Let's wait and see before freaking out.
Anyway, I'm glad I got my Ancient Elf motif already.

I noticed this too today and made my own post here: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/comment/755577#Comment_755577

Here is the meat of what I found-->

I decided to do a little test. Granted this is not very scientific and it's a small sample so take it with a grain of salt.

I ran around town and looted 21 different pieces of furniture or backpacks. I did this 6 times in a row by logging in, looting, then logging out. The first time logging in is at the top with the last time logging in at the bottom.

total objects with items (non-lockpicks)
11111111
11111111
111111
111111
1111
111

total objects with lockpicks
11111
111
11111
111
1111111111
1111

total empty
11111111
1111111111
1111111111
111111111111
1111111
11111111111111

total empty or with lockpicks
1111111111111
1111111111111
111111111111111
111111111111111
1111111111111111
111111111111111111

Catdrexion wrote: »

For serious? They were rare enough already.

The green recipes were anything but rare... I would say a very significant portion of the gold I've made in-game came from selling them to merchants because I just kept on finding them.

never received a motif or recipe off mob. I thought it was only possible to get those things from containers. that would actually be much better.

Sadly the lucky farmers pre patch more then likely saw this coming and have stock on the rare motifs. If you don't have a rare for your crafter now be prepared to offer your first born for one.

Daverios wrote: »

Lol cause when they fixed the dupe tempering alloy shot back up to 10k right like it was before.

Lol...Another good point...except for the fact that getting 3-4 already rare drops per day is not the same things as being able to create an infinite amount of legendary mats.

If you could create an unlimited amount of motifs then yes, the market would be flooded but you couldn't. The dupe bug required stacks of items and splitting those items. Books can't be stacked and therefore weren't/couldn't be duped. So they are still rare. Give it a week or two.

Once all the people that are selling actually realize that this change was put in and that they aren't getting the drops they once were, you will see them jack prices like crazy. Then you will have the majority of the population saying "LOL...I saw some guy selling that for 400g" or "You're and idiot, I bought my other motif for 10k" not knowing that it takes a week to get 1 book now if not longer. But they will learn quickly when they find no one selling the 1-9 motifs for under 2k or the rarer motifs for 40-100k. I bought 2 daedric and 2 primals yesterday and will hold on to them for just such and occasion.

Well they definitely changed something or else I just documented the most coincidental increase of empty containers. The change is already on PTS so my guess is it made its way into yesterday's patch.

The test I did today also suggests that the likelihood of empty/lockpick containers increases no matter where you are or what zone you go to. Granted, I wasn't playing per se. I was just running from one area to another looting all containers without logging to test my theory. It went from about 50% empty for the first 20 containers up to about 80% empty when I finished going through 6 different locations in 2 different zones.

All Zenimax did by nerfing the drop rates is make it easier for the gold spammers / sellers to be able to temp the normal players into their goods which is very saddening. daedric went from 50k to 150k+ was what i saw on a daedric auction 2 days ago. I wanted to cry. Yet I get 3-5 Gold spam Mails a day. I always report them but I still get them daily. Way to go Zenimax !!! Help the gold spammers by screwing the guys who try to level / play legitimately.

Ok, first of all I'd like to get this back on the topic of Recipes, not motifs. There are plenty of other threads about motifs already.

I have noticed this decrease in the drop rate of recipes as well. Granted that green quality recipes were very easy to come by, but they should be since they are the basic requirement for doing anything in the provisioning craft in the first place. I'm not really sure why green is the lowest quality when the basic stuff should be white, unless it is to differentiate between something useful and the generic trash loot.

Anyway, for me this started after the patch on April 30. From different posts I've read, it seems to not be a consistant problem for everyone. This could be from a lot of factors like being on different servers, amount of time spent searching, etc. However, it really is an issue for some people. In my experience, I've gone from getting 1 blue quality recipe per hour on average to getting 1 per day. I have spent multiple days testing this out so please understand that I'm exaggerating on this point.

Another problem with recipes, which somewhat compounds the problem, is that you can only obtain recipes based on your character level. So in order to obtain all the recipes up to level 15 (which for one faction is 6 level 1 recipes, 6 level 5, 12 level 10, and 12 level 15), you must find them all before you reach level 16 or you will not be able to find them again unless you use an alternate character. Believe me, this is difficult to do when the recipes you get are completely random (and this was back before the decrease in drop rate).

Basically I'm just reiterating the fact that it is a problem for some people and it is a major problem for those of us that are trying to be a professional provisioner.