Ngl I miss when we just had Gold, AP, Tel Var and Crowns. I get that some of them are specific to an activity, but maybe tone down a bit? Specially the ones related to the in-game cosmetic/DLC store.

Spin wrote: »

Like, can't we mix some and get rid of the other? For example Crown Gems and Seals of Endeavor. They basically serve a similar purpose (getting Crown Crate-related items), but are completely separate systems. Why not merge them, or at least make them interact?

Not that I disagree, but there's an obvious reason for this. They wanted seals to serve a specific purpose, make crown items kinda accessible, but not too much to eat into crown crate revenue. If they had made them like crown gems, then either the apex and radiant items would be even more out of reach than they are now, or it would have allowed people who wanted lower priced items to buy half a crate worth of items per season. A reasonable number of people buy crates for a smattering of low-mid value items.
Instead they chose the current version, where low value items are way overpriced compared to apex radiants. This encourages saving behaviour, and allows the rare expensive purchase which statistically most people weren't going to get from crates anyway, and if someone decides to spend on the low value things then all the better because they're getting very few of them.

In any case, they have different relative values for low vs high priced items so there's no reasonable way to merge them even if they changed their mind now without either making a bunch of people angry by choosing a low value exchange rate, or giving savers a significant boon in value in choosing a high value exchange rate.

Common(trash): 3gems=360 seals 120 seals per gem
Superior: 16gems=1000 seals 62.5 seals per gem
Epic 40 gems=2000 seals 50 seals per gem
Legendary 10 gems=3600 seals 36 seals per gem
Apex 400 gems=8000 seals 20 seals per gem
Radiant 1200/1600/2500 gems=16000 seals 13/10/6.4 seals per gem

To put it another way:
If you have 2500 gems, you can buy 1 Radiant, or 6 Apex and 1 Legendary,
or 20 Superior, 17 Epic and 15 Legendary. That last one is all the Superior, Epic and Legendary rewards in the current crates except for 2 Superior 1 Legendary.
With 16000 Seals you can buy 1 Radiant, or 2 Apex, or 4.4 Legendary, or 8 Epic or 16 Superior rewards.
That's a huge difference in scaling to bridge.

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

Trade Bars are replacing event tickets from what I understand. Then we're getting Tome points, which will have their own menu, and presumably the Premium Tome tokens from ESO+ (which will be used and spent very rarely). So that's two new currencies for a major overhaul of their content strategy.

But they stretched the one Tome point currency into two by listing “Caches” of Tome points as a separate currency from TP when they are not. They (thankfully) do not list similar containers on the currency list, like the number of transmutation geodes or crates we have, but they put the equivalent for TP there, even though caches are already listed in the Tome UI where you have to go to open them (similar to crown crates). If they had left it like crown crates, where you see what you have when you’re on the appropriate screen, they could have saved some unnecessary clutter in the currency menu.

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

Some, like Imperial Fragments (a player request since they used to be inventory items)

Not a single player requested this. ZOS took away one of the best ways to make gold. Selling Imperial Fragments. So those that did not want to do IC can still get IC stuff. Now they are forced into IC with no way out.

Vonnegut2506 wrote: »

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

Gems and Endeavors might be separated for financial/legal reasons. They also have very different exchange rates for Radiant vs more common rewards.

Trade Bars are replacing event tickets from what I understand. Then we're getting Tome points, which will have their own menu, and presumably the Premium Tome tokens from ESO+ (which will be used and spent very rarely). So that's two new currencies for a major overhaul of their content strategy.

Most currencies couldn't be eliminated (AP, Tel Var, Transmute Stones) without drastically changing the role their content plays. Some, like Imperial Fragments (a player request since they used to be inventory items) and Undaunted Keys, could be removed with a new way to get their current rewards. Several rewards could be tucked into Transmute Stones, IMO.

ESO does not have a lot of currencies compared to other MMOs, which introduce new ones (or several) for each new zone. It's like if Style Materials (we get many new ones each year) were harder to get and required to craft new meta gear and abilities. Terrible.

Another simplifying factor is that ESO currencies can't be exchanged for one another, and there aren't complex crafting recipes involving a spreadsheet currencies and different content, ultimately meaning that you don't need to track multiple currencies. You don't need to know what AP is for to do PvE, and if you do need a PvP set, it's simple to understand: AP comes from PvP.

