Unavailability of Ink locks casual players out of scribing.

Jaraal · June 10

amig186 wrote: »

Yesterday, while watching the Xbox showcase, I spent 2h running around Betnikh killing the local fauna and mining nodes in search of an Ayleid Lightwell lead. In the process I dropped around 15 inks. It doesn't get any more casual than that.

It's not a matter of drop rate as much as it is a resistance to spend any significant time farming ink.

It's the same concept as going to the guild stores to buy rosin/tempers/wax to gold out your gear. It's much more efficient to pay for those things than to spend time farming the raw materials. The problem with ink is that it's a brand new commodity, therefore the prices are higher than many are comfortable paying.

In six months, this won't even be a discussion, since ink will be plentiful as it keeps dropping, but players will have scribed everything that they want to by then. Supply will exceed demand at that point.

BlueRaven · June 10

Did both of the new public dungeons, a bunch of the delves, a bunch of the side quests, and some light mat farming, and I still have only the same inks I got from doing the scribing quests.

But the whole system to me seems exhausting, with the amount of work I have to do to unlock all of the elements, I am just giving the whole system a pass.

I really thought this might be a fun way to experiment with builds on my alt’s, but that seems an impossibility.

For me scribing is just going to be a system I will not bother with. So I am not that concerned by the drops being super rare.

Scaletho · June 10

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

Hi All,

Admittedly not a casual player here. I just spent about 10 hours clearing out my surveys which includes grabbing every single resource between survey sites. I have been doing this for two days (about 8 hours in total) for a grand total of 1 ink.

I'm looking at these odds and asking myself how the heck are casual players supposed to scribe more than 1-2 skills? Remember, most casual players don't have a huge number of alts or a large enough bank balance to be able to buy it from guild traders.

Suggests for ZOS:
Maybe make one daily task per day give a guaranteed non-tradeable 1 ink? It's not going to cause a massive imbalance in the game, but it will allow all players to eventually unlock all the skills without suffering through endless grinding.

Casual players never stood a chance with ESO. We sustain the game, but we are invisible to ZOS.

wolfie1.0. · June 10

I_killed_Vivec wrote: »

EF321 wrote: »

so after everyone settles on their skills (and most players will just copy some meta from guide, without wasting anything on experiments), ink will start piling up. With lower demand and it keep dropping from many sources it will be non-issue soon.

We don't know yet but I suspect that this might happen sooner than we imagine.

Scribing seems quite limited, and most people won't want to experiment - not least because of the rarity (and subsequent cost) of ink. It seems inevitable that people will tend to follow the meta. Personally I think that people will be a little underwhelmed about the value of scribing, and scribed skills won't be that popular. We'll soon see when the meta builders start updating their builds:)

I'm not sure how ZoS intend to keep scribing alive - once you have what you want then you have no further need of ink. Maybe scribing will be extended beyond the current skill sets, but even then I suspect that we'll only get support for niche builds.

I expect Scribing is going to be like antiquities most likely. They are going to add in a few skills, aspects, etc. As we get new updates to the game.

It's an easier way of adding in new skills without having to release a whole new weapon or even class to the game at one time. It also will give players some more diversity to play with, consider, and farm.

ClowdyAllDay · June 10

not having 60 bucks for the full upgrade with all the previous chapters locks me out of scribing. ink or no ink. all i have is base games with summerset and maybe a couple of galens for the gourmand sets on a couple of those 11 accounts. no scribing for me but i am happy to sell off anything scribing related i might find.

wolfie1.0. · June 10

Jaraal wrote: »

amig186 wrote: »

Yesterday, while watching the Xbox showcase, I spent 2h running around Betnikh killing the local fauna and mining nodes in search of an Ayleid Lightwell lead. In the process I dropped around 15 inks. It doesn't get any more casual than that.

It's not a matter of drop rate as much as it is a resistance to spend any significant time farming ink.

It's the same concept as going to the guild stores to buy rosin/tempers/wax to gold out your gear. It's much more efficient to pay for those things than to spend time farming the raw materials. The problem with ink is that it's a brand new commodity, therefore the prices are higher than many are comfortable paying.

In six months, this won't even be a discussion, since ink will be plentiful as it keeps dropping, but players will have scribed everything that they want to by then. Supply will exceed demand at that point.

In six months we could possibly have new skills to scribe with. Those updates have to add something.

But yes, once skills are set for each character they are unlikely to change often. Something thst zos I think has factored into the drop rate.

Patience is going to be it's own reward here I think.

Tandor · June 10

Jaraal wrote: »

amig186 wrote: »

Yesterday, while watching the Xbox showcase, I spent 2h running around Betnikh killing the local fauna and mining nodes in search of an Ayleid Lightwell lead. In the process I dropped around 15 inks. It doesn't get any more casual than that.

It's not a matter of drop rate as much as it is a resistance to spend any significant time farming ink.

It's the same concept as going to the guild stores to buy rosin/tempers/wax to gold out your gear. It's much more efficient to pay for those things than to spend time farming the raw materials. The problem with ink is that it's a brand new commodity, therefore the prices are higher than many are comfortable paying.

