been made to work well in other games. It would certainly make companions feel more useful, because they're not especially useful in combat yet. (Zos: *please* can you teach them basic mechanics, like "stand where indicated and don't move" (even Stibbons can be told to do that), or "stay in the moving safe zone"...)

To answer derkaiserliche's point, this could be made into a real blessing for players who only have a little time each day to play the game, or can only play every few days, and without significantly aiding players with 20 maxed crafters: make it take a substantial amount of real world time for a companion to go and harvest a survey report. Say 6 hours per report. You can give them a stack of 10, but then your companion will be unavailable for 60 hours. (Figures made up on the spur of the moment, adjust to taste etc.) I'd be more than happy to send Bastian away choppng wood for a few days (he's a lumberjack and he's okay!) and get a big pile of ruby ash back at the end.

Vaughndaunted wrote: »

How many surveys have you stored in your bank or your chests at your house? Me... I have up to 90 surveys in one location through all the surveys we could get. Alchemy and Enchanting surveys never get done. It's incredibly hard to play the game and do all the tasks. If we could delegate some of the work amongst houseguests or our companions... that would make them more meaningful to us.

Have you considered NOT letting 90+ surveys build up? Just go do them yourself as you get them and this isn't an issue! This is an issue YOU created for yourself. I don't think the vast majority of players want this game to become one of those terrible, eastern MMOs that have "auto" features and the game plays itself. I rate this suggestion a "hold space bar"/10

Miri is so desperate for approval, she would definitely do it. It's kind of out of place that we can't ask.

Colecovision wrote: »

Miri is so desperate for approval, she would definitely do it. It's kind of out of place that we can't ask.

No, she'd be way too busy eating ('What do you say we try some of the local fare? I'm famished') and drinking ('I can't wait to take a load off at the inn'). I swear she just thinks about her stomach all the time.

Billium813 wrote: »

Vaughndaunted wrote: »

How many surveys have you stored in your bank or your chests at your house? Me... I have up to 90 surveys in one location through all the surveys we could get. Alchemy and Enchanting surveys never get done. It's incredibly hard to play the game and do all the tasks. If we could delegate some of the work amongst houseguests or our companions... that would make them more meaningful to us.

[snipped the wonderful picture]

Have you considered NOT letting 90+ surveys build up? Just go do them yourself as you get them and this isn't an issue! This is an issue YOU created for yourself. I don't think the vast majority of players want this game to become one of those terrible, eastern MMOs that have "auto" features and the game plays itself. I rate this suggestion a "hold space bar"/10

^Absolutely this (nice picture btw).

I think some people simply have to re-learn how to properly enjoy a video game. All the talk about (of course self-made) "tasks" and the obvious urge to "complete them all besides not having fun doing so" is rather concerning and a clear indicator for addiction.

This behaviour shouldn't be supported by zos under any circumstances.

Braffin wrote: »

I think some people simply have to re-learn how to properly enjoy a video game. All the talk about (of course self-made) "tasks" and the obvious urge to "complete them all besides not having fun doing so" is rather concerning and a clear indicator for addiction.
This behaviour shouldn't be supported by zos under any circumstances.

With gold and crafting materials, I really don't understand why some people are afraid they could miss something - if one skips crafting a few days, so what?! You'll get less gold for a few days, but does it really matter? And if you'd trash one crafting survey it's not as you couldn't just gather those mats elsewhere on another day.

I see how a certain "pressure" is purposely created when it comes to other things, though. Yes, also by ZOS - and not only by ZOS, it's something not uncommon with this type of game, no matter who published it. One is "having to" farm new sets and mythics to be able to keep pace (in PvE, it doesn't matter much, so far, but I guess in PvP it's a different situation?), which also includes activities some people dislike, but they "have to" do them to get the leads.

Another one is time-limited offers you need a special currency for (during events, or also leads sold by the merchant in the Archive that change every week). Want that thing? You need special currency for it. And you need the currency before the offer expires. Of couse this time limitation is created deliberately and with background thoughts - otherwise they could just make these things available all year round.

Of course, no one is truly forced to do something they dislike in this game. So you won't get that one mythic item if leads are hidden behind something you dislike. So you don't get that lorebook furnishing available that week at the Archive if you don't have enough currency left to buy it in time. It's not the end of the world. But I see how these mechanisms make people do things in ESO they actually don't find much fun because they are required for some item they want, and get frustrated over it.