Transmute stones could be removed. Just change the stone requirement to a gold requirement that scales the same way transmute stones do and get rid of them. Or switch over to Undaunted keys in order to transmute in order to keep the dungeon queue hopping. They could combine Tel Var stones and AP into one PvP currency if they weren't so dead-set on trying to make people play Imperial City.

The point of Tel Var is to have a currency that you lose on death, while AP persists. It also encourages IC, whereas AP has other sources.

The transmute stones are effective at motivating players into Random Daily queues, which consequently make it easier to queue for one specific dungeon, because there's a pool of players in the random queue to join you (eventually ...). Any rework would probably need to preserve this incentive for queues to be populated.

I don't disagree but the currencies are too deeply integrated into existing systems and their surrounding incentives. I don't see a way to remove or condense without affecting the incentives.

Transmutes encourage doing random dungeons, which in turn support those doing specific dungeons. The dungeon finder would unravel without that incentive. Even if they gave more gold or more cosmetics, those are narrow rewards compared to transmutes.

Same thing with Tel Var stones. They're risk & reward structure that makes people engage IC. I could see this being condensed with AP into one generic PVP token, but I do think there'd be some massive downsides and controversy.

Now some of them are tied to monetization. While I have a pretty negative opinion of the crown crates in general, the gems serve a positive function. Gems are a by product that offsets the negatives of opening repeated crates.

I think the bigger issue is just training people in game mechanics. There's no way to navigate this game without the internet or experience. If there are in-game learning resources, they're not obvious.

Malyore wrote: »

Currency, sets, materials. There's a lot bogging them down.

I've written extensively on the mats bogging the game down. So many players I've tried to introduce to this game have been overloaded. Inventory management suffers with each patch and the argument of ESO+ is only valid for players that commit, its invalid for those that give up on the game due to inventory issues before they consider committing to a sub.

If I could wave a magic wand:

1. Remove the 10 different types of water for just 1. Alchemy would need to be changed to 'chance of successful craft' from the tiered system. Points in Alchemy increases the chance of success, max = 100%. Remove the level requirement from potions/poisons. Similar to crown tri-pots.
2. Remove the bile entirely from alchemy. Have water = potion, no water = poison. Spider eggs have enough goo in them to make a poison. This would also be a gold sink.
3. Remove the 10 different types of base enchants and replace with just Jone / Jode for positive or negative effect. Again they will need to reconsider the Enchant tier system. See Alchemy.
4. Remove white and green tier Enchants, they serve no real function. Have Blue as daily writs (but drop more to reflect this).
5. Reduce the basic food ingredients, example being instead of Chicken, Pork, etc just have 'Light Meat' eg 'Red Meat' exists, not Beef. This may result in killing pigs and making a chicken sandwich though.
6. There are entire matt tiers between CP1 and CP159 that quickly become entirely redundant.
7. Junk items for the sake of junk need not exist anymore (except actual treasure) - Why have 'damaged pelt' and 'clean pelt', just have 'Pelt' that has the same vendor price as damaged, and can be used as a furniture craft. Re-evaluate the usefulness of all strictly junk items.
8. To make purple enchants more useful, use them for scribing instead of the inks (this will require replacing all inks for Rekuta at a rate that reflects the prices of the items).
9. Remove the trait items that are so abundant they are simply clutter. This is for most weapons and armor (except nirn) and possibly the health, stam and mag for jewelry. Recycle the assets as treasure.
10. Option to 'auto-junk' items that are simply used for the purpose of vendoring. If after the clean up of items there are no junk items, but rather 'treasure' items, rename the junk tab to 'treasure tab'. Clearly denote these items as vendor purposes only.
11. Bait - remove the special baits, I barely notice an improvement, especially with the CP and companion perks catering for this. This often confuses new players, perhaps slightly buff standard bait and then have it so special fish don't drop twice. Most fishermen want the fish for roe so getting a special fish twice is unnecessary.
12. Have bait part of the Craft bag for all, it will serve as a small sample for new players, and it doesn't clutter the inventory. Can't even vendor it for a price.
13. Make style materials multi-purpose - I see no reason why 1 style material can't be used for multiple sets. New style mats with every new (non craftable) set is not entirely scaleable.
14. Remove the need for style materials for basic sets. If basic style mats are a good gold sink for daily writ crafters, slightly reduce the gold yield from dailies to factor this in. Even more relevant now 'ancient' motifs are a thing revamping the basic ones.
15. Re-evaluate all items that require 10 minor items to craft 1 major item. ie wrothgar style mats, dwarven style mats etc.

If all of that was done, the spam bombardment for new players would drop drastically.