In six months, this won't even be a discussion, since ink will be plentiful as it keeps dropping, but players will have scribed everything that they want to by then. Supply will exceed demand at that point.

Yes, it's partly about resistance to farming and also about timing in relation to completing what players want to do with scribing. The price is irrelevant to those players with gazillions of gold in the bank, and the timing point only arises because players want to complete their scribing setup now, and not when prices have dropped. However, this thread is about casual players being excluded from scribing and I simply don't see that being the case. Casual players don't have the time to benefit from giving 3 scribing skills to all their characters after experimenting with lots of others, but if that is what they want to do then as casual players they won't expect to be able to do so immediately, which is very different to being locked out from doing so at all.

Besides, last week it was all about how useless the scribing skills were, this week it's all about the unfairness of not being to have them all

!

sarahthes · June 10

frogthroat wrote: »

Aurielle wrote: »

Wow, so I managed to pick up one (1) ink after 45 minutes of doing surveys and harvesting every crafting node along the way to each survey site.

Surveys don't drop ink. The regular nodes do. And the double harvest CP does work on the normal nodes.

I got around 15 doing the same things in about the same timeframe.

It's rng. You're going to have good days and bad days. The main issue is there haven't been enough days period for the good days and bad days to balance out.

Skolandrikeb17_ESO · June 12

Got 1 ink in a week of playing as a mob drop.
All wings unlocked, don't explicitly farm resource.nodes but picked up quite a few as side activity.
Something does feel off.

Mayrael · June 12

Well... I've farmed about 30 inks in around 6 hours of regular nodes farming - it's definetly not that bad as you say.

Edit:
The one thing I would improve is drop chance of ink from mobs. Out of all inks I've found only 1 comes from mob, all the rest is from resource nodes.

Isteris · June 12

I have 60+ Ink, my dk main has learnt everything so has access to every script and do you know what, I have only made the free skill that you make right at the beginning of the quest. I see this system as away of plugging holes in your build for example you can improve on the dk's chains even on the dk but why would you want to unless you are looking for very small percentages in end game content. I think it is of most use for adding skills that your class doesn't offer but anyone who thinks this system is going to offer a lot more straight damage is going to be disappointed. My feeling is that casual players in the mid game will get something out of it if they are not in a mad rush and as others have said we will end up with a list of what's worth having so peeps wont need loads of ink.

jle30303 · June 12

Also: Although the Indrik / Netch / Gryphon / Dragon / 5th Door quests are optional for 2nd and subsequent characters, can you do them *anyway* for the rewards? If you can, that's 15 inks per character right there (3 per door).

Note that there are considerably less than 15 grimoires. I think there's 11: 6 weapon skills (of which the average character is unlikely to need more than 2), 2 soul skills, Assault, Fighters and Mages. And once you know what you're doing, you theoretically don't need to swap out inking the *same* skill over and over again, it'll be one-and-done per skill per character... Leaving each character with a minimum of 4 spare inks. This all builds up: the worst bit, in the end, is probably not going to be "farming ink" but "having each character farm the scripts they want".

Necrotech_Master · June 12

jle30303 wrote: »

Also: Although the Indrik / Netch / Gryphon / Dragon / 5th Door quests are optional for 2nd and subsequent characters, can you do them *anyway* for the rewards? If you can, that's 15 inks per character right there (3 per door).

Note that there are considerably less than 15 grimoires. I think there's 11: 6 weapon skills (of which the average character is unlikely to need more than 2), 2 soul skills, Assault, Fighters and Mages. And once you know what you're doing, you theoretically don't need to swap out inking the *same* skill over and over again, it'll be one-and-done per skill per character... Leaving each character with a minimum of 4 spare inks. This all builds up: the worst bit, in the end, is probably not going to be "farming ink" but "having each character farm the scripts they want".

you dont get ink from the 5th door, but you do from the other 4 wings, and yes its a guaranteed 12 ink per character to redo the 4 wings (you get 3 per wing)

EdjeSwift · June 12

jle30303 wrote: »

Also: Although the Indrik / Netch / Gryphon / Dragon / 5th Door quests are optional for 2nd and subsequent characters, can you do them *anyway* for the rewards? If you can, that's 15 inks per character right there (3 per door).

Note that there are considerably less than 15 grimoires. I think there's 11: 6 weapon skills (of which the average character is unlikely to need more than 2), 2 soul skills, Assault, Fighters and Mages. And once you know what you're doing, you theoretically don't need to swap out inking the *same* skill over and over again, it'll be one-and-done per skill per character... Leaving each character with a minimum of 4 spare inks. This all builds up: the worst bit, in the end, is probably not going to be "farming ink" but "having each character farm the scripts they want".

For the first part, yes, you can repeat.

However, your maths are off.

It's only 12 per alt, 3 per wing of the Dragon, Indrik, Netch, and Gryphon.

Also, it's 3 ink PER skill to craft initially and then 1 per change after that. So each character to get all 10, would be 30 minimum. 11th is not counted as it is done for free in the initial quest. That said however, it's doubtful you'll need more than 3 or 4 per character.