One solution against that would be to make these things obtainable on a different way, maybe make these items sellable - then they'd probably cost a lot at guild traders, but if you really want them you could buy them anytime for gold. But ZOS most probably won't do that. As I said: It's a deliberate design decision to make things time-limited offers. (Also in the crown store, btw, but that's a different topic).

you send em out for 1 survey ea or a zone of surveys. 1 survey is like 30 min, maybe? Then you either interact to trade with them or they send you the mats in a mail if you're offline. It just feels a liiiiiiittle too close to botting to me. Dunno if ZOS would ever go for that.

Elyu wrote: »

Many people in this thread seem to think it's a "you" problem - but for many, including the OP and myself, having to port around gathering surveys is HOMEWORK, and gets in the way of playing the game.

Surveys are a reward for doing writs. These surveys give the player a good amount of mats that it would take a lot longer to go out and farm every day. It takes little time to do the few surveys that we receive each day as opposed to letting them build up until it takes hours to clear them all.

Surveys also are not required so if a player really dislikes them they can just delete them.

Vaughndaunted wrote: »

How many surveys have you stored in your bank or your chests at your house?

One of each in the bank - in case I'm out of the one for a daily endeavor. None at all in chests in houses. My mains hang onto all the surveys and do them when I want something easy and quick to do before getting out of game.

I'd be up for a companion with a Harvesting Skill line, who would take 24hrs to harvest a survey, and then as you put more skill points into it, maybe reduce to 18hrs, then 12hrs.

There would be separate skill lines for each type of material, so you'd have to invest your points wisely, like a GMC.

No, our companions are just that: companions and not our slaves (aside from that slimy Argonian of course). I'm all for for more companion functionality, but having them do our work for us is not the way.

If you don't want to do surveys, then destroy them. That's what what I do as well.

Tandor wrote: »

No thanks, it's a player-made issue and not one that needs to be addressed by ZOS through yet another shortcut measure that further trivialises the game.

Vaughndaunted wrote: »

Elyu wrote: »

Whether it's companions or a new 'hireling' npc something does need to change.

Many people in this thread seem to think it's a "you" problem - but for many, including the OP and myself, having to port around gathering surveys is HOMEWORK, and gets in the way of playing the game.
And we have to do it, because we don't have the gold to buy all the mats, or (like myself) you want to be self-sufficient for crafting materials.

So, some suggestions:

Something like hirelings to collect surveys
Let stacked surveys drop all the mats at once when you harvest (rather than collect one, ride away, ride back collect 2nd etc)
Move survey locations to be closer to wayshrines (for the ones that are in some corner of the map)
Give survey nodes a chance to drop rare crafting resources (DLC style materials, rare alchemy ingredients e.g. dragons blood)

I cannot play this game to farm surveys everyday. That’s completely time consuming.

I craft on all 20 toons and have it down to a science. I craft 9 days worth of equipment and enchantment writs. I do this once a week. I make 100 consumable writs in advanced to make it easier to get all tasks done on 20 toons. This takes approximately 3 hours to do weekly. Then there’s logging in daily before 5a est in order to do collect the daily writ mission for one day… and them doing them after 5a est so that I could collect the next one promptly after to mitigate the time spent doing writs and playing the game.

Wow, you really have this down to a science, huh?

Why do you feel the need to have 20 toons that you log into every day and submit writs for?

I know you aren't the only person that does this. I understand there is some money and mats to be made doing this, but surely there are better ways. I have 3 toons. I make pots and food daily and never want for gold. I sell crafted items and motif pages in guild traders.

> I have 20 toons
> I have too many Survey rewards from doing daily writs for those 20 toons
> ZOS needs to make it easier to complete Surveys
> Have Companions do Surveys for me

I just think that you have the incorrect solution to the issue because you haven't figured out the real issue.

The real issue is that ESO lets players submit 20 characters worth of writs daily and bury themselves in this obsessive compulsive behavior. I get it that players are doing this because they need gold and they need mats. But players wouldn't feel the need to do this if the game gave them sufficient gold and mats in other aspects of the game! We have to diagnose the correct issue in order to correctly fix the problem.