Enemoriana wrote: »

richo262 wrote: »

Remove the 10 different types of water for just 1. Alchemy would need to be changed to 'chance of successful craft' from the tiered system. Points in Alchemy increases the chance of success, max = 100%. .

Bad idea. Hurts new players heavily, as they do not yet have a lot of materials. And they will need a lot to level up alchemy!
Same with enchanting.

richo262 wrote: »

To make purple enchants more useful, use them for scribing instead of the inks (this will require replacing all inks for Rekuta at a rate that reflects the prices of the items).

But they have different lore...

richo262 wrote: »

[*] Make style materials multi-purpose - I see no reason why 1 style material can't be used for multiple sets. New style mats with every new (non craftable) set is not entirely scaleable.
[*] Remove the need for style materials for basic sets. If basic style mats are a good gold sink for daily writ crafters, slightly reduce the gold yield from dailies to factor this in. Even more relevant now 'ancient' motifs are a thing revamping the basic ones.

Many are multi-purpose already, including basic. Used for crafting furniture. Nothing is ripping me out of nickel as colovian furniture...

How does having one water hurt new players? They go to water source ... they pick up water. Everybody, no matter the level picks up the same water. Potions and poisons and enchants are no longer level bound (meaning we no longer require a different water for class bracket). As I said, they operate like Crown tri-pots, no level requirement. The level system is no longer a tier system but a percentage of success. 1 point (default) is 10% chance, 10 points = 100% chance. A failed attempt yields extra inspiration. Logic is learn from mistakes.

Edit: 10% is too low a start, I just used that as an example. ie 1 point = 50%, 2 points 55% etc etc. up to 10 points = 100%

If anything a system like that helps new players. Sure 50% of their potions / poisons will fail (initially), but they will never end up with a batch of redundant potions / poisons (and enchants) that will become junk in 10 levels time because they constantly scale down as the player improves.

Enemoriana wrote: »

richo262 wrote: »

How does having one water hurt new players? They go to water source ... they pick up water. Everybody, no matter the level picks up the same water. Potions and poisons and enchants are no longer level bound (meaning we no longer require a different water for class bracket). As I said, they operate like Crown tri-pots, no level requirement. The level system is no longer a tier system but a percentage of success. 1 point (default) is 10% chance, 10 points = 100% chance. A failed attempt yields extra inspiration. Logic is learn from mistakes.

Edit: 10% is too low a start, I just used that as an example. ie 1 point = 50%, 2 points 55% etc etc. up to 10 points = 100%

If anything a system like that helps new players. Sure 50% of their potions / poisons will fail (initially), but they will never end up with a batch of redundant potions / poisons (and enchants) that will become junk in 10 levels time because they constantly scale down as the player improves.

Not water. Changing to chance.
Failed attempt means two or three ingredients lost. There is no real need to craft potions for low level to actually play - level up rewards gives 75 potions. And even if somebody will craft potions - there is no need to craft them in stacks. So lowlevel alchemy is mostly aboul leveling alchemy.
Secondly, all ingredient effects should be unlocked, so in any case there will be useless potions/poisons.
Now you can just level up skill with poisons and sell them to vendors and get back some gold. With chance system ingredients would be simply lost.
So new players loose more and get, actually, nothing. I can't even say "get few free slots in inventory", because lower level mats can be sold as soon as they become useless.

With enchanting there is even less reasons to craft more than you need at the moment, except leveling up skill. And leveled square runes can be bought from vendors, so there is even no reason to keep them all.

Your position is alchemy crafting chance to fail is bad for new players ... but also new players are also unaffected because they rely on 75 potions anyway? I'm not sure I follow.

I agree that players spam the alchemy tree to level it. I disagree there is any real gold benefit. In the scenario above, the failed crafts afford double inspiration so there is actually an XP benefit to failing to assist with leveling. It is a non-issue to have fewer potions that were undoubtedly only made to power level the alchemy tree because they are essentially a waste product, that wouldn't sell on a guild trader and only vendors for a trivial amount.

What is more beneficial to a new player? XP bonus for failing and having less left over trash to vendor, or the loose change they will get from disposing of a larger quantity of the biproduct?

The RP players would probably have issue with an account wide ingredient knowledge, or known from the start. I have no issue with lore books being a method of discovering alchemy effects though. That might be cool.

In a nutshell the trade off in regards to power leveling with the chance system is this. No junk items that were probably only made to power level alchemy, in favor of an XP bonus for failing, and the potions that didn't fail actually being useful as they are not bound to a level system, like how crown tri pots can be used at any level and don't decrease in effectiveness as you level.