EF321 · June 12

EdjeSwift wrote: »

jle30303 wrote: »

Also: Although the Indrik / Netch / Gryphon / Dragon / 5th Door quests are optional for 2nd and subsequent characters, can you do them *anyway* for the rewards? If you can, that's 15 inks per character right there (3 per door).

Note that there are considerably less than 15 grimoires. I think there's 11: 6 weapon skills (of which the average character is unlikely to need more than 2), 2 soul skills, Assault, Fighters and Mages. And once you know what you're doing, you theoretically don't need to swap out inking the *same* skill over and over again, it'll be one-and-done per skill per character... Leaving each character with a minimum of 4 spare inks. This all builds up: the worst bit, in the end, is probably not going to be "farming ink" but "having each character farm the scripts they want".

For the first part, yes, you can repeat.

However, your maths are off.

It's only 12 per alt, 3 per wing of the Dragon, Indrik, Netch, and Gryphon.

Also, it's 3 ink PER skill to craft initially and then 1 per change after that. So each character to get all 10, would be 30 minimum. 11th is not counted as it is done for free in the initial quest. That said however, it's doubtful you'll need more than 3 or 4 per character.

There is also a trick with tutorial scribe, you can feed alt characters needed scripts before doing tutorial, so you can scribe Wield Soul exactly as needed for free

EdjeSwift · June 12

EF321 wrote: »

EdjeSwift wrote: »

jle30303 wrote: »

Also: Although the Indrik / Netch / Gryphon / Dragon / 5th Door quests are optional for 2nd and subsequent characters, can you do them *anyway* for the rewards? If you can, that's 15 inks per character right there (3 per door).

Note that there are considerably less than 15 grimoires. I think there's 11: 6 weapon skills (of which the average character is unlikely to need more than 2), 2 soul skills, Assault, Fighters and Mages. And once you know what you're doing, you theoretically don't need to swap out inking the *same* skill over and over again, it'll be one-and-done per skill per character... Leaving each character with a minimum of 4 spare inks. This all builds up: the worst bit, in the end, is probably not going to be "farming ink" but "having each character farm the scripts they want".

For the first part, yes, you can repeat.

However, your maths are off.

It's only 12 per alt, 3 per wing of the Dragon, Indrik, Netch, and Gryphon.

Also, it's 3 ink PER skill to craft initially and then 1 per change after that. So each character to get all 10, would be 30 minimum. 11th is not counted as it is done for free in the initial quest. That said however, it's doubtful you'll need more than 3 or 4 per character.

There is also a trick with tutorial scribe, you can feed alt characters needed scripts before doing tutorial, so you can scribe Wield Soul exactly as needed for free

Thanks for confirmation on this, I was actually feeding an alt full of scripts before I did it to see if that was possible. It makes sense why the buffing and ROI on the skill is lower than others now.

NuarBlack · June 13

Must have terrible RNG or something is bugged as I haven't had one ink drop yet. Did all quests day one and opened all wings. Collections says I have them and have been hoovering up all resource nodes since in my travels, even farming to a certain extent. So I wonder if it can get bugged.

virtus753 · June 13

NuarBlack wrote: »

Must have terrible RNG or something is bugged as I haven't had one ink drop yet. Did all quests day one and opened all wings. Collections says I have them and have been hoovering up all resource nodes since in my travels, even farming to a certain extent. So I wonder if it can get bugged.

Ink drops are likely not above 1% from resource nodes and even less from enemies (still under 0.5% for me). We have no data on boss drops, since those are bugged right now.

With chances that low, you may well go several hundred nodes and even more enemies without anything. At one point I went over 250 resource nodes without a drop. Sometimes it was only 30 nodes between drops. With enemies I went over 570 without a drop and then got two in 11 kills. That's RNG with low chances.

Necrotech_Master · June 13

virtus753 wrote: »

NuarBlack wrote: »

Must have terrible RNG or something is bugged as I haven't had one ink drop yet. Did all quests day one and opened all wings. Collections says I have them and have been hoovering up all resource nodes since in my travels, even farming to a certain extent. So I wonder if it can get bugged.

Ink drops are likely not above 1% from resource nodes and even less from enemies (still under 0.5% for me). We have no data on boss drops, since those are bugged right now.

With chances that low, you may well go several hundred nodes and even more enemies without anything. At one point I went over 250 resource nodes without a drop. Sometimes it was only 30 nodes between drops. With enemies I went over 570 without a drop and then got two in 11 kills. That's RNG with low chances.

yeah i can concur with this

since the patch released, ive gotten 5 units of ink from drops (2 from material nodes (1 double drop due to plentiful), and 2 drop from enemies)

since the patch came out, ive cleared the entire west weald zone (all quests, delves, public dungeons, WBs), done 10x of each west weald daily, 10x of each mages, undaunted, fighters guild dailies, 2 lucent citadel trials, 3 other pug normal trials, and at least 30 min of nothing but harvesting mats in craglorn (during this time i also got 2 drops of nirncrux (1 potent, 1 fortified)), along with other random harvesting mixed in between

something just feels wrong with the drop rate if you cant even accumulate it through normal gameplay