Faulgor wrote: »

In regards to materials - isn't the whole gear level system kind of moot since One Tamriel? Everybody scales to max level anyway, and the sense of progression could be moved to gear quality upgrades instead of material ranks. Frankly it mostly feels bad that your stats drop as you level up, and upgrading your gear just helps to stay afloat instead of actually progressing. At least that's what I remember of it, haven't been able to make new characters in years.

Main problem with removing all material ranks but one seems to be that you'd still need a crafting material, and I have no idea what to call it. Just "metal" instead of Iron, Dwarven or Ebony is silly.
And while ESO has decoupled materials and styles, the different materials still feel kind of important for immersion, maybe? At least the classic ones like Iron, Steel, Ebony. We could probably lose Voidstone and stuff like that without anybody shedding tears.

So removing all material ranks doesn't seem ideal. A better solution could be to add a qualitative difference to a smaller pool of materials, as with character level scaling, there's not much of a quantitative one, anyway.
This means materials wouldn't be like classic skills lines, simply progressing by increasing an arbitrary integer, but like perks. A sword made from Steel would grant a new perk compared to Iron, and so on.

1) Lose the last 5 material tiers. Readjust values accordingly so current CP 160 gear is the new Level 50 gear. E.g. for Blacksmithing, Iron, Steel, Orichalchum, Dwarven and Ebony are enough (canonically, Ebony should be more important than it is in ESO anyway).

2) Normalize stats across all tiers.

3) Add qualitative drawbacks / perks to material tiers, granting the current full functionality at tier 5.
Using metal-based weapons as an example:
Iron: Your weapon can be upgraded.
Steel: Your weapon can be enchanted or poisoned.
Orichalcum: Your Heavy Attacks return resources.
Dwarven: Your weapon traits are 100% better.
Ebony: Your weapon attacks and skills can critically strike.

Some materials and professions are harder to find such perks for than others, but you get the idea. It reduces the amount of materials by 50% while still retaining a sense of gear progression up to max level, and refocuses on the classic TES materials.

Just in case you were responding to my post, I was referring to expressly 'consumable crafting' as that would be really easy to change over to chance system and result in more useful items no longer bound to the leveling system.

As for the 'non-consumable crafting' I merely flagged it as an issue in need of attention (CP1 to CP159 mats being redundant quite quickly) but didn't put forward a solution because that is whole giant can of worms that would require a great deal of re-evaluation.

Saying that I'm glad you're putting forward ideas for the 'non-consumable' reworking. I don't mind that being associated with levels as it is proper gear, but it should be refined a bit. Personally I think Steel is a bit silly, given steel is actually made from Iron Ore + Carbon + Heat. It isn't sourced from a special ore in real life. Dwarven ore is also silly because cannon wise there is no 'Dwarven Ore' it is almost an enigma in the other games, and sourced from ingots found in dwarven ruins and recycling dwarven gear. Dwarven should probably just be reserved as a material style, difficult to canonically source, and in practice it is not the best metal.

**Just for brain storming purposes**
Iron - Tier 1 (Level 1 - 14) [Any item crafted level 10 - 14 is renamed from Iron to Steel]
Orichalum - Tier 2 (Level 15 - 29)
Galatite - Tier 3 (Level 30 - 39)
Quicksilver - Tier 4 (Level 40 - 50)
Ebony - Tier 5 (CP+)

Ebony does all CP
10 ingots - CP1-150 - 'Up to CP150'
100 ingots - CP160 (Or keep the same ingot requirement as it presently is)

I've reworked how CP items works. 10 Ingots will create an 'up to CP150' item. So a CP1+ can wear it and can continue to wear it up to CP150 without it scaling down. Given how quickly CP points are gained, how it currently works, the player flies through their gears level in hours of play time. This at least makes the gear a bit more worthwhile. Could even make it 100 ingots = 'Up to CP160' that would be great gift for a new player that just entered CP. An item that would never scale down.

Ores removed
High ore - This is what is used to make steel, and not logical
Calcinium - Lorewise this is found under the water. It would have been better suited as a material style for Grave Deep
Dwarven - As per other games, it is not found as ore.
Voidstone and Galatite are associated with Daedric metals. Voidstone is speculated to come from the void or a daedric plane, so Galatite is more fitting to Nirn.
Rubedite? How dare it compete with Ebony. Outrageous.